Wednesday 18 November 2009

Quote of the day: On stealing wealth [updated]

Here’s five sentences that should be in every school room in the country:

_quote You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
    “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 my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”
                                      - Adrian Rogers

UPDATE: Did someone say they wanted a T-shirt with that on? Here you go, courtesy of Tomahawk Kid:Picture 1

9 comments:

Greig McGill said...

I think I'll put that on a t shirt and wear it daily.

Anonymous said...

You're right about the classrooms.
How about all the WINZ branches as well?

MrsT

ZenTiger said...

You'll need a bloody large t-shirt, Greig :)

orange said...

loftily beautiful... but I crave advice about how we ought best to organise our societies, and this quote gives me nothing

you say "work", I see "investing accumulated and inherited wealth"... and all I want to do is tax it away and give it to the hard-working and needy poor, and the even needier poor who haven't even had the real opportunities in life to become a hard-working person...

c'mon libertarians... have some heart! stealing that wealth ain't so bad, not when they got it passed down to them, or got lucky in the lotto

LGM said...

A quote from Ludwig von Mises:

"An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself." - Human Action

LGM

Greig McGill said...

Zen: It's OK, I'm a lot of man. ;)

ZenTiger said...

c'mon libertarians... have some heart! stealing that wealth ain't so bad,

I'll be around next Tuesday to steal what you have, and rest assured, it's going to a good cause (well, I think it's a good cause, and that's the criteria, right?)

Shane Pleasance said...

Thanks orange, I was ahead of myself and thinking people were 'getting it". If you are not able to find 'how best to organise our societies' (ie, do ONLY what is required to protect our liberty) within these pages, maybe you should skip over to Red Alert or kiwiblog. They are adept at 'organising' our societies, and have been doing so with incredible success for decades. Our country, subsequently, declines like a flan in the oven with the door opened half way through.

So much civility and prosperity squandered.

Callum said...

"c'mon libertarians... have some heart! stealing that wealth ain't so bad, not when they got it passed down to them, or got lucky in the lotto"

And the road to dictatorship and mass slaughter begins again. It always begins with this idea that the most moral man is also the poorest - that the proper image of man is him starving in the street.

You're the truly heartless one, orange.