Creating Wealth By Destroying It? Really?

From a comment to this piece about Michigan's financial straits:

"You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

- by Adrian Rogers in 1931

This parallels much of what Jefferson and Franklin wrote about in their day. The truth of their statements haven't changed in all that time. It's just that those who believe that government can cure all ills and is the spring from which all flows have chosen to forget them, if they ever knew them at all. Knowing the state of our education system, I'd say it was the latter.