"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."
Link. Via Drudge.
And here's the famous Elizabeth Warren riff.
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238 पैकी 1 – 200 नवीन› नवीनतम»In other words.... all of us who have worked hard and been successful are just a bunch of unselfish bastards that have never ever given back....
Sheesh....
I mean "selfish bastards"
Government research created the Internet
What?! He has a name, you know. Al Gore! Why can't you say his name, Obama? He's a hero to us all. And you obliterate him from the record like he's Trotsky or something. Shame!
"The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."
Wow, now I can just start an Internet business and make money like all the other businesses!! Why didn't I do that years ago?? I mean everyone makes money from their Internet business, right?
He sure knows how to charm the middle class.
You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important, but what is the point?
Is he taking credit for the porn industry?
I am getting beyond political differences to real revulsion with this dope.
I wish to Christ he had met a payroll or run a hot dog stand for 6 months. Absolutely fucking unemployable except as a blank screen onto which socialist fantasies can be projected.
Let's Play one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others.
President Jefferson: You shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned.
President Lincoln: 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
President Kennedy: The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.
President Obama: If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
Spoken like a true bureaucrat.
All success, according to Obama, results from the efforts of those who did not share in the success. Thus, all that is possessed by successful people needs to be redistributed to those other folks, and anyone who does not agree with that is evil, like Romney for example.
The point is that the atomistic individualism espoused by the right is wrong.
There is no point. What he said is true of any human achievement. Athletes had coaches, musicians teachers, they all probably have supportive friends and family, but ultimately someone has to do the work, live in a practice room for hours a day, do two a days in August heat.
He has no sense of work and reward because his whole being is entitlement based.
Obama is channeling Elizabeth Warren.
Does that also mean Obama will uncontrollably chant "the 'middle class' has been 'hammered'"?
BO's a bottomless font of tautologies.
Just because that's what happened to him in his life, doesn't mean it's true for the rest of us.
You're paid for knowing what to do.
That's just as competitive with or without bridges. You have to guess well or you fail.
Take away the reward for knowing what to do, and there's less of it happening, as we see today.
Infrastructure raises the general standard of living, but not need for guessing right. Guessing right is what the private market does, bridges or no bridges.
Government guesses wrong, and wipes out the economy entirely.
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."
Therefore, you are morally obligated turn over more than half your income to a deeply corrupt political class, who will dispose of your money as they see fit.
Many, many people have helped me achieve what I've achieved. You ain't one of them, buddy.
You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important, but what is the point?
It's a denial of individual achievement. It's a denial of great accomplishments. It's a denial of greatness, of heroes. It's a denial of art. It's an attack on the concept of a "private sector." There is no private sector.
We own you, and you owe us.
It's touchy-feely Marx rolled up in a weird "we are the borg" mantra. The government is everything and the government did everything.
You think you are an individual, but you are not. You are Julia. You are us.
Elisabeth Warren, remixed:
"You got a job at Harvard Law School? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you only got that incredibly cushy job because you could game government affirmative action programs; despite the mediocre law school you went to; and you were safe at Harvard because neither you nor Harvard was interested in exposing your fraud.
You didn't have to worry that the residents at your foreclosed homes in Oklahoma would refuse to leave, because you could always sic the county sheriff on them.
Now look, you built a school and it turned into something terrific? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. Well, unless you are Harvard University and don't pay taxes."
I guess he figures the InterContinental Railroad was built as part of the New Deal.
PS He really is that stupid.
If it didn't work for Lizzie Warren (and it didn't), what makes him think it's going to work for him?
Hector said...
The point is that the atomistic individualism espoused by the right is wrong.
Another point is that the atomistic destruction of family which "Julia" espouses is wrong too.
So why doesn't everybody have a business? We all have the same government and infrastructure. What's wrong with everyone? Why didn't you all take your free coupon down to the post office and pick up your new business.
Mine is pretty cool. It came with an owners manual, a set of tax payment coupons, and a picture of Obama right on the front of the building, like Mao Zedong.
A chaplin was captive in a German prisoner of war camp.
Every month or so red cross packages arrived, with cigarettes, meat, jam, and so forth.
Every month the chaplin would set off trading stuff, letting meat lovers trade cigarettes for more meat and so forth.
Every month he'd return to his bed with the equivalent of two red cross packages, a gain from trading.
Everybody he traded with is better off, and yet he comes out with a profit.
What he knows is the barter price of things, who to go to next, and so forth, to enable all the trades to happen.
Should he turn in a portion of his profit because he couldn't have done it without the red cross?
Why? Everybody is better off already owing to his efforts.
This is the role, incidentally, of the middleman, as given in an econtalk.org podcast by Mike Munger, which itself means middleman.
I have added the infrastructure question.
I guess this is the type elevated discourse he prefers after calling Romney a "felon". I would love to ask him at what point do people get to "earn" a profit for their labors? When he decides? When his nomenklatura in the democratic party? Fuck OFF!
