The Story
There was a girl that lived with her mother. She had never been on her own and liked the comfort of being taken care of. Her mother made a good living, so providing her daughter with the basics was no big problem.
One morning the mother got up and made breakfast for her and her daughter. The daughter came in and asked her mother if she could have some money to buy a new outfit for upcoming job interview. The mother said, No. I had to pay the rent, the electric, and other bills, I don’t have the money.
The daughter was upset but she let it pass. Later that day, one of the daughter’s friends showed up at the house. Her mother did not like the friend, so she told her she wasn’t allowed to come in. So the friend called on the phone. The mother answered and told her not to call again.
The daughter was so upset, she went into her room and slammed the door. The mother came in behind her and told her that there were to be no closed doors in this house. The daughter got upset and told her mother that she was going to move out.
The mother freaked at the thought that her daughter would move. So she reached into her pocket and gave the daughter money to buy a new outfit for her interview. The daughter was relieved. She and her mother had come to an understanding and she no longer felt like she needed her own space.
Her mother gave her want she wanted, not what she needed.
The Story
There was once this woman that lived in the Ghetto. She had dreams of opening her own community center to help her neighborhood. She had seen promises made and broken and felt it was time for a center that could not be underfunded or closed due to budget shortfalls.
She worked as a nurse for the last 10 years, saving and investing her money to get to the sum she needed. When she finally hit her target, she was super excited. She began working on the plans for the center. She decided to run the idea by her local officials to get some publicity for her project.
She was stunned to hear her local politician say, You have saved to much money. Instead of building a community center, I want to take the money you have saved and give it to the people in your community. What good is a community center if the people are suffering?
The woman planned on giving financial advice, not financial assistance. The woman planned on giving her time and heart, not her money. The woman had dreamed of leaving a legacy, not helping a politician win re-election off her years of scrapping by.
The officials took her dream and made it impossible.
The story
There was a man who was brought up around money. His father knew how to make it and his mother knew how to spend it. His father would say, Money doesn’t grow on trees. His mother would say, You can’t take it with you. He adopted some principles from both.
So when he got the money and the power, he knew he had to invest in his father’s company to keep it strong. He also knew he had to spend some money too, so like his mom, he wanted to give lots of money to charity.
When tax time rolled around, the man was hit with hard reality. He could save the jobs of his employees and not invest in new equipment or projects, or he could lay people off and divert money towards mandated healthcare. With either option, he would no longer be able to donate to charity.
All the promises he had made to different organizations would have to be taken back. He was heart broken. What was the point of having all this money, if he couldn’t decide how he wanted to spend it.
The system took the lessons taught by the man’s parents and discounted them.
The Last Story
There are three roommates living in an apartment. One was a full time student with a full time job. One was a full time student with money from his parents to pay for living. The other was a part time student with no job and no money.
Every month when rent time came, the part time student would give excuses as to why he couldn’t pay his portion of the rent. After the third month, the other two roommates finally spoke up. The part time student made promises to find a job, but they often found him in front of the video game.
They were through. They went to the rental office and told the people, we need to get this man’s name off the lease and out of our house. The renter asked why. The men told him that he wasn’t paying his share of the rent and was making no attempt to get a job.
The renter said, the rent has been paid on time, so I don’t understand why you are complaining. The full time student with family money said, I brought the furniture, the T.V., and my mom sends us all the other basics; toilet paper, dishwashing liquid, etc. Why should I have to pay his rent also? The full time student with the full time job said I work eight hours a day and spend another six at school. Why should he get to play the video game while I’m out slaving.
The renter said, you both have the means to carry this man. It’s your responsibility as Americans to share with him. Both men were furious.
They were working to better themselves but had to carry someone else’s burden on top of their own.
The Point
Socialism sounds great if you are on the bottom or in political power. If you aren’t doing anything to better yourself, then you welcome someone giving you something. If you control the power, you relish the fact that you can keep a person’s vote by giving a little at a time.
But what happens to those who want it for themselves? The funny part is we all claim to want it for ourselves. We want to own a house but we don’t want to save. (If you save your money, then I’m not talking to you.) But the truth is you know the people I’m talking about.
You get up everyday to go to work, they don’t, but they have better clothes than you. You save for a vacation but end up having to spend that money to get your car fixed, damn transmission. They take two or three vacations to local beaches. You cut coupons and bargain shop and they come over and eat all your food.
You don’t mind, though. That’s why they keep coming. They spend their money at the club on Saturday night because they know they can eat Sunday dinner at your house. And that’s cool. But what happens when the government tells you that Sunday dinner is mandatory and you also have to feed this person and that person too. What happens to your Sunday dinner?
What if someone doesn’t like meat? Do you have to fix a vegetarian dish for them? What if someone doesn’t like Iced Tea? Do you have to check with them on which drink they would like? What if someone didn’t like the color of your dining room? Do you have to change the color?
