The Ant and The Grasshopper - Posted by Bill

Real Estate Investing Vacation Rentals
1

Posted by NCPaul on March 02, 2002 at 22:50:08:

We can go on for ages talking about analogies we can pull from the modern grasshopper/ant story. You have a good point about the lazy person, hung-over or not! I was just trying to tie the story into a current event and that doesn’t always lend itself to a seamless blend as you pointed out. I get annoyed by the seemingly endless mass of lazy people who are he11-bent on taking advangtage of the “system” that my hard work is paying for. This leads me to make what you consider to be a poor analogy of the story.

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The Ant and The Grasshopper - Posted by Bill

Posted by Bill on March 02, 2002 at 10:18:37:

Subject: The Ant and The Grasshopper

ORIGINAL VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer
long, building his
house and laying in supplies for the winter. The
grasshopper thinks he’s 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.

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer
long, building his
house and laying in supplies for the winter. The
grasshopper thinks he’s 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 others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC 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.”

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of
the ant’s house, where the
news stations film the group singing, “We shall
overcome.” Jesse then has the
group kneel down to pray to God for the
grasshopper’s sake.

Tom Daschle exclaims in an interview with Peter
Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back
of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax
hike on the ant to make him pay his “fair share.”
Richard Gephart nodding, in agreement with higher taxes.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and
Anti-Grasshopper Act, " retroactive to the
beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for
failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs
and, having nothing left to pay his
retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the
government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the
grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant,
and the case is tried before a panel of Federal
judges that Bill had appointed from a list of
single-parent welfare recipients. The ant loses the
case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing
up the last bits of the
ant’s food while the government house he is in,
which just happens to be the
ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he
doesn’t maintain it. The ant
has disappeared in the snow.

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 the once peaceful
neighborhood.

3

GREAT POST!!! (nt) - Posted by Lazaro

Posted by Lazaro on March 02, 2002 at 21:09:53:

nt

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Re: The Ant and The Grasshopper - Posted by jack

Posted by jack on March 02, 2002 at 12:23:17:

Your story should finish at the ant’s new house that he built, one that is better than the last one, and well stocked with food that he foraged and grew again.

5

Re: The Ant and The Grasshopper - Posted by GregNY

Posted by GregNY on March 02, 2002 at 11:37:34:

I can see where you’re going with this and what you’re
trying to say BUT let me point out. This is not what’s
going on. All that would never happen because, people
know people. Everyone would know that the grasshopper
is a lazy fool. Yes there are grasshoppers that cry foul
because they don’t have the life of the hard working
ants. But they are quickly put in their rightful place.
There are some welfare fools that think they are
getting over but you really shouldn’t care. Welfare
will only get you so far. The more lazy bums out in the
world the more section 8 tenants to be had. Will a lazy
grasshopper ever take my home? They won’t take it but
I will let them use it and pay my mortgage off. Also,
they make great motivated sellers.

Long live the grasshopper!

GregNY

6

ReDistribution of Wealth??? - Posted by Lazaro

Posted by Lazaro on March 02, 2002 at 21:09:19:

Hey Greg
Do YOU KNOW what Redistribution of Wealth is???
COMMUNISM!!!..Just had to disagree with you.
Cordially,
Lazaro

7

Tell that to Gensiro Kawamoto - Posted by NCPaul

Posted by NCPaul on March 02, 2002 at 16:44:08:

If you check out this thread, http://www.creonline.com/wwwboard/messages/82179.html You will see that the modern version about the grasshopper and the ant isn’t that far off base. Basically, an ant by the name of Gensiro Kawamoto (An investor) decided it was in his best interest to vacate and sell his rentals. Well, the tenants decided this was wrong, afterall, they lived there-he just owned the place. The ant in this story got pressure from everybody all the way up the to the GOVERNOR! The city council even passed an ordinance that would fine him $4,000 for every tenant he displaces. Technically Mr. Kawamoto agreed and gave the tenants an extension, but let’s face it, the King of England signed the Magna Carta with a knife in his back too! Never underestimate the power of a group of lazy entitlement driven media savy Grasshoppers!

Good Luck

8

Re: ReDistribution of Wealth??? - Posted by TC

Posted by TC on March 03, 2002 at 22:18:54:

My take on this story is “ReDistribution of Wealth” also as well as the “Entitlement Mentality”.Socialism to me is not what I like to see but in another sense if it wasn’t there would there be as many deals available to us as investors?

9

Re: But is that what the story says? - Posted by GregNY

Posted by GregNY on March 02, 2002 at 16:50:39:

It might be Saturday and it might be that I’m a little hung over…

But, it seems to tell a story of ONE ant and ONE LAZY
grasshopper. It doesn’t say that the ant owned the
graashoppers home and that the grasshopper was a hard
working insect. I read it as a lazy person getting over
and beating the “system” over the head putting the ant
in the poor house. Maybe its me but too me (too me),
this is a poor analogy of the story.

Just MY thoughts,

GregNY