He should have left these two sentences out:
If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
Without those two sentences, he would have made the point that we are all part of a community and rely on one another - the whole "No man is an island" thing. But he let out his Freudian slip about business and messed it all up.
Building a business is hard work. It takes a lot of sacrifice, both in time and in money. Nobody else makes it succeed for you. If you fail, no one is going to take the blame but you.
This guy is pathetic.
@Ann:
Actually the basic idea is not sound either..
Well, Barack, since the roads, bridges and internet exist for everybody, then why do only a few succeed?
I find it telling that both Warren and Obama apparently* reached their career pinnacles via affirmative action. Why doesn't he just state that with sincere clarity and let the point stand or fall?
______________
*With plausible deniability on both their parts but a retrenched effort to discuss.
[amended]
I find it telling that both Warren and Obama apparently* reached their career pinnacles via affirmative action. Why doesn't he just state that with sincere clarity and let the point stand or fall?
______________
*With plausible deniability on both their parts but a retrenched effort to deny.
Obama has some real problems with authenticity. When was the last time you heard him thank all those that brought him to this great presidential pinnacle? How many times does he say "I" in a speech? How often and in how many ways have we been told how amazing Obama is - not how amazing those who created him are?
Obama knows that people are different or it wouldn't matter who the president is. And he knows that Romney has given back in many ways and is running for president as another way to give back.
Obama is at some point going to go too far in exposing who he really is; a hateful spiteful human. I think the independents are looking for a reason not to vote for him. At some point they will start to see who he really is and they will feel discussed instead of feeling like they owe him something out of shame.
When the indies and minorities figure it out, his poll numbers will drop like a rock. Independents and minorities will give hope and change a chance and even except him acting like an imperialist; but being told that their hard work is not appreciated by his majesty the “Lying King from Hyde Park” is going to make a lot of very proud independent people very pissed off.
You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important, but what is the point?
Don't they pay taxes? Don't they create jobs which makes other people pay taxes and on and on..So shouldn't we be helping those who do take the risk and make things happen for everybody else? Everybody else who didn't want to work 80 hours a week or take risks on and on..
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Right Barry?
"You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important, but what is the point?"
That depends on what you mean by "the basic idea".
If you mean that society's infrastructure makes it easier to thrive and prosper, and that we should respect that, then yes of course it's true and I don't see any of even the most hardened laissez faire capitalists denying it.
If you mean what he and Elizabeth Warren seem to be saying, that we OWE our success to things others have paid for and created, then I say 'nonsense'.
The business owners that he's disparaging are, more than anyone else, the ones who are paying for police and roads and bridges and exorbitant public employee pensions right now!
Government exists BECAUSE of these people. These people ARE the government. How dare he.
I swear if this SCOAMF doesn't lose by Carteresque proportions then we are well and truly doomed.
"Obama is channeling Elizabeth Warren."
---------------
He is a plagiarist to boot.
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."
You didn't get every single one of your opponents in your first race for state senate--including the incumbent--removed from the ballot. Somebody helped you.
You didn't get Blair Hull's divorce records leaked to the press during your U.S. Senate primary race. Somebody helped you.
You didn't get Jack Ryan's divorce records leaked to the press during your U.S. Senate general-election race. Somebody helped you.
Yeah, I see where he's coming from on this.
"I wish to Christ he had met a payroll or run a hot dog stand for 6 months. Absolutely fucking unemployable except as a blank screen onto which socialist fantasies can be projected."
He was never going to be anything than what he was: the least experienced candidate ever nominated by a major political party for president.
It was obvious then; it is obvious now. His failure as president was completely predictable. He was never suited for the office.
But you can't blame a man for having ambitions, especially when he's learned his entire life that other people want to give him things he didn't earn and put him places he has no place being.
The fault lies with the voters - the 53% who somehow convinced themselves he warranted their votes.
Hopefully, enough of them have learned - but stupid like that is awfully hard to fix. No one should be surprised if he wins again.
If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
No.
If you've got a business, it's because you parlayed your capital and intellect and initiative to make it happen. And you entered into relationships with people who chose to trade their labor for your money. And you told them what to do -- they didn't spontaneously make your business self-sustaining. Without your willingness to take risk, the people would be working in less attractive alternatives, or not working at all.
They didn't make it happen. You made it happen. And if the government takes away the ability to achieve a reward that makes the risk worthwhile to you, nothing will happen. You'll get a civil service job, and the country will be poorer because of it.
This is like buying someone a birthday cake, and then the bakery calls to tell them that they did the baking, and that birthdays would be impossible without them. Thanks dude, I'll keep that in mind.
What is more disappointing, that he believes this crap or that he has to resort to it to avoid getting fired. It's just getting embarrassing. If he wasn't so arrogant, I'd feel sorry for him.
Ann Althouse said...
You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important, but what is the point?
------------------
This is the tricky part . Lot of people fall into this trap of thinking, yeah that makes sense, but it does not.
I wonder who would survive longer the the taxpayer without government or the government without taxpayers?
I am a Mass voter and don't really follow politics that much. Although, my mayor is a black lesbian.
Althouse is a little obsessed with Elizabeth Warren.
