Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Double Down

To "Double Down" in Blackjack: The player is allowed to increase the initial bet by up to 100% in exchange for committing to stand after receiving exactly one more card.

To "Double Down" in politics:

First Card:


The Double Down:



"Families like yours, young people like the ones here today--including the ones who were just chanting at me--you're the reason that I ran for office in the first place."

Even though the President is extremely smart, especially in politics, I don't think he'd do well at Blackjack.

You don't Double Down when you are given a very, very bad card.  Note to whoever is advising the President to embrace the OWS crowd.

Stop.

In my humble opinion (of course), the OWS crowd is destructive, not creative.  It's socialist, not capitalist.  It's negative, not positive.  It's backward thinking, not forward thinking.  It's a proven failed philosophy, not a correction to a masterpiece.  It's exactly what we don't need.  To think otherwise is to embrace insanity.  Really, I'm not kidding.  Let me put it this way...would you let anyone at the OWS rally look after your child while you're away?  No?  Then why are you taking their view on the economy...something that will shape your child's future?

This country has done magnificent things, and this economy has driven prosperity to all time highs.  Prosperity is relative, of course, but so is the definition of poverty.  The lack of a job is not the issue.  The real issue is the lack of incentives for businesses to create those jobs.

If government figured out that instead of "telling" business what to do, they "incentivized" business, the economy would flourish.

At the beginning of economist F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom", Hayek stated that when government controls the economy, what's more at stake is not our wealth...but our "alteration in the character of the people."  If the President believes that government should control all the "faults" of the economy, then we will fundamentally change as a people.

According to the Tax Foundation, 60% of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes.  Over half of our population lives at the expense of the rest.

Is this truly what we want in our country?  60 will become 70%....and 70 becoming 80%.  Unless we change, this is not conjecture, it is fact.  Do we want a culture of takers or makers?  Do we want freedom and self-responsibility or do we want the tyranny of the Nanny State?

This is the true discussion.  All else is smoke and mirrors.

2 comments:

  1. Very eloquently put. Unlike protests in the past here, or even the passionate protests we are seeing in other countries today, the OWS crowd has no vision. They don't have dreams for the future...all they want are handouts. Very, very sad.

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  2. Good blog, Skippy. OWS has become a haven for socialists, anarchists, partiers, leftover hippies and attention seekers.

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