OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

MODERN VERSION:


The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote

Right-wing propaganda in the guise of fables. How cute.

It's true

It would be tragic if it happened in the real world, 'cept it doesn't.

Right wing propaganda indeed.

Poor right-wingers. They need someone to write for them, as that was rather lacking in subtlety and creativity both.

In addition, it's severely exaggerated, completely ignores the real plight of the "grasshopper", ignores actual "grasshoppers" who don't just "live on the ant's wealth", etc etc etc.

Aesop would be very sad.

I see examples of this sort of attitude a lot in real life. I personally know SEVERAL select pieces of 'trailer trash'(an attitude, not neccessarily a financial situation). These people decided school was 'stupid' and dropped out so they could 'have fun' which seemed to matter more in life to them, instant gratification. So they drop out, smoke some weed, drink some beer, then realize 'oh , i have no money left, maybe i'll get a job'
Well, they have no education. Not even a diploma or GED. It's kinda difficult finding a job like that, unless you like flipping burgers. I've worked in a fast food restaurant. No offense, but a lot of the people there i wouldn't trust with a penknife. We had a worker turnover period of about 3 months. A person would hire on, work for 3 months and quit or get fired, usually for not showing up, being lazy, or having an attitude. These are the same people i mentioned above, who dropped out. Well, drugs are addictive folks, and expensive. People spend all their money when working these lousy jobs on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. The alcohol and drugs part was a major reason why employees were losing their jobs too. I could check the paper monthly and name a couple of co-workers who had been arrested for drug/alcohol related crimes. Eventually, most of them give up on working, and run down to the local welfare office, and sign right up. A lot of that money they get goes to alcohol, as I've driven past the bar several times and seen my co-workers cars(small town, i can recognize their cars pretty well) parked outside, and i know they're receiving state benefits, or have been fired for that alcohol problem.

Now, some social security/welfare programs are shaping up and restricting what the recipients can purchase. Some aren't. They're still getting a lot of alcohol somehow. Now, if you're in hard financial times, where you have to rely on financial aid to get by, then damnit, spend 100% of your resources on neccessary items. You do NOT need alcohol to live.

My family is considered upper/middle class, whatever you wanna call it, for tax purposes. We pay a higher tax rate. It still hurts us, but you know what, it would hurt less knowing that the money that's being stolen from us was actually HELPING people, instead of winding up at some watering hole. My biggest beef with Social Security/Welfare/Income Redistribution is the management/administration or lack thereof. If people who are receiving aid can still go down the the local bar, or drink a 6-pack every night, then i'm sorry, they don't need financial help, they need an AA meeting.

Don't even try to tell me this never happens.

I've seen it.

That was entertaining.

Great story. Of course its exaggerated, but it does make a quite valid point.

Admittedly I talk about this book way too much, but:

Go read "Storming Caesar's Palace". Or, alternatively, watch "Thirty Days at Minimum Wage".

A number of people seem to have a problem with broad, sweeping generalizations.

Not every God-fearing Republican with lots of money is a hard-working man or woman.

Not every impoverished person is a lazy drunk or "trailer trash".

Just as:

Not every God-fearing Republican with lots of money is really a godless, selfish, self-important bastard.

and

Not every impoverished person is trying really hard to make ends meet and just can't get by despite his or her best efforts.




And I DON'T say this as a welfare recipient; my family as well is "upper middle class".

But nothing of the sort has been posted in this thread. What the story is mocking does happen, as you implied in your post. Of course you can't assign traits to everyone of a certain group, but no one here is trying to do that. The story does no more then point out what can (and has, and probably always will) happen when its possible to get something for nothing.

There are no godless conservatives. Even the ones who don't profess any particular faith (All five of them.) still fervently believe in the god of money. Really, their faith in the free market is nothing short of fanatical. "God helps those who help themselves" is said by a lot of believers, but I"ve yet to see an American conservative who thinks the free market can't fix everything.

It's a political philosophy grounded on the notion that the only human motivation is greed, and that the only human rights are 1) the right to property and 2) the right to shoot people who try to "infringe" on that property. Its followers in the US are either the people who actually benefit from the Republican regime (The people that could be described somewhat tactlessly as "corporate fat cats.") and deluded middle-class suburbanites who have been misled into thinking that the high taxes are the fault of welfare recipients, and that they actually have a shot at becoming rich if they weren't burdened by so much taxation. The promise of being able to be really rich, if only you were free to not pay taxes and exploit other people, is what fuels the Republican version of the American dream.

If you want to know who's to blame for your high tax burden, Stangmar, look no further than the military. Their budget is immense, their efficiency is ridiculous, they are accountable to virtually no-one - anybody suggesting oversight is immediately caught by the yellow ribbon inquisition - and they have no true function other than being the world's biggest pack of bullies. Face it already: The Republican party is in the pocket of corporations, much like the Democrat party. Thinking they care about the middle class is naïve in the extreme.