Why?
Is Warren that interesting? Lot's of Warren postings here. This is Mass not Miss-thank God. I believe Mass is the most urban state so what do you expect? We are really gay, hot and urban. Even the small towns in Western Mass are fab.
I don't know shit about Warren but I am voting for Brown because he is hot and seems to be not a crazy republican. Can we get more Scott Brown's please.
tits.
None of President Obama's accomplishments are strictly his own, so I want my share. He couldn't have done them on his own.
I want my share of President Obama's millions in royalties because he didn't invent language, writing, the alphabet, or the printing press, and I want my share of his presidential salary because he didn't invent elections and millions of people voted for him.
If only the President knew how hard it is to build a successful business, perhaps he would not sound so hostile to private enterprise.
"Obama is channeling Elizabeth Warren."
Is he Cherokee, too?
Ann,
the basic idea is obviously true and important
The basic idea is not obviously true, which is important. Government routinely intervenes into all sorts of industries and almost always makes them worse. That government intervenes in an industry and happens to make a contribution, does NOT mean the industry would have been worse off without government intervention.
The government's big contribution to networking was TCP/IP, a robust network protocol. The idea that government was needed to invent this protocol, or one like it, is absurd.
There is ample evidence that government's intervention into the telecommunications industry retarded innovation, including networking.
Imagine if you had an employee, and that employee, despite being very well paid, just did a terrible job, and wasted a lot of company time and money, and you know most people could do much better, so you call him in your office to tell him, and he responds by telling you the stuff he did was important work that would not have gotten done without him.
Is he right? Should he keep his job if he refuses to change his ways?
He's lost your vote, that is clear.
When are you going to start apologizing for your mistake, that really was easy to foresee?
Althouse is a little obsessed with Elizabeth Warren.
Why?
The Society of Blonde Law Profs?
Hector,
The point is that the atomistic individualism espoused by the right is wrong.
This is the strawman that lefties have been erecting for decades. Individual choice and liberty does NOT mean "atomistic individualism", but it is what lefties want libertarians and conservatives to mean. Libertarians and conservatives recognize that the wonderful progress made in the last two centuries is due to non-coercive cooperation - the backbone of capitalism and free markets.
Lefties see this freedom of association and think it should be mandated and better run by a central planner, then busy themselves with misrepresenting and outright lying (but most likely completely and blitheringly ignorant of conservative and classical liberal thought because lefties by and large are an ignorant and superstitious lot) about the philosophical underpinnings of the right.
What Obama is doing makes me very sad. Recently I have been exposed to patent laws. It shows how remarkable this country is to think of patents in the late 1700s and encourage and foster innovation and innovators and entrepreneurs. No other country in the world did it -- Europeans had the means but didn't and other parts of the world were struggling and didn't have the means. Only this country true to its spirit included the idea of patents in the constitution (35 USC 1). Not a surprise that this country leads the world and has enriched itself beyond others through innovation. Obama is ruining that concept by killing small business and distorting a cherished vision of American innovation.
Now a NASA astronaut is flying on a Russian rocket -- how humiliating is that? Obama cut funds but did he have to humiliate us by outsourcing it to the Russians?
I used to think lawyers were ruining this country. Now I'm starting to think law professors are ruining this country.
Present blog hostess excepted.
Outsourcing and offshoring, by the way, are good, but that's likely to be beyond the populist reaction to correct.
Just don't expect economists to be behind you on this one.
AA wrote:
"You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important, but what is the point?"
I thought you lawyers were supposed to be good at parsing words.
There are at least two ideas here.
One is that our broad experience base is in part learned from the experience of others. ("If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.") This is true.
The other is that we don't own our experience or the utility of public resources; that others who helped us build our experience base or the government that provides public resoures has a right of ownership in anything that we choose to do with it. ("If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.") This is incorrect and a morally indefensible position. One has an absolute right to one's thoughts and actions. .
Right?
"You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important"
And yet every right wing site I've been to today is flipping out over Obama saying something that's obviously true. (Though of course most of those sites are taking the line out of context from the speech, so they are hiding Obama's obviously true point from their readers.)
I thought it was a point worth making given how central the cult of Ayn Rand is to the Tea Bagger movement.
In the story of The Little Red Hen, the Little Red Hen is a capitalist. The Cat, the Duck, and the Pig are socialists.
Toy
Almost all of what Obama said is untrue in an analysis of actual cause. He is confusing remote conditions with the efficient cause of success. He might as well have said that without God, none of this would be possible. Research may have created infrastructure, or found oil, or set up a banking industry, or created tools. None of these things is the cause of one’s success. That comes from an individual’s effort—skill, industry and foresight if you will.
What he has said is logically wrong and it demeans the individual effort that creates success, like it has for all of Obama’s basketball heroes. This is to be expected from someone whose life history reflects no success in the real world. By this argument, he attempts to appropriate others’ success for himself.
He is a nasty little man.
You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important...
