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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAnyone else seen this stupid post going around facebook
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never fai...led 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. It could not be any simpler than that.
Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.
These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy 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 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.
This is likely the dumbest and most uninformed thing Ive read. But It takes just a click to 'share it' and a lot of people I know have this up on their wall. This this serves to distort both the economic realities of our situation and the policies of the Obama administration. Crap like this reinforces everything the fox news idiots state.
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xchrom
(108,903 posts)
Ian David
(69,059 posts)<snip>
...the central point being that this chain email pops up here every month or so with someone pointing at it and tittering with glee "Look how horrid (insert Democrat of the moment) is because this economics professor is so right and smart!!!"?
I'll discuss your five "best" sentences...
1 - Very true. However, is anyone trying to legislate the wealthy out of prosperity? I've yet to see anyone even close to mainstream American politics try that. To take the fringe on the left's lunacy and apply it to modern Democrats is stupid, as would be taking people who want everyone brown and non-Christian kicked out of the country and applying it to modern Republicans.
2 - Right... assuming there's direct equality to begin with and one taxpayer per recipient of welfare. The faulty logic here is that by giving, say, food stamps to a poor person, you're not exactly knocking a singular other person down to the poverty level. Trying to create a one-to-one comparison of a recipient of welfare and some singular, faceless, "it could be you" payer is quite the breach of logic. (You may want to refer to the numbers on welfare recipients vs. working Americans below for an example of how faulty this sentence's "logic" really is)
3 - See #2... you've rehashed the same statement.
4 - This really doesn't mean anything. Nice platitude. No substance to discuss, unfortunately.
5 - Yeah, because half the population is on welfare. A little over a year ago, it was reported that 4.4 million Americans were on Welfare. In the heart of the biggest recession in a generation, 4.4 million out of 300 million - or approximately 1.5%. Even if you compare that to the number of employed Americans at the time - 139 million - that's about 4%. Don't know where you or your copy/paste email get half, but it certainly does sound scary when you conveniently leave out... y'know... facts.
Anyways... there's the discussion you were looking for, mate. For someone who calls himself "dr debunk", you may want to check and see if your chain letters have been debunked and passed around for decades before you post it.
Ed Will for... I don't know, "paranoid passer of stupid chain emails of the month"?
More:
http://interact.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?printertopic=1&t=855766&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&vote=viewresult&sid=1f736955b897f39e4adc4a795431444a
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)
Bok_Tukalo
(4,322 posts)[indent]2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.[/indent]
I thought this was an argument against capitalism?
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KansDem
(28,498 posts)2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. That defines the 1%-ers ("What one person receives without working for" ) and the 99% ("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. True, The "government" (as in "government owned by corporations" ) takes from the 99% and gives to the 1%.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it! Just as you can't "create jobs" with "trickle down" by sending those jobs overseas. So what's the point?
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. That's the current plight in the US: the 1%-ers believe they don't have to work because the 99 percent will take care of them, while the 99 percenters believe it does no good to work because the 1%-ers are going to get what they worked for...
This is right-wing bullshit, like the viral crap circulating about a year or so ago comparing North Dakota snowstorms with New Orleans hurricanes...
Frosty1
(1,823 posts)Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)has sent me several variations on this meme. I just delete after reading the intro.
But, how to counter the wider influence of this Ayn Randish
idiocy, I don' know. SG
Edit: typo
Yavin4
(35,433 posts)In academia and in real life, you are often judged by how well you perform in groups/teams/departments, etc.
If you attend any graduate business school, which I did, the majority of your assignments will be in groups. You are graded based on how well your GROUP performed.
In real life, you are also judged by how well your department will do. I met a guy over the holidays who works in retail, and he told me that the store that he works for paid out bonuses to their employees based on how well the entire store did, not the individual, not his department, but the entire store.
In that example, if you are attending a school where the students deliberately slack off and don't want to study, then maybe you should transfer to school whereby the students are more motivated.
procon
(15,805 posts)This old email hoax has been floating around the InterTubes for years. Check it out:
http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp
LeftishBrit
(41,205 posts)As regards the specific items:
I've seen these before, sometimes attributed to Abraham Lincoln - at least I suppose the author of the current e-mail should have credit for not doing that.
'1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
No one is doing that. Progressive taxaion does not 'legislate anyone out of prosperity'.
'2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.'
Not true. For one thing, this is assuming that there is enough work for everyone to do. The main problem about 'people on welfare' is that there is unemployment - people unable to get jobs. Also, many of the people who 'receive without working' are not of working age: children and the elderly.
Yet more fundamentally, this is assuming that it is all a matter of taking from some individuals to give to other individuals. In fact, it is a question of society giving, and society taking. People pay taxes and social security contributions during their working lives, and in return they gain a pension when they are no longer able to work; publicly funded education for their children; public transport and maintainance of roads so that they can get safely from A to B; protection by police and emergency services; etc. etc.
Just as everyone receives benefits, everyone pays taxes - through VAT/ sales taxes, if not other taxes.
The idea that there is a division between taxpayers (who don't get benefits but are slaving to benefit others) and benefit recipients (who don't pay taxes) is a vile, mean-spirited and ignorant distortion of society.
'3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. '
Not true; see under (2).
'4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!'
You cannot use it effectively without dividing it. This is as true within a family or a private business as within society as a whole.
'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.'
Possibly. But no nation has ever been run in this way, including communist countries.
deutsey
(20,166 posts)
arbusto_baboso
(7,162 posts)because, in fact, giving cash aid and food stamps to the poor DOES multiply wealth, as such benefits get spent immediately (the poor certainly aren't hoarding anything, like the wealthy are) and circulated through the economy several times, benefitting more than just the recipient of the assistance.
