Posted on 07/11/2011 6:20:53 PM PDT by econjack
These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do nothave to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does
He's a SPY!
He's NOT EVEN A US CITIZEN!
The zero sum assumption is based on "work" (as in human effort and human ingenuity) or "goods" being a fixed or certain amount. There is a certain amount of goods to go around, and everybody is entitled to some.
The point of "What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving." is to criticize deliberate deficit in human effort. The grasshopper and the ant, if you will.
Is #5 one that we should complete for ourselves?
6. “What do you mean I lost, all of time I spent rigging it!”
That one seems to bug me, but I can't quite figure it out right now.
John 3:16, for those inclined to Christian spiritual "bestness," and if I scratch my head long enough, I'll come up with something more profound than E=mc**2 to note the bizarre nature of physical reality.
I like that one best!
btt
2nd Thessalonians 3:10
“...if anyone will not work, neither let him eat.”
(My interpretation: Hunger is a great motivator.)
Ping and agree
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie scored a landslide win over President Barack Obama winning all 50 states in the most lopsided election in US history.
Okay. If the zero sum game assumption is incorrect (and I believe to a large extent it is incorrect in view of the fact this earth and sun are capable of producing more wealth than we can harness), may it not also be incorrect to assert that in every instance where one provides for another, he necessaily robs someone else?
BTW, far be it from me to argue in favor of government as a proper arbiter of wealth redistribution to the extent it rewards grasshoppers. It seems to me, however, both assertions place limits of a “zero sum” nature on what is available in terms of give and take.
The best sentence today is
LET THEM EAT PEAS!!!!!
And should be hammered home.....
Okay..so it’s a paraphrase..but Marie Antoinette never said LET THEM EAT CAKE either and it helped bring her down.
Yes. Gifting from a fixed amount of material (not that [useful] material is fixed, just saying, even if it was) is not "robbery" in any sense of that word.
My point was that the "great sentence" was meant to criticize those who expect something for nothing; and THAT criticism is different from criticizing those who reason from a zero-sum reality.
I am thinking caseloads of that veggies should be DC bound about now.
“Not enough money left to finish #5.”
LOL. We shared it!
I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension. That is just not an acceptable approach. And if we think its hard now, imagine how these guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season when they are all up. Its not going to get easier, its going to get harder.
So, we might as well do it now. Pull off the band-aid. Eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when? We keep on talking about this stuff, and we have these high-minded pronouncements about how weve got to get control of the deficit, how we owe it to our children and our grandchildren. Well, lets step up. Lets do it, President Obama said at his press conference today
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.