Yes, so much so that it was the subject of much discussion among 19th-century economists. It's pretty much been a settled issue in mainstream economics since the early 20th century, though. John Bates Clark's marginal productivity theory of the distribution of income pretty much relegated Marx's and others' theories to the attic.
Where, apparently, law professors running for office go rummaging for their policy insights.
The basic idea is sophmoric and well understood. But what is not well understood is that we have paid for the roads and teachers and electrical grids already and the govt did not wake us at four in the morning to start working on our dreams and the govt did not stand with us until we stopped at nine or ten at night. The govt did nothing to help us get our first promotion or to give us the strength to fire the lazy asshole who was holding us back.
We get the idea, ok. He doesnt
"You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important, but what is the point?"
Which basic idea and which point?
The basic idea that humans work cooperatively to create all of *this*, no man is an island, etc., is obviously true. It's actually a pretty simple thing for SF nerds who may have, at some point, played at designing a space colony...
How many people do you need to provide enough specialization to maintain a civilization.
Specialization allows one person to dedicate themselves to, for example, making microchips. This person doesn't have to make the power infrastructure or roads or set up schools to train workers or maintain farms to feed them all because other people do those specialties.
To say that the microchip manufacturer should "pay back" the farmer or the guy who labored building roads or the teacher to taught the workers is to entirely ignore the fact that NONE of it was meant to benefit the microchip manufacturer, it was to benefit the people who want to have microchips!
And you know what? I want microchips... and fruit from Chile in the winter and clothes I didn't have to weave my very own self from wool shorn from my very own llama.
The "pay back" is "pay as you go" with all the wonderful products we have and the web of commerce that makes life comfortable.
Oh, it sounds so very good to explain how no one makes it without everyone else, and that is true. It's completely true.
The insidious LIE is that someone OWES.
Very little of my success in life is due to the American highway system.....Do all those people who have had a loved one die in a highway accident get to blame the government for their grief? Can we blame the teachers and the American educational system for all the drop outs in line for food stamps? Can we blame obesity on food stamps?....Your failures are due to moral turpitude. Your success is the result of a government program.
So if you use the public infrastructure and create something,
you should be humble about it, realize it wasn't just you, and not complain that some of it is taken and given to others.
What, then, should we do with or to those who had access to that same public infrastructure, but did nothing with it, and thus have nothing for us to take from?
How should they feel about themselves?
[insert sounds of crickets chirping]
Come Nov, are there enough sane voters left to finally rid us of this troublesome President?
I can't wait until our astronauts fly to the ISS on SpaceX rockets.
Reminds me of this picture where Obama's telling the little girl he's going to give half her legos to the children that have been napping.
Wasn't this the crux of the argument of Karl Marx? If what Obama said were true, would not all of us, collectively, own all the profits, however generated.
This is not the first time around for this theory.
You right wing racists criticize our Dear Leader because he is half black.
The American people live by the grace of govt, work for the govt., ...
Our Dear Leader is the govt., we the people live for him, swoon for him, slave for him.
"If you've got a business — you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
-Barack Obama
If Romney doesn't use that in an ad to make this election a slam dunk, that will be a tragedy.
LoafingOaf said...
You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important
And yet every right wing site I've been to today is flipping out over Obama saying something that's obviously true.
More obviously untrue.
The work and ingenuity that made business succeed did not come from government. That comes from each individual (I know such concepts are unknown to the mindless automaton). In fact, in most cases, success came in spite of government, not because of it.
More to the point, most of what the government has appropriated - education, f'rinstance - has deteriorated under its rule.
I agree that he is speaking like a bureaucrat who wants to believe that he has made a difference.
But not every business succeeds. Not every idea makes people money. Why is that? After all, they're all using the same infrastructure, and had all the same teachers, etc.
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."
Obama is trying to define one class as the "evil successful wealth class" then everyone else in the "good poor underclass".
Next he will pit one class against another and gain votes, neighbors against neighbors. So if you live next to someone with more than you, you must learn to hate them. You must also learn to hate Mitt Romney, the lefts poster child for the evil wealth class.
This has all been tried before in different countries and we know how that has worked out.
He is going to try to win by destroying us and our friends. Obama is evil.
This is what happens when a president mindlessly plagiarizes lines from a senate candidate. She said it as a true liberal running in a heavily dem state and running for a mere senate seat. He the president of the USA adopted it and is going around repeating it as if it is the best thing since sliced bread.. LOL.
Didn't Neil Kinnock say this first?
This speech should be the tipping point, when enough decent people get disgusted and decide they don't want anything to do with him.
Then again, his 'spread the wealth' crack should have done it four years ago and it didn't.
"This speech should be the tipping point, when enough decent people get disgusted and decide they don't want anything to do with him."
It should be, if it gets reported by the mainstream media. But it won't.
This is the most infuriating thing I have ever heard President Obama utter. As I mentioned earlier, I had to go into the office today and damned if I saw hide nor hair of President Obama or eliz Warrer,
Chip S. said...
Didn't Neil Kinnock say this first?
------------
Wow, Biden paid a heavy price for what seems like a minor incursion, at least compared to all the lines Obama has plagiarized from various speeches.
