Amerika

One of my hobbies is looking up obscure pop culture references that interest me to find the source and get the actual quote, since all the quotations-sites just steal the same wrong content from each other.

Today, we look at an infamous statement by Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) which is generally quoted as “Everything government touches turns to crap.” The full story comes from the official biography of The Beatles, where we get a lengthier argument from Ringo:

He doesn’t feel any urge or necessity to give money to charity and doesn’t see why they should. ‘Brian gave stuff now and again, on behalf of us. John did Oxfam a Christmas card, didn’t he? That made them a lot of money.’

‘I don’t fancy it, really. Most of the people running charities are not nice people. What good did the Aberfan Fund do, except for all the lawyers? They gave each person £5,000 for losing a child. Ridiculous. Five million quid doesn’t equal losing a child. I think a lot of people are making money out of charities. No, they’re not for me.’

‘The Government’s taking over 90 per cent of all our money anyway — we’re left with 1s.9d. in the pound. The government spends it on helping people, doesn’t it. That’s like helping charities.’

‘Not that the Governments are any good. They can’t make anything work. Buses, trains. None of them work. I was in the car yesterday going to town and I passed five Number 7 buses, one lined up behind the other, all with just two people on. Why couldn’t they all be on one bus?’

‘The Government takes too much in taxes. There’s no initiative, you get taxed right through life. When they’ve left nobody rich, nobody will have any money to give the Government.’

‘Everything the Government does turns to crap, not gold. The railways made profits when they were private firms, didn’t they. It’s like Victorian England, our Government. Outdated.’

‘All Governments are the same, Labour or Tory. Neither of them offers me anything. All they do is oppose each other. One says one thing, and the other has to say something different. They both do it. That’s all they do. Why can’t they all get together and work for the country?’

— Hunter Davies, The Beatles: The Illustrated and Updated Edition of the Best-Selling Authorized Biography, New York: W.W. Norton (2006, originally 1968), p. 362.

He identifies government and charities as the same entity: claiming to do good things, but really wasting the money and making profits for people in the know who got in on the ground floor and now have become our new elites. Social mobility, indeed.

More importantly, he points out that this deceptive nature is inherent to the privileges granted to government and charities, namely the assumption of goodwill because they help the poor, injured, sad, and so on.

Finally, he shows that not everyone has been fooled by democracy, which resembles a soccer match more than a logical debate. Everyone is trying to “say something different,” so no one can get along, and nothing gets done.

“Everything Government touches turns to crap, not gold.” Seems that before the commie years, the Beatles were leaning libertarian. Too bad they did not take the step out of modernity that is required and simply become monarchists and ethnats!

Tags: 1960s rock, government, libertarianism, ringo starr, taxation, the beatles