Robert Hall Is Tired

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran and he is tired.

I remember once I was tired. I had flown up to Vancouver, taught a seminar, and was now flying back to wherever I was in the States, to get up the next morning and teach another seminar. I was sitting back in coach, it was the evening of the day I had gotten up early to check out of the hotel, teach the class, dash to the airport, clear security and US immigration, and make my flight so I could get a Rent A Car, drive to the next hotel, check in, and get some sleep before getting up early to begin the next class the next day in the next city. I was so tired.

I opened the paper to an article by John Ralston Paul, Canadian intellectual, who was musing about the need to consolidate all the various welfare subsidies that Canadians are entitled to into a "guaranteed annual income". I was tired, and the thought swept over me "oh, I could stop working!".

I. Could. Stop. Working.

And that, my friends, is the problem with socialism. It eats away at personal responsibility and self-sufficiency; it gives people an easy way out that people are too ready to take. And, to the extent that it erodes self-sufficiency, it also erodes feelings of self-worth. It is, in short, de-moralizing.

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink
I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No,no,no. -- John Lennon

Guaranteed annual income?

No. No. No.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.