The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

NO FREE LUNCH
This section is merely a restatement of the economic aspect of Ford’s uni-
versal code. The concept of no such thing as a free lunch seems like com-
mon sense, but it is far too uncommon even in the twenty-first century. 
The United States cannot maintain an affluent and prosperous society 
by exporting jobs to China, or by trading in carbon credits as recom-
mended by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (2009). The United States can no 
more deliver high quality healthcare to all its citizens through government 
mandates than Shakespeare’s Jack Cade could decree that a penny was to 
buy seven half-penny loaves of bread.
The idea that governments can mandate free lunches, or that unions can 
negotiate them, exemplifies what Ford calls “the unreasonable demands of 
irresponsible labour.” To this Ford (1922, p. 177) adds: “If everybody does 
less work and everybody gets more of the product of work, how long can 
it last?”
This is not to say that a penny could not have conceivably bought seven 
half-penny loaves of bread during the fifteenth century. A contemporary 
Henry Ford, however, would have had to get the production and distribu-
tion cost below an eighth of a penny so the baker could earn a reasonable 
profit. Jack Cade could not do this by decree, and neither could the King, 
whether Lancastrian or Yorkist. If Henry VI or Edward IV had issued 
such a decree, there would have been no bread at all because farmers 

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Why Charity?  •  199
and millers would not have sold their product at a loss. If Medicare emu-
lates Jack Cade by “controlling” healthcare costs through cuts to physi-
cian reimbursements, senior citizens will be unable to find doctors who 
are willing to treat them. The government-run healthcare systems in the 
United Kingdom and Canada sometimes deliver long waiting times for 
elective and even mandatory medical procedures.
* * *
If we can get away from charity, the funds that now go into charitable enter-
prises can be turned to furthering production—to making goods cheaply 
and in great plenty. And then we shall not only be removing the burden of 
taxes from the community and freeing men but also we can be adding to the 
general wealth. We leave for private interest too many things we ought to do 
for ourselves as a collective interest. We need more constructive thinking in 
public service. We need a kind of “universal training” in economic facts. The 
over-reaching ambitions of speculative capital, as well as the unreasonable 
demands of irresponsible labour, are due to ignorance of the economic basis 
of life. Nobody can get more out of life than life can produce—yet nearly 
everybody thinks he can. Speculative capital wants more; labour wants 
more; the source of raw material wants more; and the purchasing public 
wants more. A family knows that it cannot live beyond its income; even the 
children know that. But the public never seems to learn that it cannot live 
beyond its income—have more than it produces.