Such assistance even generates more tax revenue, thus at least partially paying for itself...
treestar
(82,383 posts)So they would get the best grade? Their "free ride" business does not work in that setting. Morans.
Nobody wants a free ride - that's just an excuse the right has invented. People are on welfare because they can't find work. Simple as that.
If there are a few unwise enough to be happy with welfare when they could make more on a job - that's likely some rare exception. Once the media located some family where generations were on welfare. Well the poor are poor and if you are a poor woman's daughter, you may well be poor when you grow up - but they spin that into making it permanent for all time - like the family remains on welfare for all time and then they stretch that so that everyone who ever goes on welfare stays permanently and their kids grow up to stay on it permanently too.
It's all a made up story to make the right feel victimized by the existence of a social safety net - while complimenting them to say they will never need it themselves, because they are so hardworking. BS.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
Um...yes you can...it's called the tax code. Reagan used it to fuck over the middle class and we are still getting fucked by it today. Many people are in debt to the IRS because the need the money the are supposed to pay in taxes to pay their bills. We used to have some fng breaks for the middle class who do not own property, like deducting credit card interest, and non-itemized charitable deductions.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
No one "works" for interest and dividends. Foolish people don't understand the many poor Americans actually have jobs and are still poor. Ask a Walmart employee.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
Duh...that is the purpose of government. We just need to stop giving our tax dollars to corporate interests instead to average people.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
Actually...you can. If you give tax breaks to people who will actually spend the money and not hoard it, the economy will be stimulated and everybody will benefit.
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.
See #2.
dawg
(10,624 posts)when the professor just gives out the best grades to the children of his old golfing buddies. 
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)for falling for it and point them to the truth.
Stavrache
(2 posts)1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
No, one must not try to legislate the poor into prosperity just like that, out of the blue, because it would involve posing a threat to all socioeconomic structures of the present by creating a psychological disequilibrium. First you have to go about searching for the main reasons why most poor people are poor (in order to provide better answers than “they are lazy”, ”they have been born with the poverty gene” and other unscientifically judgments). Pierre Bourdieu, who was a renowned sociologist, talked about “cultural and social reproduction”, and he pointed out the ways in which the richest people get to maintain the status-quo by retaining all means of relevant education for their own benefits, poverty being perpetuated by the lack of access to higher education. Additionally, it is a fact well known that poor people, those who can still put food on their tables and not starve to death, resort to what is there for their limited incomes, that is junk food, genetically modified food etc., things that have been proven time and again to pose a serious threat to their cognitive apparatus (which embeds the fundamental capability for someone to create value, or to valuably contribute to the elevation of humanity), let alone to their physical health. This “junk food” argument is also true for people of higher incomes, which resort to this kind of nutritional habits due to advertising and lack of time for preparing their meals at home. This “genius” professor casts many conditions away from his experiment, because he wants to make a stand and those conditions most likely would undermine the credibility of his little experiment.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
This is a pun that has little to do with the real world, the world in which the distribution of resources is arbitrarily carried out with the help of the bureaucratic apparatus, which keeps the great majority of people in line and convicts people instead of helping scientists to discover the origins of their deviant behavior. Many rich people today receive things for nothing, to say the least. The professor probably slipped his mind in regard to the underground economy, which is not being dissolved, but encouraged, and in which gangsters, mobsters, moguls and so on make money by exploiting people who work as slaves, and the same is true for corporations and other established structures that use people to generate more and more revenue, not for the sake of the planet, but for satisfying some vested interests. Many people work like slaves, being brutally underpaid; others work hard and earn enough money to enjoy the little joys of life, but they do not contribute to the common good of society; and there’s the issue of the privileged few, which had been magisterially tackled by Joseph Stiglitz, who has received a Noble Prize in Economic Sciences.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
This does not say anything at all. Many entrepreneurs believe that governments should cease existing, and they argue that since the means of production have been shifted towards private hands, and governments proved themselves time and again cumbersome structures that burden “the private initiatives”, we should further reject their already weakened involvement in economy. In many countries throughout the world, governments function as guardians for vested interests, making way for the great companies to exploit both human and natural resources. They take, and take, and take, providing services of the lowest quality for the people they were supposed to protect.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
Nor can you create a better environment by concentrating most resources in the hands of the self-elected leaders, giving the majority of people poisonous food, polluted air and water, propaganda throughout all media, vulgar entertainment, etc.
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.
Some of the greatest minds of humanity worked not for money (although they had money, yet didn’t work for financial achievements), but for greater rewards, which were to be found directly in the products of their labor. Most people need money in order to compensate for the fact that they are not happy with what they do at work, and since they were not been made for repetitive jobs (if Mother Nature wanted us to work as machines, she would have probably given us steel hearts, titanium brains and so on), most of them are very unhappy, because, even if they earn their money, they have been long ago alienated from the products of their labor. It is like you would bring 3 babies into this world and then get a lot of money in exchange for them, but afterwards you’ll still be miserable for the rest of your life because you had given your “products” to another person. Think about doing that every day, if it were possible. People need money as a reward, because repetitive jobs have no rewards in themselves. But money does not suffice, since rich people want more and more for themselves. Money does not fill the void left when life ceased to have a meaning. Today, less than 10% of the entire workforce produces goods that are vital for our existence. Those who work in the service sector are been taken care of by those who actually produce something of worth. We’re just playing for the sake of the system. But what will happen when someone or something, let’s say a better player than we’ll ever be – a robot, for instance, will jump in and phase out the human players? Actually, some think this is the future of technology.
alittlelark
(18,890 posts)
Thank you very much! I'm pleased that you like my post!