Its a somewhat cowardly argument, because its actually not an argument for high taxation, but only an argument for taxation in general.
I dont know why my fellow comrades are so impressed by this and I dont understand why conservatives are so offended.
It must be Woody Guthrie day.
Warren is an Okie from Muskogee and she speaks the Guthrie lingo in acquired, polished Harvard words.
But the message is the same: This land is your land, this land is my land from California to the New York highland, etc... There are about 100 verses. The people own everything and Commissar Obama and his czars run it.
The enemy is always the property owning American middle class a/k/a the bourgeoisie thieves.
Hector said...
The point is that the atomistic individualism espoused by the right is wrong.
===================
Well, all that is a dispute of that notion that an individual "freedom lover" accrues all the wealth they get and shouldn't have to have their "freedom violated" by paying taxes for the security and infrastructure and law the wealth creation rests on - or sharing profits with others in the endeavor that helped create the wealth.
That doesn't mean the equally extreme and fatuous lefty ideas on wealth creation and business success have any validity just because the Ayn Randians are out to lunch.
A belief that all wealth ultimately comes from government initiatives that hands over all the things a business has to have except people to man the cash registers? Please.
From noble teachers that put all those successful ideas in each successful person's head?
Please!
No, government research invented the internet so if a city was blown the hell up communications would continue.
The infrastructure was mostly built by business, not the government. It was paid for by taxes also mostly from business or the fruits of business.
The government acted primarily as middle man, and not the facilitator kind rhhardin mentioned above, but as the worst kind, who takes the money by force, siphons of a big chunk to reward friends who contribute nothing to the work. Then this middle man insists on union labor so that union dues can be collected (a tax on taxes) and this money is used to reelect the middle men so they can continue the parasitic exchange. The government has very little to do that is constructive and a lot that is wasteful.
The net result is that the infrastructure is less and costs more. That's pretty much what you would expect from a community organizer mentality, and it's exactly the kind of thing Obama demonstrated in the few responsibilities he had before being hired for the most important job in the world. He is a wasteful and destructive man of virtually no vision or wisdom.
Actually Mr. Obama is on to something. What if there were no air to breathe? We'd be in a fine fix. Everything we've accomplished stands on that one gift. Pop the top on a frosty cold bottle of Melena, Sir. You have earned it!
gutless said...
Actually Mr. Obama is on to something. What if there were no air to breathe? We'd be in a fine fix. Everything we've accomplished stands on that one gift. Pop the top on a frosty cold bottle of Melena, Sir. You have earned it!
-------------
You got it! Can we get a twitter thing going here to help Obama with his argument? ;) Come on my Republican friends, use your creativity. This thing is as bad as 'I ate dog'.
The more I think about what he said, the more I think he is trying to incite real civil strife. He is accusing successful conservatives of being selfish if they don't embrace his big govt ideas alongwith his bigger taxes.
Example: don't take it serious only an example of what I think is going on…Mark O is the example :)
Mark O, that is a nice horse you have. You must be successful and you must owe me something since you surely have a better life than me. Obama says I can have that horse because I am not successful and I created your success. After listening to Obama I also now understand that it is successful people who are creating all the misery in my life. I want to punish anyone who has success so I am going to vote for Obama to get even with them.
The Marxist way…
Even your accomplishments aren't yours. I wonder if Obama will accept responsibility for anyone's failures. That same group of people helped in those, too.
Nobody made the taco I ate today on his own. Do I owe taxes to the Mexican government for that?
Pretty good comment by Obama. Its amazing how many rich old farts I run into that think they got rich on own.
Yep, other than the public school education, VA Loans, Veterans benefits, subsidized college tuition, FHA housing, SBA Loans, and of course government contracts - they did it without any help. SO,GET THE GOVERNMENT OFF THEIR BACKS.
You don't get it Althouse because you've never had a business. You are just like Obama only in a much smaller pond.
" I dont understand why conservatives are so offended."
I worked for 30 years, often sunrise till midnight to build a company, and now the government takes 43% of everything it makes. It takes that money not only from me, but from all my employees who work hard and long, and use their own ingenuity to create it. In addition, the government takes huge some from each of those employees directly.
Then some government bureaucrat that never created a job in his life, tells us we should be grateful for it, as he golfs, takes exotic vacations and campaigns on our dime, constantly reminding us that we are the problem.
What could possibly piss us off about that?
How are things in that crime infested hellhole called Memphis, rc? Why does everybody that can afford it, black and white, live in Germantown? To get way from the society that the entitlement mentality built.
It's sort of like the silly arguments that sports stars and movie actors make too much money for what they do. (Not that Obama is going to put that in a speech!).
Instead of focusing on the producer (ie., the actor or quarterback) who doesn't deserve what they have because it depends on so many other factors, why not focus on the consumer?
