Sunset News: One of the many shallow statements that sound good :

"We know we belong to the land and the land we belong to is grand"

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

One of the many shallow statements that sound good :

One of the many shallow statements that sound good -- if you don't stop and think about it -- is that 'at some point, you have made enough money.' The key word in this statement, made by President Barack Obama recently, is 'you.' There is nothing wrong with my deciding how much money is enough for me or your deciding how much money is enough for you, but when politicians think that they should be deciding how much money is enough for other people, that is starting down a very slippery slope. Politicians with the power to determine each citizen's income are no longer public servants. They are public masters. Are we really so eaten up with envy, or so mesmerized by rhetoric, that we are willing to sacrifice our own freedom by giving politicians the power to decide how much money anybody can make or keep? ... Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy -- quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go." --economist Thomas Sowell

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