Billy?
Billy doesn't have five dollars. Billy says that it is unfair that we each have five dollars, and that he has none.
Billy joins with Sue and Tom and Lisa and hundreds of thousands more. They talk about the immorality of disproportionate wealth. They talk about how those who are "the haves" are besting the system and using it to their advantage to keep others from having their own five dollars.
With sufficient numbers, Billy and his political following form a political alliance, call it a party. They pass a law requiring everyone to contribute a "fairness" assessment. The purpose of the "fairness" assessment is to provide those who have been locked out of opportunity with a ready pool of cash.
The effect of the "fairness" assessment is that Fred, you, and I question why we worked hard, scrimped, saved, did without, deferred gratifications, etc., and we decide to reduce our labors and efforts. After all, thousands and thousands have joined together and made our actions seem most unseemly, perhaps immoral.
The "fairness" assessment cannot keep pace with the outflow of cash that was committed to by those that adopted it. They march on the printing operation where the money is actually printed. They seized the presses and begin a 24/7 operation creating additional dollars that do not reflect the product of a "fairness" assessment.
What a wonderful new world! If only we could have realized this sooner.
A problem develops.
There are SOOOOOOOOOOO many dollars on the market now, everyone is buying more and demand goes up. As demand rises, the price rises. Higher prices demand more money. More money means re-evaluating the "fairness" assessment. Maybe one should be attached to the the value of estates when people die? Maybe one should be attached to interest earned on savings and investment? Maybe one should be attached to the earnings of corporations?
With "fairness" assessments imposed on savings, there is a perverse incentive and people stop saving, but they do keep spending and spending creates demand and demand justifies increases in prices and increases in prices requires additional printing of dollars, whether funded by "fairness" assessments or whether covered by a new invention devised by the Billy Party. They came up with the idea of using IOUs to provide value for the dollars. They'll just promise to be able to pay the thousands, millions, billions, and trillions of accumulated promises to pay that the newly minted dollars represent.
Soon, the price of milk is $8.00, the price of a loaf of bread is $ 5.00. The price of toilet paper? Well. Actually. Since no one can afford to purchase trees to make pulp to make paper no one has seen toilet paper in months.
The Billy Party begins to distrust its own members. It sees greed in their eyes, their constant hectoring for more, more, more, while doing less, less, less. So the Billy Party imposes a framework of controls:
- Wages are fixed at set rates by the Billy Party.
- Prices are fixed at set rates by the Billy Party.
- The Billy Party orders farmers to produce X gallons of raw milk each day.
- The Billy Party orders bakers to produce Y loaves of bread each day.
- The Billy Party orders toilet paper manufacturers to produce Z rolls of toilet paper each day.
The result?
The people living in the nation ruled by the Billy Party water their milk down 3 parts water to 1 part milk to make it last and to make it affordable.
The people living in the nation ruled by the Billy Party think of white bread as a luxury, nearly a dessert in character. A child that wants the crust peeled off is forced to watch as parents and siblings eat their piece of bread to teach them not to be picky.
The people living in the nation ruled by the Billy Party wipe their asses with their hands, and they aren't even Arabs, because ordered toilet paper manufacturers to make toilet paper will not force trees to grow, to chop themselves down, to be ground into pulp, to be shipped to the nation ruled by the Billy Party, and to be milled into toilet paper.
No one shakes hands with the people living in the Nation ruled by the Billy Party.
And it all started with Billy claiming it was unfair that three others had five dollars that he didn't have!
The moral of the story:
Venezuela is a festering cesspool that proves the vapidity of socialism. If you are voting for Bernie Sanders U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders We Want Bernie Sanders, you ought to go live in Venezuela so you can look into the future you want to create here in America.
