Excellent Lesson In Economics

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the final test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3^rd test rolled around the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings, and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that...

My reply:

Actually, the students didn’t learn socialism, they learned dictatorship. The professor made the rules the students had to follow. The students obeyed the prof’s rules and failed. Wonder if they had to repeat the class to graduate? Of course this is a made-up parable by someone who really doesn’t know what socialism is. (The A students could have kept on being A students for the sake of personal integrity and love of learning.)

Blessings,

Andrea