Anyone who wants it bad enough can make it. I know of numerous cases where people have. For example, I know of a parking attendant who never made more then $12 an hour who is a millionaire.



No one wants to pay taxes, but I truly doubt anyone is deluded enough to think that without welfare, there would be no taxes. It would doubtlessly be less, or, failing that, the money would be spent on something else thats hopefully not just allowing people to freeload.



I... disagree. Their budget is immense, yes. The inefficiency can be chalked up to wanting to minimize unneeded deaths. The war could have been over in 10 minutes, but people would have been upset about the crater where Iraq was. Its rather messy. As for the accountability, I'm not sure what you're talking about. If the military sneezes wrong, the media's all over it and there are investigations etc.

I am impressed by my perceived economic effeciency of America. I came here to study. I can now afford my self, my life, and my schooling abroad in China, living in Beijing, in a nice apartment, the likes of which I could never afford back home in Thailand. Why? Because I worked 2 or so part time jobs, saved my money, put it into a money market account, and invested it.

It is true that if you manage your life effeciently, you can achieve the life style you want. I am not really into the U.S. political system, since I do not understand how it works enough to comment, but I do see that there are people who are willing to earn their keep and those who aren't. I for one don't mind earning mine, makes me feel good about myself at the end of the day.

Also, I am thoroughly impressed with the US Military. It is scarily good. Look at it this way, you have an entire force of people who are (I am led to believe) are in it because they want to be. You have people who are in the job of killing because they want to. That creates an atmosphere where things get done. I don't see many other volunteer militaries ruilling the world at the moment. I wish our military was as effecient as theirs.

You don't know a parking lot attendant who is a millionaire who only made $12 an hour without winning the genetic lottery. Grab a calculator.

Anyways, the US government has three major budget items: Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, and the Treasury.

HHS covers federal medical research, immunization programs, agriculture, the FDA, the portion of the war on drugs not covered by state police, Bush's "Faith-based initiatives," the child health care act that Congress is bickering over, Medicaid, and food stamps. Basically, it covers everything you associate with the government, except Medicare and Social Security, which is temporarily funded by its own tax (for a little while longer, at least--it'll implode soon enough). It's the biggest budget item, needless to say, coming in at a hefty $697 billion.

The Department of Defense covers the active duty military. The number doesn't include all military activities--some come under the Department of Energy (like major weapons technology, nuclear research, etc.), some come under Health and Human Services (Veterans' Affairs), but it's close enough for our purposes. Most notably, it does not include the war budget. It weighs in at $493 billion.

The Treasury, in and of itself, doesn't need much money to run. The Treasury allocation is basically the interest payment on the government's debt, that nasty side effect of letting a Republican run the country for too long. That's $318 billion.

There are other line item in the federal budget, but they're all trivial compared to those three. Even combined, they're less than the debt payment.

In comparison to other countries' budgets, our human services are underfunded, our debt payments are moderate when looking at all countries or among the worst in the developed world, and our defense budget is about equal to the combined totals of the top fourteen spenders under us, or about eight times that of China.

I'm not sure how you can look at that and not think the defense budget is excessive.

Hello, political arguments spawned from a funny joke!
I'd eat popcorn and watch, except that this is too repetitive to be amusing, and I have no popcorn.

So here's another fable-related story: remember the hare and the turtle racing? What's the moral? It sure as hell isn't "slow and steady wins the race" - not only is this retarded, it's untrue also.

The real moral is: If you have narcolepsy, don't join a race! Eat kafe or something.

Oh, but I do. Grab an investment book, theres tons of them.

If you live within your means, work hard, and invest well like he did (the stock market, on average, goes up 10% a year), its doable.

I'd like to see your own opinion for once when you post on issues like these.

Looks like post 7 covers it. Stangmar's always pretty vocal about his opinions...

And really, where's the fun of stating an opinion if you don't state it after (or as) an amusing story.

Assuming this 'parking attendant' works 8 hours/day, 6 days/week and never takes week-long vacations or some such, $27,648 before taxes isn't much to live on, unless the company he worked for included health insurance in its benefits package.

And the stock market is, after all, a gamble. It's possibly more doable if you invest in a mutual fund (most mutual funds want something like $1000-$2500 minimum investment*) and don't invest all in one sector/stock/fund. Certainly it isn't something that anyone should do with the expectation of quickly making a large sum of money - it requires planning, watchfulness, and a knowledge of the market.




*This is admittedly second-hand information from my father, who invests in various mutual funds; I looked around the Internet for solid information from one of the mutual fund companies that he invests with, but didn't feel like calling the company and going through the rigmarole of "I just want to know what your minimums are!"