Welfare for Me but Not for Thee?!

The “Rationalist Judaism” blogger posted an article attacking Kollel students living off government welfare.

Myself, I’m conflicted about the whole matter (although welfare is surely negative), so Hyehudi.org tries to give space for any well-written article on the topic, from any angle.

But one libertarian-leaning commenter called “ex-Avreich” (lightly edited by me) exposed at least the RJ blogger’s astoundingly unselfaware hypocrisy and shallowness of mind, all expressed in intemperate rhetoric:

ex-Avreich:

By “parnasa”, did you mean becoming a pseudo-“intellectual” welfare queen busy hectoring those who receive money from voluntary donors instead of sponging off taxes? Like Slifkin?!

…

The VAST majority of an Avreich’s income is voluntary; the vast majority of an academe parasite’s income (and incomparably larger in absolute terms) is from taxes. How does the expression about the pot calling the kettle black go? Or the one with the beam and the splinter?

Besides, the hypocrite Natan Slifkin loathes private scholars who accept ZERO government funding in Eretz Yisroel no less, if not loathing them more.

Another commenter by name of “Yosef R” responded:

Um, sure, there are a few college educated folks who go into academics. But hey, there should always be a few who go into kollel. There should be professors who get tenure, and there should be, l’havdil, baalei treisin and of course, gedolei hador.

But most people who go to advanced education do not become welfare queens or “parasites.” They work their tuchuses off at their jobs, be they in white-collar or blue collar spheres, whether they wear a white coat or a charcoal gray suit. And they create wealth and pay taxes.

Focusing on the tiny tiny fraction of those who get advanced degrees and stay in the academic world is beyond the worst “whataboutism.”

ex-Avreich:

Yeah right.

As if a monopoly degree handed out by a self-selecting elite and “licensed” overpriced text-book pubs doesn’t stop other, more qualified people and dumb down the whole profession and lead to institutional laziness (except perhaps in engineering – at least until wokeness fully blossomed), and that’s without going into revolving doors and corporate welfare…

Yosef R: I don’t think I’ll convince you so easily.

But again, I referred mainly to the tiny tiny fraction called NATAN SLIFKIN who doesn’t believe in Kollel, period! For anyone! Including avreichim who get ten shekels an hour from private donors and nothing from ‘Datot’!

And NATAN SLIFKIN wasn’t promoting trade schools but davka the Greek places with the marble columns the avreichim wiped out on chanuka (college).

NATAN SLIFKIN wants to insulate himself and his chevreh from market choices, and in the name of “intellectual freedom” hector his betters (in all senses as a group) not only in the ivy towers but also in an open medium avreichim disdain.

Nobody chooses to voluntarily fund subsidized hacks (like NATAN SLIFKIN) telling off deserving poor, unlike kollel salaries VASTLY funded by private donors (the state gives almost nothing).

And kolel is a meritocracy of ever-improving Torah teaching and writing with proven results in a virtuous spiral. While anyone who thinks the same is true of academe with its unread journals and replication crisis and failure in almost any real-world area their ideas are tried is… um, too young to listen to.

So yes, avreichim and their wives and families pay massive taxes so NATAN SLIFKIN and other parasites with too much free time can castigate them and tell them to go to college.

[Of course, we should also criticize avreichim and tell them to stop taking ANY taxes]

The end.

Whew.