Spotted in this month’s Viz Comic Top Tips section:

How Government works

This comment on Reddit.com by Sharpsight2 tickled me:

That’s just the TL;DR. You could be more accurate:

Help to teach kids how the government works by

  • taking half their sweets away.
  • eating some of the sweets and tell them that you deserve these because of the “services” you provide (whether wanted or not), such as buying toys, making them eat their vegetables, etc
  • giving some of the sweets to the kids next door who don’t have any pocket money to buy any, and accept full credit for the generosity yourself
  • requiring your kids to regularly write down how many sweets they had originally, how many you took away, and how many extra ones they’ve been able to get hold of since that you don’t know about and haven’t taken half of yet. Failure to volunteer this information results in getting sent to bed without dinner
  • offering one or two of their sweets back as a “bonus” in exchange for voluntary additional work of taking out the garbage and raking leaves off the lawn all week. Bonus issued at the end of the year and on a pro-rata basis if daily records of work performed are incomplete
  • in case you forget how many sweets you’ve had, warn the kids that they could be audited at any time and be required to produce their candy return records for the last two years. Failure to produce these will result in half of their sweet income being estimated, and then confiscated

This will leave kids with a richer, deeper understanding. Depending on their characters, they’ll then either become concerned with freedom & justice, or they’ll run for office.