The Right Metaphor

Ever since Obama made his "spread the wealth around" comment to Joe the Plumber, many emails have been circulating around the internet - all attempting to find the right metaphor for describing Obama's plan to redistribute your wealth.

Most email attempts at finding the right metaphor use children to symbolize taxpaying citizens, and parents to symbolize the Obama government-mandated redistribution of your wealth.

One example has a child collect Halloween candy - and then at the end of the night, the parent takes away half and gives it to neighbor kid that didn't go trick-or-treating. But this metaphor doesn't cut it in my book - for the parents are merely redistributing the charity that the child received - the child didn't earn the candy.

A real metaphor would be - the child:
* Gets up early each day for a week
* Works with Dad to construct out of wood and paint a lemonade stand
* Works errands around the house to earn enough allowance to be able to buy a couple canisters of lemonade
* Runs to the store with the allowance to purchase the lemonade canisters
* Brings home the lemonade, mixes it up, and adds ice cubes
* Brings the lemonade along with a set of drinking glasses outside
* Sets up the lemonade stand for business
* After looking at the competition, decides on a profitable price point
* Sits outside all day long a hot summer day
* Makes lemonade sales pitches to passing pedestrians and cars

Now under the Obama plan to "spread your wealth around:"
* The profit from the kids' lemonade stand endeavor
* Would be taken by Obama and ("spread") given to the lazy kid next door who slept in and played video games all week.

Yet with a straight face, Obama will tell the enterprising kid that "he isn't punishing his success" and that "spreading the wealth around is good for everybody."

And with that, the entrepreneurial child has learned a valuable lesson about how the Democrats and government politicians feel entitled to steal his/her business profits.

How's that for the right metaphor?