Let me tell you a story

[Crash]

Two Different Versions! Two Different Morals!



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.

Go Big Blue!

[manasecret]

I see. All green bugs are lazy drug dealers involved with gangs who don't do anything but ruin neighborhoods. Great moral you got there.

[Angrist]

I guess that this story only appeals to that 1 or 2% of the population that's actually rich.

[thatmariolover]

Typical ignorant upper class drivel. Almost everybody with a lot of money was born into a lot of money, and half of the people who got rich themselves did so by luck or illigal activities.

It doesn't take into account the people working two or three jobs and still struggling to make it. It doesn't take into account the unfortunate or the ill without health care. It doesn't cover a lot of people and lumps everybody who isn't rich into one clump of lazy and carefree people.

In addition, the Pro-Republican implications are just silly. None of the Democratic cantidates have proposed tax hikes for those who can't afford it (the middle class and lower) whereas Republicans are trying to pass a bill at the moment that will double income taxes for a select group of middle class wage earners (~$50,000 a year) with multiple children. Republicans who still believe in benefiting the rich and in turn the less wealthy with a "trickle down" (or Horse and Sparrow) economy are delusional.

[Professor S]

I find it funny that not one comment in opposition to this story will acknowledge that the anology it creates is at least partly true. The point of the story is that the media and politicians feed to sympathies to drive ratings and votes, and in the end help to create an atmosphere of apathy that sustains the illusion.

There are a lot of people out there who are working very hard to sustain a basic standard of living. There are also a lot out there that abuse government programs to sustain a basic standard of living.

In the end, why would you work hard to sustain the same standard of living that the grasshopper gets for free? Why not just suckle the government teat and save yourself the stress and anxiety of behaving like a productive member of society? Either way the people live a basic standard of living, but only the one who is working hard has a chance to IMPROVE their situation.

Government programs can help when they are not abused for the sake of currying votes. I personally believe there should be federal sanitoriums to help the large number of mentally and emotionally troubled homeless. Instead of being arrested for vagrancy, public drunkeness, etc. and released the next day or hour, they would be sent to these sanitoriums where doctors and psychologists could try and help them become productive members of society. Thats what would WORK, but it doesn't sound NICE, so it will never happen.

Instead, we (as charity) waste millions every year giving to soup kitchens who feed them every once or so often, give them shelter for a night or two and then send them on their way to freeze to death on a sewer grate. It feels good to feed someone rather than to round them up and send them to a hospital, but it only feels better to those feeding the homeless. It doesn't change or improve anything. In fact, all it does is make it easier accept homelessness

Example of abusive legislation?: Take the absurd chilldrens healthcare bill the democrats tried to pass. The idea? Give every child in families up to $80,000(?) annual income free healthcare money with a raise in cigarrette taxes. So your going to fund healthcare for an ever increasing number of children with taxes on a product that people are using less and less? BRILLIANT! It sure sounds good at face value, though. Makes you feel good to hear the idea of it...

Throwing money at problems never fixed anything. It sure does feel good to say "Hey, I helped by paying more taxes!", and I guess as long as you feel good thats all that matters...

[thatmariolover]

There’s no denying that media is disgusting. But this was obviously very targeted at a specific group of people and you can hardly blame somebody for being offended. Ending with the tag line ‘MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote’ is obviously going to enflame those who disagree with the rest of the article. There’s a much less offensive way to make a point about corruption in the media. They could have remained less biased politically and taken jabs at Fox or shows like Bill O’Reilly and Nancy Grace along with their Democratic counterparts.

I’m also disgusted at people that just live off of the system. And I’ll even take that a step further; immigration policies are going to have to change. We’re being overpopulated – and that’s a fact. Lax border laws and poor regulation on legal immigration is choking the economy. Not to say I blame immigrants or imply that they’re the only ones living on the system. But it doesn’t seem realistic for America to remain the land of immigrants with the amount of money we’re losing on the system. We need to spend money to save money.

As for soup kitchens and charities not making a difference, maybe you’re right. I don’t necessarily agree, but that’s another debate.

[Crash]

hmm.. this forum might be getting to intellectual for me ...

anyways.

[Bube]

Originally Posted by Crash

hmm.. this forum might be getting to intellectual for me ...

anyways.

The correct spelling would be too, sir.

[Angrist]

Bube, add my Wii number! And that isn't fair, our English spelling is better because we had to study harder to learn it.

[Dylflon]

I didn't really care for that.

It makes it seem like it's the fault of the race itself for media sensationalism, and also makes it seem that caring about underprivileged minorities is silly.

That and it's not actually all that funny.



Oh! And it was pretty racist as well.

[GameMaster]

This ought to dumb down the intellectual stench in here.