one month passes...
british pop has been so terrible for the past two years and not even "pass out" and "katy on a mission" can disguise it
― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Tuesday, 23 November 2010 12:33 (1 month ago)
Ah Lex you cantankerous old codger.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 6 January 2011 14:33 (thirteen years ago) link
eight months pass...
eight months pass...
three weeks pass...
How would you explain it to a 5-year old why higher taxes on the rich doesn't fix everything?
I can think of half a dozen different ways to put it, but the best is probably the one my dad told me when I was five years old.
My dad, who was a Goldwater Republican and one of the smartest people I've ever met, used the analogy of a careless fire brigade carrying buckets of water up and down hills for miles. As each one passes the bucket to the next, some of the water is spilled on the ground.
You might think that because so many people are involved that each one is watching the other and ensuring they don't waste any water. But it's precisely because there are so many hands involved that, though each one spills only a small amount, it adds up to a massive loss.
No one person is responsible for the lost water, because each one can rightfully claim that he spilled only a little bit. In the end, the final person in the chain gets a tiny splash of water, but it removes a full bucket of water from the source.
You can use the bucket brigade to move water from one place to another, but unlike the natural water cycle (supply and demand), short temporary bucket brigades created in response to disasters (spontaneous charity), well-designed aqueducts (churches, nonprofits, and other permanent charitable institutions), it's a very inefficient process.
(When I was little, I was irritated that this analogy seemed so simple. I thought it couldn't be true, because if it was, people would be too smart to fall for it. When I got older, I gradually realized my dad was right about this, as he was about so many other things. But to this day, I still remember this analogy. I wish I knew if it was original to him or something he read somewhere.)
Knowing what I do now, I would extend this by saying that the economy is like a pool of water. It's all connected. Whether you draw water out at the shallow end or the deep end, the shallow end (the poor) will still go dry first
― ledge, Wednesday, 11 July 2012 08:42 (twelve years ago) link
two years pass...
one year passes...
seven years pass...