The ANT
AND THE
GRASSHOPPER
This one is a little different ……
Two Different Versions …..
Two Different Morals
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 the ant is 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 OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!
————————————————————————————————————————
MODERN VERSION:
The conservative white ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The liberal black grasshopper thinks the ant is 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 he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, 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..’
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We shall overcome.
Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake.
Jesse Jackson grandstands at the blatent racism demonstrated by all ants.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, the Pope, 1%, and white folks for the grasshopper’s plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King 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 Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green and black bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading black friends finishing up the last bits of the white ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
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 and ramshackle, the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2012
But wait, the best-set ants were manipulating LIBOR and the like. This isn’t just a story about how honest hard-working ants are being destroyed by slovenly grasshoppers.
You want a quote? Haven’t I written enough already???
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i always have a problem with those “Rock the Vote/ Vote or Die/ “the most important election in history!”
its basically saying..
(if you don’t go out and vote Liberal Democrat, the Evil Republicans will win)
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the sneaky slimy spiders are artificially holding down the price of silver and dumping gold plated tungsten bars onto the market to supress precious metals!
Ants by their nature work single mindedly as servants within a class system to female monarch (subjucated by her percieved fertility) before dying out at the start of winter while the queen nests with the eggs.
Also, according to wikipedia, ants constitute between 15 and 25% of the worlds terestrial animal biomass!
I used to smoke pot and go to class.
Sneak in ten minutes late with a bullsh*t excuse.
Slink down low at my desk.
Pray to god nobody asked me any questions.
I was the best teacher ever.
“The liberal black grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.”
Fuck You
" CFAvsMBA is the brah'da, that plays the role of another brah'da, that is a brah'da"
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Should it say, …fool and drinks 40s and plays dice the summer away?
If this board is a representation of the world of finance and CFA charterholder, I dont want to be a CFA Charterholder. I would end up stabbing a MF in the neck with a pencil or any sharp portable object around the office!
" CFAvsMBA is the brah'da, that plays the role of another brah'da, that is a brah'da"
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First rule of finance is to never let emotion get in the way of logic.
#Troof!
I suggest joining a drug cartel instead. The money is much better and sociopathic acts of violence are viewed favorably.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
actually stabbing assholes in the neck can be very logical and productive. Think about it Deebo. By commiting this heroic crime (might not be a crime if I face chronic black drunks, black crack head jurrors, and dead beats after all what to they know about right and worng, work ethics, law etc) I will free the office from a big jerk, there will be a sense of camaraderie among the remaining employees, everyone will be allert and on their toes, not to mention team work. ie assman getting Hit by a ” BRAH” . Not sure why that was important to highlight in that tragic incident but whatever.
" CFAvsMBA is the brah'da, that plays the role of another brah'da, that is a brah'da"
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I don’t know wtf you talk’n bout, but I assume you disrespectin me.
If I was you, I’d change my sig to say, “Find it, Fuck it, Forget it.”
As opposed to racist and bigoted comments. Those go unchallenged in this forum!
" CFAvsMBA is the brah'da, that plays the role of another brah'da, that is a brah'da"
Not as cool as my sig.
" CFAvsMBA is the brah'da, that plays the role of another brah'da, that is a brah'da"
CvM’s racist and bigoted comments, which we’ve all received via email a thousand times, were met with intellectually humorous retorts from bchad, dvictr and swan. You, on the other had, responded with profanity and threats of violence against innocent coworkers.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
This shit is wack as fuck, I expect better from you.
So you agree that those comments were indeed racist and bigoted and the only issue here is my lack of intellectual humorous retort and my choice of words. Got it! Maybe stabbing racist coworkers with pencils is not the way to go.
" CFAvsMBA is the brah'da, that plays the role of another brah'da, that is a brah'da"
^ progress.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
WTF is intellectually homoruos about this shit? please show me?
" CFAvsMBA is the brah'da, that plays the role of another brah'da, that is a brah'da"
^anti-progress
I used to smoke pot and go to class.
Sneak in ten minutes late with a bullsh*t excuse.
Slink down low at my desk.
Pray to god nobody asked me any questions.
I was the best teacher ever.
Where is Iteracum ??
" CFAvsMBA is the brah'da, that plays the role of another brah'da, that is a brah'da"
Wrong quote my angry, young friend. See dvictr’s next post:
the sneaky slimy spiders are artificially holding down the price of silver and dumping gold plated tungsten bars onto the market to supress precious metals!
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
Hmm. It’s pretty unfair to pick out a small set of high income/1%/conservative people and claim their negative actions have are material to the broad category of people. Hardly any high income people are actually rates traders, let alone libor manipulators.
