Politics & Current Events
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
A friend of mine posted this to my email... An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed 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. Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on) 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.
Re: Well, I agree!! Do you?
http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp
Sigh.
Too bad that story is fictional.
And the story is wrong. As Lexi's link explains, this is communism, not socialism. I've seen lots of these types of stories passed around and they're just plain wrong. Socialism with respect to healthcare is really the only way to go in my opinion. Capitalism is great -- love it for everything else. Cannot work for healthcare (or basic education). You work hard - great. Move on up the ladder, get those rewards you deserve. But working hard shouldn't mean you deserve basic healthcare more than someone else who also worked hard but cannot work because they were laid off, for example.
Maybe he was, and that's why he had to resort to writing chain email anecdotes for a living.
Haha! Love it
This is such an obvious straw man lie it's not even funny.
I've been in classes where there was group work and everyone in a group got the same grade. And you know what inevitably happened? In almost all cases the team pulled together and earned an A. The stronger members often carried the weakest members, but in the end, the vast majority of teams succeeded under that arrangement.
lolololol
I like this explanation. why can't we have all 3, each pertaining to what works best. I know it sounds stupid, but why not?
Even the countries that Americans think of as "socialist" (like Sweden or Denmark) are not really socialist - they're capitalist, free market economies with a strong public sector and extensive social safety net programs. I mean, the guy who founded Ikea is one of the richest men in the world!
I LOVE Ikea. we are finally getting one here in 2014 and I can't wait.