I RECEIVED A CALL from my broker, Michael Jay Bruce, the other day.
"I have a hot investment," he said.
"What is it?" I asked excitedly.
"Orphanages. I'm recommending that all my clients put their money in orphanages."
"I thought orphanages were out of fashion."
"They're coming back. Newt Gingrich, the new speaker of the House, is recommending that they put children of welfare mothers into orphanages. The problem is that there aren't enough buildings to handle all the kids that would be sent away."
"Why is that?"
"The Democrats goofed. They were influenced by Charles Dickens, and they let the orphanages close during their 40 years in office. Now Congress is going to have to finance a crash program to get the new institutions built. We can make a bundle on the investment once Newt Gingrich gets his plan passed."
"It sounds good on paper," I admitted. "But suppose the mothers won't give up their kids? Then the orphanages will have a lot of empty beds."
"They won't have a choice," Bruce said. "Under the Gingrich plan, unmarried mothers Bullish on orphanages.
under 18 would be denied aid. This should give us at least 970,000 orphans. Then Newt Gingrich also wants some children put up for adoption. I figure that that isn't going to work because most of the children are too old, so they will have to build even more orphanages than they envisioned."
"How much will it cost to build a good home to house welfare children?" I asked Bruce.
"An average of $30 million per institution."
hat's a lot."
"They have to be escape-proof, so that the kids don't run off to find their mothers."
"It sounds like a good investment. Welfare mothers have been getting away with murder, and if they can't cut the mustard we might as well take it out on their children. Michael, are you sure this isn't too good to be true?"
"I swear it's part of Gingrich's solution to getting people off the poverty rolls. He calls it the Personal Responsibility Act. Ordinarily, anyone who proposed this sort of thing would have been taken away in a strait-jacket by now. But Newt is the speaker of the House, and if he says that orphanages are the solution to our welfare problems, then we're going to end up with orphanages coming out of our ears."
"OK, I'll invest in building them," I told Bruce. "It's rare that I can help get people off welfare and make a profit at the same time."
:,
Art Buchwald is a syndicated columnist.