h/t Clive
Related:
The following tale is likely apocryphal but still communicates an important life lesson:
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”.. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A … (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that.
These are possibly the 5 best points you’ll ever read and all are applicable to this experiment:
- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
- What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
- The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
- You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
- When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
Received via e-mail
This attitude is scarily reminiscent of the type of thought I saw in a group of Ukrainian coal miners who were brought over to Canada in one of the USSR “peace and friendship” campaigns in the early 1970’s. They would talk to people through KGB translators who told everyone how wonderful the socialist system was.
I was one of a group of Ukrainian nationalists who decided to attend the session and it was quite obvious that their KGB watchdogs were not at all happy when we started to converse with them in Ukrainian. The guy I was talking to seemed mystified by the concept of freedom; the state provided him with a job and an apartment and it would provide his kids with jobs and housing and all he had to do was to pretend to work. When I mentioned the fact that it was up to me to find my own job and pay for my university education, he seemed puzzled by the idea that people could actually do things for themselves. From what I’ve seen in many Ukrainians who have grown up under this system and emigrated to Canada is an incredible sense of entitlement and a reluctance to pay for anything as “the government should pay”.
The only people from formerly communist countries that seem to be very self-motivated and individualistic are either those who escaped to the west when doing so was considered a crime, or members of the Russian mob who believe in capitalism in its most fundamental form. This is what living under socialism does to people.
The only way that this entitlement mentality is going to be turned around is for the Republicans to win big in this years elections. If Obozo gets back in as TOTUS, it won’t be long before America becomes another Haiti.
There’s no way one can discuss matters with the entitled and it’s going to be a very messy decade. Living in a big city is not going to be pleasant when TSHTF and the entitled throw temper tantrums in a big way.
@ Loki
Amen to that. As Ken said in above statement, when freedom dream is over, the Marxists will be waiting , making the appropriate promises and seeing that the trains run on time. Democracy is fragile and right now it’s on life support.
@ Ever Vigilant
Good stuff. Can’t see the Bitcoin thing ever working as it seems to be directed at the OWS crowd that doesn’t have anything. The Rockwell article on schools is so logical that sooner or later it will probably be tested. Of course they have to get past these folks first:
http://bctf.ca/SocialJustice.aspx?id=21406
Loki, I was just about to ask for a translation when, by some intuition, I realized that WTSHTF stands for: When the sh** hits the fan.
I agree with what you say. (Actually, I always do. Thanks.)
Well, I was filling my car with gasoline in Port Huron Michigan at the local SAM’s Club last week and I had a very interesting conversation. I was in my Army Service Uniform (I am a US ARMY LTC) and a Car with Ontario plates pulls up to the pumps. Granted you have to be a member of SAMs club and have a membership card to purchase fuel so I can safely assume that they have one and choose to shop in Michigan vs Ontario. So anyway, the ladies were both attractive and friendly and I asked them, “can you really save money crossing the border and shopping here?” The answer was….”Oh of course, fuel is $1.30 a litre and the PST/GST is really high.” I have a flair for pointing out the obvious. Well it is your government that has placed those taxes on fuel and everything you purchase. “Then I got a snarky reply,” Well, I have OHIP.” Well I said I have good insurance too…..when I take my wife to her treatment in Philadelphia, PA. the waiting room inevitably has several Canadians. “well, we do have to wait.” I said have a great week. I guess my point is, when you think things from the government are “free” they are inevitably not and it ends up costing you more in money and freedom.
,federal govt employies DONT PAy FEDERAL TAXES,provincial govt employies DONT PAY PROVINCIAL TAXES,municipal employies DONT PAY MUNICIPAL TAXES,and teachers DONT PAY SCHOOL TAXES.They are PAID with taxes.
Gov’t employees at every level do indeed pay taxes, out of a wage that is compensation for work that they do. It is welfare bum farmers like yourself and the kulaks of this world who receive tax dollars not for what you do, but for who you are: rural conservative welfare bums, parasitic barnacles on the system, with all the entitled to your entitlement mentality of blood sucking leeches everywhere. The small dead mind in it’s trivial totality.