More on Taxes in Story Form

The Ant and the Grasshopper

Much has been said here lately about taxes so I'd like to share a story I heard a long time ago. You're either gonna love it or hate it. Depends on which you relate to.....the Ant or the Grasshopper?

THE ANT & THE GRASSHOPPER

Old Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself.

Modern Version

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Jessie Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall Overcome." Jessie then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Tom Daschle and John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Dan Rather that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Ecomomic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single parent welfare recipiants.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican
5,958 views 15 replies
Reply #1 Top
I've read this before, and the analogy would work if the Republican party were a fiscally conservative party.
Reply #2 Top
I've read this before, and the analogy would work if the Republican party were a fiscally conservative party. - T. Wahine

*in best Beavis voice*

Yeah! Yeah! Me too!
Reply #3 Top
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXl7Q4TkRyU

Using the notion of "peak oil" as its underlying assumption, this documentary builds a case for suggesting that the suburban lifestyle is unsustainable. The further assumption is that one-person or one-family vehicles will always be gas powered and gas guzzling. Whether or not you accept this premise, the film does examine critically the wisdom -- or folly -- of constructing an entire civilization on the expectation that there will always be plenty of cheap fuel for combustion.


See: escapefromsuburbia.com - A trailer is available on the site for advance viewing.

The advance description is that there will be a positive emphasis on what people in many countries are doing to meet the challenges of higher and higher oil prices.
Reply #5 Top
:LOL: This is awesome! I've never seen it before.
Reply #6 Top

HAHAHAHAHA.

That was funny KFC. 

Reply #7 Top
Congrats on the feature!  And thanks!
Reply #8 Top
the analogy would work if the Republican party were a fiscally conservative party.


they're not??? Actually no one in government is fiscally conservative as far as my tight wad sense goes. I'd love to put them all on my budget. Their allowances would be very drastically decreased.

Congrats on the feature! And thanks!


Thanks for letting me know....I didn't until you mentioned it!! Thanks and........you're welcome.
Reply #9 Top
This is SO clever.....Democrats the brunt of the joke and Republicans get to be smug and superior. On top of that it's helped me to realize the necessity of a single party nation because history has recorded nothing but Republican foresight, virtuousness, and principled action. I know it's just a joke but it's SO true. Thank you...thank you.


Oh and your political party does NOT define your worth to the greater good of society. It's what you do. Vote for that...
Reply #12 Top
Oh and your political party does NOT define your worth to the greater good of society. It's what you do. Vote for that...


Might want to tell that to your fearless leaders, Boris Badinov!
Reply #13 Top
This is SO clever.....Democrats the brunt of the joke and Republicans get to be smug and superior


so, ahhh you're siding with the grasshoppper?

Wellllllllll alrighty then.

Reply #14 Top
I don't understand why the moral of the story is 'vote republican'. It may as well be "don't deny your nature" or "don't live alone if you're small, weak, and traditionally live in massive skyrises with millions of your fellow species". It could also be "the best-laid plans will be undone by the venal stupidity and innate unfairness of humans."

Why does 'vote republican' figure into it?
Do Republicans have a pro-ant and anti-grasshopper philosophy I'm not aware of? Because grasshoppers traditionally attack ants for food; do Republicans intend to put a stop to that? It seems like a fairly irrelevent policy if that's true...