Free Stuff

This has been going around the internet as a perpetually forwarded email.

The folks who are getting the free stuff don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

And, the folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop.

And the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!

Now... the people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff that the people who are paying for the free stuff are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.

So... the people who are getting the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff and giving them the free stuff in the first place. We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.

Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded.

The reason?

The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.

The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 236 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff.

We have one chance to change that in 2012. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.

Thanks to Dave for forwarding this one to me.

Actually, last I heard, the US still has 49% receiving free stuff, and 51% paying for free stuff. So we're still barely above break-even, although I suppose it depends on how you account for it all.

A Great Society does not create a helpless, dependent class (The 99 Percent) with only a few producers (The One Percent -- slaves, essentially) to provide for them. That's not a Great Society, it's a Pathetic Society. A Great Society has no classes; it is simply a collection of self-sufficient individuals working at whatever level each is capable of, and who voluntarily help the less fortunate, while keeping them responsible for themselves, and guarding against malingerers and unscrupulous opportunists.