Turning This Economy Around: As Simple and as Hard as Losing Weight

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- There's joke about the fat guy going to his doctor and asking, "Doc, how can I lose weight?"

The doctor replies, "Diet, nutrition and exercise."

The patient chuckles and responds, "No seriously, how?"

We all realize what's needed to turn the economy around:

Intellectual honesty, spiritual courage and practicing the tenets that empower people to try, rather than giving up and turning to handouts. Whether from a well-meaning charity or government, individuals solve problems while institutions create them.

Perhaps the greatest unintended consequence of well-meaning assistance is that without limits and conditions, it eventually turns into learned helplessness and dependency on institutional or government largesse.

You know the "Teach a man to fish." Parables are set in truth.

And you know what? I wouldn't stop at teaching a man to fish, but also teach him about how to supply, start, and run a successful fishing enterprise... now you're talking about a man with a real future.

As a colleague recently reminded me, it's not the knowing of something, but the commitment to apply the knowledge and committing the time to focus, that truly solves problems and achieves goals.

Until the desire for a bacon double cheeseburger, super-sized, is overridden by the desire for my by-gone slim, girlish figure, I'm still the chubby boy filled with knowledge of weight loss.

Until the desire and commitment to get back to intellectual honesty, spiritual courage, and practicing the tenets that empower people to try, rather than giving up, and turning to handouts, we're doomed to maintain the recently popularized 99% vs. 1% disparity.

So why is economic independence and strength so hard for so many? Seriously.

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