Surely you've all heard the story of the little red hen, who asks her barnyard friends to help with growing the wheat, reaping the wheat, and baking the bread. They decline to help, and so they don't get any bread.
The moral of the story is that if you don't work, you don't eat.
I've seen a wingnut version floating around that uses this as a parable for socialism, peppered with jokes about porkulus, Pelosi, Jesse Jackson, the Clintons' book revenues, and etc. I won't repost it here.
What follows is my version. Feel free to copy and (gasp) re-distribute!
This is how most thinking people view Capitalism.
The little red hen called all of her neighbors together and said,
"If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?"
"I!" said the cow.
"I!" said the duck.
"I!" said the pig.
"I!" said the goose.
"Fantastic! All of you can do the work, and I’ll create a market for our wheat!"
And so the animals toiled, until it came time to harvest.
"Will you help us reap our wheat?" asked the other animals.
"Not I", said the little red hen, "For I have important work to do! For if we are all reaping the wheat, who will be the manager?"
And so the animals harvested the wheat.
"Who will help us bake the bread?" asked the other animals of the hen.
"Not I," said the little red hen, "I am busy making us all millionaires! Based on my projections, you should produce enough wheat to make 500 loaves of bread, and we can leverage the future price of the bread by bundling your bread and everyone else’s bread into a big pool, and then selling tranches of the pool to all of our neighbors!"
The other animals stood back, going all like "What the f**k?" and went on about their work.
They baked five loaves and held them up for all of their neighbors to see. The little red hen came out of her hen house, screeching and shouting.
"This is only 5 loaves!" she said.
The other animals replied, "of course it is, that’s all we could get out of the wheat we produced. You only thought we could get 500 because you don’t know jack s**t about farming or baking."
Then the farmer (Obama) came. He said to the other animals, "Well, now we have to borrow 350 billion loaves of bread and give it to little red hen, because she has insufficient capital to cover her obligations. And you will all have to work to pay it back".
"What? F**k her, and f**k you!" said the other animals.
"I’m sorry. I know. I get it! But we must not yield to the politics of the moment."
The moral of the story? Bake your own bread and eat it.