An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.  The class insisted that wealth re-distribution (aka socialism) worked because then no one would be poor and no one would be rich—a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, let’s try an experiment.  Henceforth, all grades would be averaged; everyone would receive the same grade and no one would fail.”

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.   The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.  As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.   The second test average was a D!  No one was happy.  When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.  The scores never increased because bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To the students’ great surprise they all failed, and the professor told them socialism as a form of governance always fails because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, it’s human nature not to expend the effort because the result is always the same.