P.J. O'Rourke: Dear Mr. President, Zero-Sum Doesn't Add Up

[Valin]

WSJ:

Is life like a pizza, where if some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box?

P.J. O'ROURKE

12/27/12

 

Given that hypocrisy is an important part of diplomacy, and diplomacy is necessary to foreign policy, allow me to congratulate you on winning a second term.

 

(Snip)

 

But the worst thing that you've done internationally is what you've done domestically. You sent a message to America in your re-election campaign. Therefore you sent a message to the world. The message is that we live in a zero-sum universe.

 

There is a fixed amount of good things. Life is a pizza. If some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box. You had no answer to Mitt Romney's argument for more pizza parlors baking more pizzas. The solution to our problems, you said, is redistribution of the pizzas we've got—with low-cost, government-subsidized pepperoni somehow materializing as the result of higher taxes on pizza-parlor owners.

 

(Snip)

 

[clearvision]

Might work better, for those who need to understand, if he had used a pot plant as his example versus pizza....

[SrWoodchuck]

I say...."Stone him!"

[pollyannaish]

Might work better, for those who need to understand, if he had used a pot plant as his example versus pizza....

 

In Washington State, they'd just ask for brownies instead.

[Valin]