If you look at what people have already gotten from the actors or sports stars in the way of enjoyment and entertainment, for a few bucks here or there or "paid" for by watching advertisements, the exchange of value, the "paying back" has already happened. Thousands or even millions of people are entertained, have a fun show they follow, or a game to watch with friends. Is that worth what the quarterback gets paid, and his big house and fancy car? Or is he supposed to be thankful that someone made the roads and electricity and televisions and cable infrastructure and feel like now he owes extra?
If we took all that infrastructure away who would be hurt more? The actor who now has to act on a little stage, or every one else who has to put up with community theater or the drama group at their church?
The customer is always right, right? And all this STUFF exists for the customer, not the business owner. Or at least equally for.
The transactions are complete.
Actually, DAD, rcocean may be onto something important.
Suppose school districts were funded in part by a proportional tax on the earnings of their graduates? Think of the radically different incentive structure they'd face.
"Yep, other than the public school education, VA Loans, Veterans benefits, subsidized college tuition, FHA housing, SBA Loans, and of course government contracts - they did it without any help."
Where do you think the freaking money came from? Would you also suggest they pay for those things and then not use them if they can?
And if the government gives a business owner any of those things, how much do you guess a $100 worth of it actually cost the taxpayers who paid for it, and what happened to the rest?
And if it was known that it wasted $200 on government for every $100 returned to business, would that be a feature or a bug to Obama?
Good point, Chip.
I bet Fraysur High School in Memphis, which had about 90 pregnant girls a couple of years ago wouldn't get too much money.
The only thing missing is the salutation, "Comrades!"
rc - why are you so envious against the rich and my guess is anyone else who has what you don't have? Why the need to take from them? Live your own life, you only have one. Communism and liberalism is a sickness of the soul. Don’t get caught up in class envy and who has what and owes what to who. It’s a fools game, you will never win and you will die a sorry sod.
You know, the basic idea is obviously true and important, but what is the point?
edutcher has the point. The basic idea is not true and not important.
They might be stupid. They might be stupid. They might be stupid.
Here, let me try it another way: They might be stupid.
"VA Loans, Veterans benefits,"
This.
Seriously?
I OWE for my freaking VA loan? I owe AGAIN for my freaking VA loan? Maybe I can owe three times for my freaking VA loan?
I get it. It wasn't earned by me. It was a gift. JUST LIKE the hazardous duty pay I got was a Christmas Present from the government. I never so much as stubbed my toe, so it must have been entirely unearned.
Maybe school teachers should have to PAY BACK because they'd have never every made it ON THEIR OWN without the nice pay check the school district gave them out of pure charity.
I don't know any businessmen who have gotten an SBA loan. I sorta suspect SBA loans are gimmicks and are given mainly to those with insider connections or to the big corporate rentseekers like Solyndra. But I could be wrong.
DAD, a lot of people I work with live in Memphis and like it. Myself, I live even further east than Germantown. And when I commute in, I drive on public roads. Lastly, Memphis crime has less to do with "entitlement" than other factors.
Actually Rcocean makes a good point but did not realize it.
Re veterans benefits, they were a reward for serving in the military just like the GI Bill. No one resented the govt providing Veterans benefits or the GI Bill [except maybe kooks].
But today, the govt provides a long menu of freebies to people who just apply for them [no service required]. This is what fiscal conservaives and others resent today.
Hmm...wasn't the precursor to the internet funded by the defense department?
Does he really want to go there?
Liberal: You know, businesses would never be able to deliver their goods to consumers without the highways provided by the government. So we need higher taxes.
Conservative: How about making those highways toll roads?
Liberal: Wingnut!
If I got an SBA (small business association?) loan, and I'd do it if I could, and I paid it back with interest (as opposed to paying all my rich friends and crashing and burning like Solyndra) and I hired some people and stayed solvent and was successful...
At what point haven't I already paid back for that loan? I paid back the loan, I paid taxes, I hired people, I paid their taxes, AND I provided whatever product my business was formed to provide, which means that I've contributed to the welfare of the community by providing that product or service to my community.
At what point is it even rational to claim that I have a debt that I owe?
The loan is paid and everyone benefits from my success, unless I'm Solyndra and don't actually have a useful product that pays it's own way, if I succeed all my debts are paid, my business is sound and I continue, ongoing, to have employees and provide my product or service to the community.
The only thing wrong with this scenario is that I'm not any sort of a business person, I have no product or service I'm hot to provide, I don't want to work that hard or take the risk, so the fact of it is, I never got that loan nor repaid it nor hired anyone nor reached a point called "success."
BUT I'm glad that other people are and do those things. They make my life better.
Why would my president want to encourage me to hate them for it just so I'll vote for him to take their "unearned" money away from them?
"I OWE for my freaking VA loan? I owe AGAIN for my freaking VA loan? Maybe I can owe three times for my freaking VA loan?"
No, you don't OWE anyone. Just don't talk about how you DID IT ON YOUR OWN - WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT.
'cause you didn't.
Obama is, indeed, channeling Elizabeth Warren. He thinks the way she does. They are both products of political correctness.
How would either of them fare in the meritocracy described by Martin Luther King, Jr.?
I'll answer that: both would fail. Neither would even gain entrance.