Imagine if I mouthed off against poor people and said that they are responsible for murder and robbery, thus requiring that we spend more money on police. Almost all murder and robbery is commited by people with relatively low income. This does not mean that low income and violent crime are synonymous.
Sure, the original post was a bit… strange. But let’s not make questionable generalizations because of this.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
You mean the same way it isn’t fair to cherry pick some poor people (crackheads, welfare moms, etc.) and classify the other non-1%-ers as lazy bums just wanting to feed of the hard dignified work of the 1%? If that’s your point, I’ll agree with you.
But remember, I didn’t say “all the ants.” I said “the best-set ants.” Sure, the 1% isn’t chock full of traders and bankers and financial types who have enormous incentives to manipulate the system and who apparently only do so if they have gotten caught. There are doctors and lawyers and business owners in there.
But take a look at the top 0.1%, and you’ll find that it’s mostly finance and banker types, plus a few owners of companies that really hit it big (the Bill Gates’, Sam Waltons, Larry Ellisons’, etc.).
–
The grasshopper and the ant story is a good parable because it says that the consequence of not working and thinking ahead is hard times. That’s a worthwhile lesson for kids because not applying yourself is likely to cause problems and hard times.
But it is flawed logic to jump to the conclusion that those who are going through hard times have by that circumstance alone clearly not planned ahead and worked. There are MANY other things that can lead to hard times, not just not saving for the winter.
Maybe people saved but saved the wrong things. Maybe people thought that savings put in the market or real estate was like saving for the future… and lots of bankers and mutual fund and mortgage broker types (the types you think of as in the 1%) were happily telling them so.
Most of the anger towards the 1% is actually not so focused on the “the rich” in general. It’s more focused on the banking/hedge fund/trading class than on people who actually run businesses and hire people. Contrast the anger against the software programmers and gadget-makers vs. anger at bankers and traders.
And remember, to get into many of the professions that lead you to the 1%, you have to get with the right people, go to the right schools, get the right designations, look the right part. When it starts to become clear that the opportunities are stacked against you, and all that’s left are a bunch of minimum wage jobs even if you apply yourself and go to college or whatnot, it’s not irrational to say “well, I’m going to enjoy life while I can, and when the hard times come, we’re just going to go chop off the heads of the 1% and we’ll enjoy everything that they’ve accumulated for a bit.” I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it’s not an irrational way for people to think when opportunities for ordinary people to have jobs that can support a decent middle class life are no longer around.
You want a quote? Haven’t I written enough already???
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i forgot the kicker
To enslave the ants and grasshoppers!
I have I ever told you that I think you’re pretty awesome, no homo.
Wow. Just wow… I leave you guys alone for just a few days b/c I’m trying to get my swag on and this is what happens… CvM posts a fine script for “A Bugs Life-2 - Shitz Gonna Get Real” and you guys trash it. Shame.
The first part isn’t mentioned enough. How many people were told that investing in Freddie Mac for example was more or less risk-free?
The 2nd part i don’t agree with. There is a HUGE jump from not having an elite financial pedigree to minimum wage ihatemylife jobs. All of my friends who went to mediocre engineering schools have jobs that started in the upper 40s and 50s. My little brother has a few of friends who went to community college doing some sort of IT things and have solid jobs now as well
You are right about point two above, except that only about 1/3 of the population even gets to an undergraduate degree, and from there, decent middle class jobs are by no means easy to secure and hold. My point here was the hollowing out of the middle class and the hopes of being able to attain this without herculean efforts. There still is a middle class, but it is getting ever more precarious.
Surveys show that Americans are willing to tolerate substantial inequality provided that they feel that the game is meritocratic, fair, and not rigged. It’s when hard work doesn’t get rewarded that people either get despondent or angry or both.
You want a quote? Haven’t I written enough already???
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This may be a broad generalization, but people in general do not enjoy hard work. I understand what bchad is saying that if the incentives are not there then people will not work hard, but I think that by and large the incentives are there but people just don’t like to bust ass. My fiance’s dad is an electrician, didn’t finish high school, has made a good living and provided a better future for his family. Those jobs are still there. My neighbor is a contractor and busts his ass and makes a good living. A problem is that in the US people are taught that success is defined by having a decent paying white collar job, when in reality financial success is attainable through many avenues.
Obviously, everyone on this board has a very skewed perspective on what success is based on their CFA participation.
“Some people make shoes. Some people make houses. We make money and people are willing pay us a lot to make money for them.”
wow people. Can we all just lighten up? It’s like a massive fuse ready to blow these days here in the water cooler. I thought the story was amusing. Stop taking everything so literally.
stormy, you should be banned. None of your posts do anything except curse, stir up hatred or describe violent acts upon regular AF members.
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
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