TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL OR ATLAS WILL SHRUG. (Courtesy of The Gartman Letter)

Crosby, Stills and Nash told us that we’ve no choice but to teach our children well, and it is very, very hard to argue with that statement for who wants to teach their children poorly.

But sometimes they learn lessons for themselves, and a friend of ours sent us the following short story about a lesson concerning the US drift into socialism learned on their own by his two sons. Our friend wrote:

On the way home from summer vacation, my two sons (four and eight years old) were talking about staging a lemonade stand when they got home. The four year old who spends every penny he gets suggested that he should keep all the profits because his brother (who saves every penny) has a lot more money. As a lesson in behavioral finance I suggested that it sounded like a good idea. The eight year old then said the four year old can do it himself and he would not participate.

It does not get much simpler than this to see why socialism does not work.

ScottEbeling
CommodityTrader
Chicago, IL

Scott wrote later, after we’d asked if we could reproduce this wonderfully simple yet forceful story for our clients, that “You should have seen my [eight year old son… he was kickin’ and screaming, but eventually our taxes will get to a point where it is not worth the risk to put capital and effort into starting businesses and creating jobs, we will choose just to not participate.”

We are collectively near to the point of this eight year old boy’s anger and dismay over his four year old brother’s illogical demands, for we are being asked to pay huge and rising taxes to support those who chose not to work and we wish not to do so.

We’ve a responsibility to those who cannot work and for those to whom life has dealt a very bad hand. We have obligations to the infirm and the ill-treated, and we take those obligations very, very seriously, for we give graciously and willingly to charities of all kinds and at most times.

However we are not prepared, nor do we intend, to sponsor the “four year olds” who envy what we or others have made and think it is theirs to be taken from us. Obama and the Left are teaching our young an ill advised lesson that those who are wealthy owe money… large sums of money… to those who are not, but even eight year olds know a scam when they see one.

(Dennis Gartman - The Gartman Letter - Aug 05, 09)