Who owes the second time around for the unfair benefits of roads and railroads?
The ranchers shipping beef from Dodge City or the city folk in New York who eat it?
rcocean and those with that point of view seem to intensely dislike the tone of people who believe they have earned the things they have.
OK. But why can't they understand how much we hate the tone of: You didn't do that. Someone else did it for you? It sounds insulting and denigrating and disrespectful, which makes us strongly suspect that there is real, intentional insult and disrespect behind it. Why can't you see that and agree with that at least, no matter what you think of the content?
@rcocean, please help me understand your point. And I'm not gonna talk about veterans' benefits b/c those seem pretty obviously to be part of the overall compensation package for military service.
Let's talk about a very simple example: There's a river separating two towns. The voters in each town (for simplicity, say it's unanimous) decide to build a bridge connecting their towns, and agree on a cost allocation rule.
Construction costs are covered by a bond issue that is serviced by property taxes.
Clearly, the people who voted to approve the bridge consider themselves better off b/c of it. And equally clearly, future generations of bridge users will be better off b/c of it. Fine, no problem.
But why, exactly, is anyone supposed to pay taxes in excess of the costs of the bridge? And if they pay those extra taxes, what are they supposed to be spent on?
rc, entitlement has a lot to do with it. It's the old I'm entitled to it so I'll take it attitude.
“Memphis crime has less to do with "entitlement" than other factors”. The other factors that cause poverty and crime are career dependencies on government (manly blacks) and illegal immigration.
So…. let’s do say people get “entitlements” to start businesses and become evil successful people and others get entitlements to blow up there nose and have 6 kids form 6 different fathers. What Obama wants to do is bring the people who are evil successful entailment types to the level of the unsuccessful good entitlement types and let them all just blow it up their noses.
Obama hates success…and likes people in poverty who he can control. I grew up in poverty and there is only one way out and that is on your own, it comes from within. At this point in my life I will be dammed if I sit idle and not speak my mind and let some dysfunctional Marxist anti-colonialist left wing punk of a president speak down to me.
So I guess no one cooperated with each other or helped anyone else before we had a $3.5 trillion dollar budget. And if we do something crazy like reducing spending to, say, $3.2 trillion or something like that, the US will turn into a lawless, every-man-for-himself hellhole not unlike the movie Road Warrior.
Good to know!
Right RC... and those school teachers, they didn't do it on their own either.
I don't believe you when you say that you know so many people who claim to have done everything all on their own. That might be what you hear, but what you hear is what you expect to hear.
The US government doesn't have an Air Force as a charitable jobs program. We don't have public schools to benefit teachers. And truthfully... we could do everything without a government. EVEN the military and police. It would be entirely different from now, and it would be every bit as interconnected as it is now, and people would be every bit as dependent on those interconnections as they are now.
I wasn't employed by the Air Force out of the goodness of it's governmental heart. If I was employed by a private security firm and getting promised benefits after leaving that firm, no one would pretend this was evidence that I somehow didn't "make it on my own."
Do you know who we owe, RC? We owe Microsoft. All of us. Nothing we do could be done without Microsoft. No one has a life that is untouched by unearned personal benefits received from the existence of Microsoft.
If someone says they made it on their own and doesn't admit to the debt they owe Microsoft, do you come down on them the same way?
Why is it magically different if everyone is touched by some government program?
Hey, that 8.2% unemployment rate is great for business so stop complaining. It means there'll be new business startups that can get freshly minted Ph.D.s answering phones and fetching coffee for minimum wage.
Taxpayers pay.
I've gotten an SBA loan right up to the maximum. You pay market rate interest, and a huge fee to the government for the right to borrow your own tax money back. Gee thanks.
I couldn't get a standard bank loan at lower interest with less fees, because they only want to do SBA loans. Then the taxpayers are on the hook for 90% of the loan risks.
If banks can get taxpayers to take all the risk on loans to other taxpayers while those banks collect interest and fees from them, then why would they ever risk their own money? They don't.
Again, SBA loans are nothing but taxpayers loaning money to themselves with government playing middle man and skimming it to employ and pay friends.
Without SBA loans the money would still get loaned, although not to bad risks.
Sorry, I seem to be tonight's stand in for the usual Left-wing trolls you guys battle with constantly. My only point was that no one does it on their own, and I've met too many rich old farts who THINK they did. They not only think that, they want to raise the ladder, now that they're on the first floor.
Its like listening to some trust fund baby jabber about the "Free market" - it gets on my nerves.
My biggest frustration is that I have spent my whole life basically independent of the Federal Government. I do not ask what the Government can do for me, I ask what I can do for the health of America and we the people. I am now being forced by law to do what the Government has determined is best for it. We no longer have any control over “It” and it is now taking from us at will based on “you didn’t earn it, it all was made possible by government bureaucrats” . People are getting very pissed off and rightly so…
What about all the people that stuck it to you in your life.
The crappy high school teacher that you got stuck with so you didn't learn anything.
That college professor who gave you a crappy grade because you missed a class - so you didn't get into business school.
