Last edited Thu Mar 13, 2014, 11:27 PM - Edit history (1)
> 1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
You can, however, legislate policies that make it less attractive for the already-wealthy to get even more wealthy by squeezing everybody else. We did these things in this country, and it worked out pretty well for most Americans and let them earn a middle class income.
>2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
So you understand the problems people have with hedge fund managers, credit default swap traders, Wall Street wheeler-dealers, CEOs with cozy relationships to those determining their compensation, and others who seem to worship at the altar of Maximizing Profit? Up to a certain point most of these people do provide a useful service in allocating resources for wealth creation, and deserve compensation. However, above a certain level they are extracting more wealth than their services are worth. It gets worse when that extraction becomes detached from how they make their money and to any outside accountability for how much they stuff into their own pockets.
In those cases they are "receiving without working for", and that removes resources available to those who do the actual work.
> 3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
Get back to me on that one when you apply it to government contractors, especially ones for the Defense Department with cozy relationships with politicians and plenty of lobbyists. We spend more on our military than the next largest six countries combined, and most of them are our allies. You really think we're getting top value for all that money?
> 4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
Horseshit. You don't run an engine without "dividing" the lube. If it doesn't get to all the moving parts, it's going to break down quicker and harder.
If someone never changes the oil in their car, are they being thrifty and efficient? Or a short-sighted idiot?
>5. 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.
So is believing that statement when it's not true. Acting on faulty information rarely produces the desired results.
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