Spot on. Also, let's not forget to keep pushing that big State lottery since there’s no way to get rich except by luck
Let’s not forget who it’s all for folks!
.
Posted on 12/21/2002 4:49:05 PM PST by Radix
As a casual observer of what makes this country work and what stops it cold, I hereby offer a few suggestions on how we can ruin American competitiveness and innovation in the course of this century. I think the reader will agree with me that we are already far down the road on many of them:
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
1) Allow schools to fall into useless decay. Do not teach civics or history except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit. Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and physics. Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors. Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the many. Watch America lose its scientific and competitive edge to other nations that make a comprehensive knowledge base a rule of the society.
2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or at least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated to death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation of new products and services. Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new products and services.
3) Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke. Make it second nature for someone who is overweight to blame the restaurant that served him fries. Encourage a legal process that can kill a drug company for any mistakes in self-medication. Make it a general rule that anyone with more money than a plaintiff is responsible for anything harmful that a plaintiff does. Promulgate the pitiful joke that Americans are hereby exempt from any responsibility for their own actions--so long as there are deep pockets around to be rifled.
4) Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant and lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in the dust. Make sure that society's idols are men and women who got rich from being sexy in public or through gambling or playing tricks, not from hard work or patience. Make the citizenry permanently envious and bewildered about where real success comes from.
5) Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and ensure that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other societies, while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social standards that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of labor unions to no ethical standards.
6) While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way. This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade any long-term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen to apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation and everything else.
7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV-land.
8 ) Mock and belittle the family. Provide financial incentives to people willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened. This guarantees that men and women of sufficient character to bring about innovation will be psychologically stifled from an early age.
9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This, too, leads to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual disappearance of social cohesion.
10) Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes saving, while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the fruits of labor many times:
First tax it as income. Then tax it as real or personal property. Then tax it as capital gains. Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level, at death. This way, Americans are taught that only fools save, and that it is entirely proper for us to have the lowest savings rate in the developed world. This will deprive us of much-needed capital for new investment, for innovation and our own personal aspirations. It will compel us to ask foreigners for ever more capital and allow them to own more of America. It will also promote an attitude of carelessness about the future and, once again, encourage disrespect for law.
11) Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover their costs of experimentation, trial and error.
12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.
My list need not end here. But I stopped at a dozen because I realized that this is already, in large measure, the program of so many of our elected representatives. The debauchery of our tort system is already in place, and the rest of the agenda is under way.
Benjamin J. Stein is a lawyer, economist, writer and actor, and host of the game show Win Ben Stein's Money.
Spot on. Also, let's not forget to keep pushing that big State lottery since there’s no way to get rich except by luck
Let’s not forget who it’s all for folks!
.
Can you say the DumbocRATic Party? Ben Stein hits it again!
Check out his bio. In 1973 and 1974, he was a speech writer and lawyer for Richard Nixon at The White House and then for Gerald Ford.
Bio link
Lotteries are nothing more than an extra tax on people who are poor at math.
November 11, 1998
Dear Legislator,
I look forward to immigrating to America, very soon. As I cannot yet read or write in the languages of America, my friend has agreed to assist me with this letter. I understand that your country has laws protecting Americans. It is for this reason that I am writing to you; I understand that legislators are the people who write these laws. I have many friends who would also like to immigrate to America. They are very apprehensive, as I am, that they will not be allowed to live there. We have been listening to the music in America for the last few weeks. Some of my friends would like to spend their lives adding to such music. Personally, I prefer classical music, but I have friends that like country music and even a few that like the soft rock we hear. Some of my friends would like to be farmers, others would prefer teaching or engineering; a few would like to become scientists. They understand that the sun shines warmly in America, that birds sing, cats meow, and cows moo in America. From where we live, we have been feeling this sunshine and hearing these wonderful sounds, and we look forward to seeing for ourselves the things that make this marvelous music of life in America. (Is it true that you have laws protecting the animals making these wonderful sounds? What a country you must have!) But we have also been hearing disturbing words spoken in America. Though we cannot yet understand the language, we get the gist from varied messages of men and women in your country debating our minority's right to immigrate. This letter is an effort to request laws that will protect us, for we are disenfranchised. As a special minority, we understand there are no laws granting us the unalienable rights in your Declaration of Independence and Constitution. As conscious beings, we respectfully request that you address this inequity, so that we may plan lawful immigration to your country with the simple expectation that our consciousness will be protected. Please address your debates and (hopefully) new law to the minority of conscious prenatals. I look forward to being an American and thanking you in person, in the not so distant future.
Sincerely,
Future immigrant
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