“Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free” is a widely used idiom often employed by men who cannot commit to marriage, but still want to enjoy all the residual benefits of that relationship. The context of the idiom involves companionship, sex, and an additional household income, but most certainly, among young men, sex.
Many people, especially women, find the expression controversial, regressive, if not out-and-out offensive.
I have often thought of this expression relative to other things that we pay for, while alternatives are free. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and free-to-air television network is certainly one of them. The company claims to be commercial-free, but typically an advertiser pushes their wares in “the brought to you by” that precedes most programming.
Much of the funding comes from the taxpaying public. If the programming is that good, other free-to-air, cable, satellite, or encrypted broadcasters could have made Big Bird a millionaire without a significant taxpayer endowment.
In the United Kingdom, unless someone is 75 or older, one must pay a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) license fee whether or not one watches the channel or has a television. The current annual license fee is £174.50 ($236.50 US) for a color license and £58.50 ($79.25 US) for a black and white license.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is largely taxpayer-funded, sourced primarily by federal parliamentary allocations. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is funded 93% by the taxpaying public.
The United Kingdom’s MET office, previously called the Meteorological Office, costs British residents £300 million ($406.455 million US) annually. Yet, The Weather Channel and AccuWeather are more accurate in their weather forecasts than the MET. Both are free if a user has the Internet and a connected device.
The MET Office rides the climate-related Net Zero like they were its Zoro. As Chris Morrison of the Daily Sceptic writes “The Met Office might be safe for the moment in its self-satisfied form, but for how much longer can it claim its unreformed nationwide air temperature network is fit for purpose? And how long will its climate alarm edifice last when Net Zero comes tumbling down, and serious politicians start looking for easy cuts in bloated state operations?”
Every one of these broadcasters reports news, current events, and worldly actions with an animated progressive narrative, and climate change as the existential threat to the entire Earth.
