How Socialism Has Demoralized Americans And Instilled An Entitlement Mentality

One Pissed-off Vietnam Vet

3/3/2011

Work Ethic? What Work Ethic?

You’ve heard the joke about city employees changing a light bulb? Like it takes two to hold the ladder, another ten to watch the two hold the ladder, and then they all take a break.. Meanwhile, the union gets involved and they decide that at least one of the employees has to have a pilot’s license, preferably with multi-engine and instrument ratings, someone who has demonstrated in the past that they have avoided vertigo at such astronomical heights as the ceiling height of the average office. Not finding an employee with the proper credentials, the changing of the bulb is contracted out to a private civilian contractor, preferably the brother-in-law of the supervisor of the city employees, who charges the city a fee which would make an odds-maker of a race between a frog and a greyhound envious.

Let’s say you have a roll of steel that weighs 200,000 lbs. Ten tons. You decide to make washing machines. You make a lot of washing machines, but like anything mechanical, they break down. So what? You make the parts to fix it. More parts need to be manufactured to keep the machines going, old machines get refurbished, or maybe they go off to the recycle plant where they again become a washing machine, or a tricycle.

Then again, maybe you decide to make missiles. At first you make a lot of missiles, but, like washing machines, they get used. Unlike washing machines, you can’t recycle a missile. Once the missile is used (fired), that’s all, folks. No recycling a used missile. No melting down the old and resurrecting a new.

No matter which country you live in, there is a finite supply of anything, including fresh water. As a matter of fact, fresh water may very well be the world’s most precious resource. Anyway, there’s a finite supply of anything at any given time, whatever the resource. The moral here, I suppose, is waste not, want not. Another way to put it would be to say you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Or, if you eat your cake, you won’t have any cake to eat. You can’t have your missile and fire it too, for if you do, you won’t have a missile left to fire.

And now… the rest of the story. …..