Sunday, October 26, 2008

Spreading the Wealth Around Experiment

A surprising (read scary) number of people support the concept of spreading the wealth in the abstract. It would be interesting to see how many of those people would continue to support it if that meant they would be the ones to lose money. Then I cam across a post at RobertBluey.com (http://robertbluey.com/blog/2008/10/25/redistribution-of-wealth-experiment-3).

The crux of the post is that a patron at a restaurant decided to see how and Obama supporter would like the concept of spreading the wealth when it meant that the waiter would lose their tip. The patron took the tip they were going to give and told the waiter they were going to give it to the homeless person outside. As you may figure, the waiter was not pleased.

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This e-mail forward was sent to me this morning. Very rarely do I find these educational, this was a very clever demonstration of Barack Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around.”


In a local restaurant my server had on a “Obama 08″ tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference–just imagine the coincidence.


When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need–the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.


I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I’ve decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.


At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.


I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.


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