See, it’s fine when it’s your idea but when someone else tells you how to run it, things change. It no longer is, You will eat what I cook. It becomes what does the government want me to cook. You no longer search the internet for new recipes. You don’t experiment with new ingredients. You stick with what is approved.
Now you might say, Not in my house. I run my house. Well guess what? You also have the power to run your government. Everyone complains that the government is corrupt and does nothing but cause more problems. I wonder how the answer to that problem could be more government.
They messed up Wall Street, now you want to trust them with health care. They destroyed company accountability, now you want to make them accountable for your child’s education. We have the most hated Congress in history, now you want to give them control of government spending. How will this help any of our problems?
A personal issue I have is this; What does that say about you? It pisses me off to think that a politician in government could tell me my worth. You see, just because I don’t make $250,000 a year now, I need help. The truth, this debacle on wall street and the high cost of gas caused me to re-evaluate my spending. Last year, my daughter had four pair of name brand shoes. Now she has one and three pair of no name shoes. What’s even funnier, she likes the no name shoes better.
I can understand the mantra on change going around. Things haven’t been working in the last eight years, so we have to make a change. The truth is, things crashed in the last two years. President Bush won re-election even though we were in an unpopular war. Why? Because the economy was good. Housing sales were up, unemployment was down, and America was in great shape.
No one was concerned about what would happen next. We were all just living in the moment. Buying $600 iphones like we needed them to breathe. Moving into $500,000 houses because that was the American dream. Finding the biggest, gas guzzling SUV because it sent the message of success.
Then all of a sudden life caught up with us and we start looking for someone to blame. I blame myself for constantly wanting to get my hair done, even though I know how to do it myself. I blame myself for hiring someone to cut my grass, when it would only take me and hour or so to do myself. I blame myself for thinking my three year old really cared about the Nike swoosh on her shoes. And I don’t expect someone with money to pay for the mistakes I’ve made.
I believe that the lesson’s I’ve learned will get me to the $250,000 mark and beyond. I know that trivial things like clothes that fade with the next fashion trend are not a good investment, unless I own stock in the company. I know that a car’s purpose is to get you from point A to point B and it doesn’t matter who says, “That’s my car”, when I roll down the street. I know that governments make promises that never materialize, So it’s better if I do it for myself.
That’s how I want my worth determined. What I’ve done through my own sacrifice, not what someone else gave me. I told my daughter the other day, there will come a time when she has to realize that when someone gives you something, they often want something in return. I told her to remember that everything that shines is not gold and when things seem to easy, there is usually a problem.
She told me, “So if I get it myself, no one can take it away.” I told her, Yes, but I felt this pit in the center of my core. I’m trying to teach my daughter self reliance, when she is surrounded by people with their hands out. I don’t want to teach my daughter, You work to pay the government. I want to teach her to work hard and give back. As Jay-Z said, I can’t help the poor, if I’m one of them. I got rich and gave back, to me that’s the win win.
And that sounds wonderful, just like Sunday dinner, but what happens when the government tells you how to give back? When they are paying for Bear research and your community has poor or no health care clinics. When they are paying for wooden arrows and your community has no jobs. When they are paying to keep financial institutions from falling when your community fell years ago.
They say, I’m going to take from the rich and give to the poor. What the hell is $500 going to do to help you? Seriously. You can’t even pay mortgage for a month with that money. Wouldn’t it be better spent if it stayed in the hands of your employeer who could then hire more people, maybe even give you a raise or promotion. Or maybe it could stay in the hands of the people that donate Millions every year to building community centers or finding a cure for AIDS.
And yet again, what does that say about you? You work hard but life gets in the way, you should be taken care of. Where will you get your lessons of survival? Or are you like the daughter in the first story, willing to take any little thing that puts off dealing with a major issue. Or are you like the politician in the second story that thinks you can spend money better than the person that earned it? Or are you like the tax man in the third story, that doesn’t think a business owner can make responsible decisions? Or are you like the renter in the fourth story that thinks as long as things get done, it doesn’t matter who makes the sacrifice?
Oh yeah, one thing I forgot. What happens when the government decides that you have gotten a break for to long? What happens when the margain for being rich is pushed down to $125,000? What happens when you graduate college, get a great job, and then have to turn around and pay for someone else to go to college before you finish paying off your tuition debt? How then do you save for a home or for your retirement?
If you think that spreading the wealth helps everybody, just look at the people around you. How many of them will do the right thing with money they recieve? And don’t lie to yourself, you know the people around you. And if you are one of the people who doesn’t see anything wrong with the spending habits of those around you, you are probably the example your friends and family are looking at.
P.S. If you think the guy in the last story will actually get a job, write to me. I want to hear why you think that man will get a job when he still has a place to live without one!
