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Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Why Socialism Does Not Work

Posted by Justin Voelker on April 6th, 2010

I recently received the following chain-email and found it to be an excellent example of why socialism just plain does not work.  I hate forwarding chain-emails so I thought this to be the next best method of delivery–I’m not clogging your inbox and you still get to read a great story.

Some disclosures first… Although this particular email references Obama, the same concept applies to any socialist leadership whether it be in government, a local business, or anything in between.  Second, I checked the following story out on Snopes and it cannot be verified as a true story.  That being said, it is still an excellent example of how socialism does not work whether it actually happened or not.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once 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 would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

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.  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.

All failed, to their great surprise, 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.

Again, yes, this story may not have actually taken place but you simply cannot deny the lesson it teaches; socialism does not work.  Just as stated above, “…when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great…”

An Unfortunate Education

Posted by Justin Voelker on February 21st, 2010

It seems that the call to action in my last post actually worked and drew in some comments (thank you for that!). As promised, I will continue using this blog for a while longer. If I keep getting comments (and maybe some comment debates) I will keep posting. This post is a bit long so I apologize for that–I will keep future posts shorter.  Without further adieu, I present to you my first actual post.

I shall dispense with the names to protect the innocent (and moronic) but will say that my cousin is in the 7th grade at White Pine Middle School here in good ol’ Saginaw Michigan. While spending an evening conversing with the family over pizza, my cousin and her friend began discussing their social studies class woes. Apparently, the teacher finds it appropriate to degrade the class and one day even wrote “worst class ever” on the chalkboard.  He has even said he “feels sorry for this country because you kids are the future.”  I’m fairly certain this is no way to treat 7th graders. That seems like something we can all agree on.  Although these types of comments are disturbing, something just as disturbing is what he is teaching to our youth.

During one discussion the teacher proclaimed that outsourcing is bad and minimum wage is good. I realize everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but really? Nobody wants to pay high prices if they can avoid it. If a company can use outsourcing to give you a lower cost, is that not a good thing? And don’t start with domestic job loss. What the teacher was actually referring to was offshoring although he incorrectly labeled it as outsourcing, but I digress. Yes, an individual may suffer temporary displeasure from outsourcing/offshoring but by saving money the business can lower costs. This can result in actually saving jobs because the company may have otherwise had to fire employees that they couldn’t afford. Outsourcing/offshoring is a good thing and needs to be controlled by the free market.

What about minimum wage? By forcing higher minimum wages the government actually stops businesses from hiring more employees. Let’s pretend that minimum wage is $10 and you, as a business, have $10 available to hire help. You can only afford to hire one person because of the government mandated minimum wage. If there were no minimum wage and the free market determined that fair compensation for that position was actually $5, you could now afford to hire 2 employees. With the government forced minimum wage you were able to hire one less person which resulted in one more unemployed individual. If that person was willing to work for $5 why shouldn’t they be allowed to? By the government stepping in and “helping” people they are actually hurting others.

No wonder people vote the way they do–they are being fed this sort garbage in middle school when they are just plain too young to know any better.

Originally writing this post in the heat of the moment may have resulted in misspellings, grammar mistakes, or just plain hard-to-follow thoughts. So, how about a few videos in case my incoherent rambling didn’t make sense.

John Stossel – Outsourcing

John Stossel – The Minimum Wage Doesn’t Work

It is a shame that the future of our country is being taught by such narrow minded individuals… Comments?

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