Yesterday, a friend of mine relayed a recent discussion he had with his son. It serves as an excellent lesson.
His son had asked him what it means to "spread the wealth" because it sounds like a good thing. The analogy he painted to the youngster (I'm going to say the kid is around 10-12) was like this:
Let's say you've studied very hard for a class in school, you worked hard, you put forth the most effort. And, you earned an "A" in the class. But instead of giving you an "A", the teacher pulls you aside and says, "You worked harder than everyone else and earned the highest mark, but one of your classmates didn't work as hard and got an "F" in the class.
Instead of giving that person an "F", though, which would hurt their self-esteem, and maybe keep them from being, or at least feeling, successful, I'm going to give them part of your score. So, instead of you getting an "A", you'll get a "B". And instead of them getting an "F" they'll get a "D". It's not necessarily what either person "earned", but it makes everything more even.
Of course, the son didn't like this idea at all. And I don't blame him.
Reminded me of an email going around 'bout 'lection time. A bit of Googling and I got many hits. Here's one of them:
ReplyDeletehttp://robertbluey.com/blog/2008/10/25/redistribution-of-wealth-experiment-3/
My girlfriend has a friend who is an accountant. Recently she was talking to someone about their taxes and he told the accountant that he hadn't paid his house payment in months. When the accountant warned him about that, the guy just smiled and said "Obama will take care of me."
ReplyDeleteMultiply that a few million times and you can see the crisis that this country is in right now.