Socialist LIFE – the sequel to Socialist Leaf

As you might be aware, my "Socialist Leaf" remarks provoked considerable objection and outcry from my liberal friends.  Unlike my idol, Rush Limbaugh, I did not back down from my comments.  Also unlike Rush Limbaugh, I did not have a horde of radical left-wing sex addicts threatening to put a bullet in my head.  Anyway, my inflammatory language generated sufficient controversy to warrant a masterpiece of a sequel.  Having played Milton Bradley’s Game of Life a number of times, I have noticed several disturbing trends in this family-friendly board game.  I have found that LIFE is a deeply socialist game which encourages jealousy and class envy, denies personal responsibility for one’s success or lack thereof, and places burdensome regulations on the pursuit of one’s happiness.

The Mitt Romney card.

The chief purpose in LIFE is to steal the salary of the greedy 1% player, who makes $100,000 per payday.  Only one such salary exists, and it’s highlighted in yellow to emphasize the point that the person making this much is one out of many and utterly separated from the rest of America, the workers.  This coveted position of the 1%er is fought over the entire duration of the game; after all, everyone who reads the New York Times knows that the wealthy are few in nature.  This quest to steal the hard-earned profits of the top dog usually yields odious dialogue of the following sort: 

“You’ve been holding onto that salary card for too long.  It’s not FAIR!” 

“How is it acceptable for you to make $100,000 a year while I wallow in squalor, struggling to get by on minimum wage?” 

“I teach a class full of rambunctious, destructive public school kids and make a mere $30,000 a year, while you deliver babies and collect 3 times that amount.  How the $@&% is that just?”

This game not only encourages us to be a bunch of envious Marxist freaks; it also turns us into those vineyard workers of Jesus’ parable.  In this instructive story, Christ tells of a landowner who paid a denarius each to several laborers early in the day to work in exchange for their service in his vineyard.  Much later in the day, he hired more men to work in his vineyard, also giving them denarii for their pains.  When the first workers receive their pay, they’re discontented and feel cheated, as they worked longer but took a sum equal to that of those who were in the vineyard for a shorter time.  Their jealousy of the other men blinds them to the generous wage they are given, which is, in the allegorical sense, heaven.  LIFEwise, instead of being grateful for the salary we do receive and the job we have managed to obtain in this fictitious game, we are consumed with our hatred for the 1% figure who supposedly does less work but gets paid more.  This hatred ties directly into communism, an economic model so evil that God even seems to condemn it in the book of Exodus.  “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.  You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”  Communism and the Game of Life are structured around envy against all men more privileged than oneself and the covetous desire to deprive such men of their riches or forcefully redistribute (i.e. steal) their wealth for the sake of fairness, which is falsely interpreted to mean shared success or, in the case of all socialist nations ever founded, wretchedness.

This plastic wheel makes you rich or poor.

LIFE’s war on the wealthy doesn’t stop at merely envying the rich: that’d be too simple.  The Game of Life has more devious plans.  I like to believe that anyone has the capacity to become affluent if he only exploits his god-given talents and works diligently to his utmost potential.  Conservatives like me find it rather spineless to complain about “rigged systems” or “luck” when it comes to determining a person’ financial state in life.  If the concept of “responsibility” truly is real, then you are the only one who can impede or allow your own success.  The Game of Life does not share my view; quite to the contrary, the game thinks that prosperity is determined by the spin of a wheel or the draw of a card.  No one in LIFE becomes wealthy without a good deal of luck, and chance – not strategy – is the ultimate variable in determining the game’s victor.  This (obviously) produces a requirement for government intervention in the form of the “trade salary cards with any player” tile, which is supposed to close the so-called wealth gap and repair the damage inflicted by this mystical wheel which dictates our every action, victory, and failure. To Help with individual responsibility – in the materialist’s real LIFE, we all win or lose based solely on chance, not on the decisions we make.

The Occupy tile and some people peeing on a bush.

The Game of Life is predisposed from the beginning to make the pursuit of happiness practically impossible.  Note the way that certain higher careers, e.g. the accountant, are restricted to college graduates.  Why in the world do I need to complete four years of college in order to keep track of money?  Is the schooling system so deficient that I enter college without a proper grasp of mathematics?  This is why neither federal nor state governments should be in charge of education.  Nevertheless, if I want to work as an accountant, I’ll have to endure four years of job training and probable liberal indoctrination.  I’ll have to borrow $100,000 in loans from the government, money which I needn’t repay until I retire.  Because I’m such a caring, conscious college lib, I get my choice of three careers instead of the one which those evil, capitalist conservatives get, who live on their own dime instead of government handouts.  This game clearly despises self-sufficiency.  Additionally, should you manage to work your way to the top and achieve a $100,000 salary, you’ll be punished for your hard work with a “heavy graduated income tax”, inspired by Karl Marx himself.  Indeed, in the Game of Life, the 1%er pays the government a percentage that is 1.8x the cut that the bottom earner owes; i.e., the game endorses far-left FDR policies.  The game also flaunts its anti-prosperity bias in the finale.  If you choose to retire at Millionaire Estates, you can see all your life achievements sucked away; however, the game will reward you if you settle for a life of mediocrity and inferiority at Countryside Acres.  I’m not suggesting you can’t find happiness in the rural country – I just find it absurd that LIFE demonizes those who take the more luxurious route.

I could criticize this game further on its anti-singles message, environmentalist undertones, and delusional representation of our health care system, but it does not even deserve the attention this writer has granted it.