Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (1)

The following ideas are not original with me, although I have expressed similar ideas in the philosophy section of my website, http://www.stayingrich.net/. I reprint them here because I think these few short sentences capture the essence of the failure in Greece today and foretell the future of many European nations, California, other states and the United States as a country unless we begin to spend less than we earn.
  1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity; there are simply not enough wealthy people in any society.
  2. What one person receives without earning, another person must earn without receiving; this method of redistribution of income and wealth builds resentment in both the receivers and the payers.
  3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else; the government must demand from some in order to confer benefits on others.
  4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it; wealth creation is only done by a tiny percent of the population that is willing to save and work far beyond the ambitions of most people.
  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. The United States is dangerously close to this point.
If you view these ideas as self-evident then you are a realist. If you wish to have the governments force working people to support people who can work, but choose not to work, then consider yourself as live bait for the next big fish that decides their government program should extract its pound of flesh from you.

(1) The original source of a portion of these ideas is unknown to me. I received some of these phrases by email from various people who also do not know the source.

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