The law school admissions clerk that lost your personal statement.
That kid who sneezed on you so you caught the flu and missed your job interview.
The firetrucks that came late to your house and failed to put out the fire.
The nurses that went on strike during the summer you were supposed to intern at the hospital...
The corrupt government that crushes you before your business even gets off the ground.
Success in life is not about having good teachers. Teachers are supposed to be good. Success is succeeding despite all the bad ones.
Obama has is backwards. If it were not for the ingenuity of the entrepreneur, the pioneer, the individual, the risk taker, there would be no tax base to pay for his roads and schools. I don’t think Obama is capable of understanding that basic fact.
"No, you don't OWE anyone. Just don't talk about how you DID IT ON YOUR OWN - WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT.
'cause you didn't."
This is like saying you couldn't build a deck on your house without Home Depot, because you made a trade with them for the building material. VA benefits are paid for with service, and risk. It ain't free, and it's often a pretty bad deal. Imagine a private company making that deal. OSHA would require them to have all infantry encased in tanks when in country.
BO: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."
Me: OK then, let me ask you this. Were they compelled to help, under force of law, or did they do so voluntarily?
If they gave help voluntarily, why do they now, through you, demand, under force of law, their pound of flesh, their tribute?
Seems unjust, to me.
Here's how the richest man I know got that way...
His Dad owned a 1 building hardware store in one of the poorer parts of the city. His Dad said "Son, this corner of the store is yours to sell what ever you want" So the guy sold a few rifles, bows and arrows, and fishing poles out of the corner, and shared the profits with his parents.
His Dad dies and leaves the store to his wife and son 50/50. One day he goes to his Mom and offers to buy her half of the store so she can retire. She agrees. So he guts the store and goes all into retail sporting goods. It killed his Mom. She never spoke to him again.
Over the decades, yes decades, he goes further and further into just retail archery sales, with a little shop in the back making his own brand of arrows. Slowly, he turns from retail to retail whole sale, and finally entirely wholesale. This guy poured his life into this business. The only trips he ever took were business trips. He worked 6 or seven days aweek. Any work down on the physical building. mowing the grass, painting, roofing, he did it himself.
He is now the 6th largest archery wholesaler in the world. He does take vacations now, but only for 2 weeks a year. Usually at someone elses expense, trying to get in business with him. I can drive to the campus on weekends, and he'll still be mowing the grass or painting, or whatever.
Yeah, Zero, he couldn't a done it without ya, ya fuckwad.
"They not only think that, they want to raise the ladder, now that they're on the first floor."
It seems to me that most of the ladder raising is done by the government making it harder with more regulations and more complicated rules for new people, who by definition, are *new* rather than established, to start out.
Government did it. You didn't do it. Government did. You helped, sure. You were a big part. You'll get a +7 mention on your next review. Don't doubt that. But government did it. You were just a part.
rc - I can understand but for every one of those types there are thousands upon thousands who did not do it that way. I know a few like the ones you mention but i know many others who are not. Obama fairness solutions will not make any of those types you are sick of go away. It will only harm the good ones that we should look up to and the ones who are trying to get out of bad situations. I would not have been successful if all the government aid was at my beckoning when I was younger. I looked up to who I considered successful people at the time and did not look for gov help. Gov help will make you dependent and stop you from growing. If self-empowerment can work for me it can work for anyone.
rc - one thing I have noticed about some wealthy successful people is that they have hid behind their success, work and wealth and have stopped growing as individuals. They have never reached a point that they have learned that "life is not about themselves" they are still at a lower level of development emotionally. Still it is not just taking from them that isn't ours.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
If you know the difference b/w a partial and a total derivative, then it's easy to reconcile everything being said here.
Warren, Obama, et al. are basically claiming that the total derivative of output with respect to government programs represents the value of those programs. This is wrong. The actual contribution of every input (infrastructure, labor, private capital) is the partial derivative of output with respect to that input (a.k.a. its "marginal value"). And in a free marketplace, that is exactly the payment it will command.
Now, it is most certainly true that each input's marginal value depends on the amounts of the other inputs. That seems to be rcocean's point, and it's certainly correct. But--as has also been said in this thread--those other input providers are also being paid for what they contribute.
"Government" is owed the marginal value of what it contributes; no more and no less. The appropriate focus is always on a cost-benefit analysis of each proposed government program on its own, in terms of what it adds to the productivity or consumption opportunities of the rest of the economy.
I get his point. No matter how much people create, it all can be reduced to naught by multiplying by zero. Obama is that zero.
If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.
The fuck I didn't.
Obama has never learned a speck about creativity, particularly the sort that has created the Western standard of living.
His is a world of selfish parasites, the one who most damages the host geting a brief interlude as Commissar or community organizer or ward heeler.
from California to the New York highland, etc...
I think it's actually 'island' not 'highland'. He couldn't find a rhyme for the Hamptons.
AprilApple said...
"Obama has is backwards. If it were not for the ingenuity of the entrepreneur, the pioneer, the individual, the risk taker, there would be no tax base to pay for his roads and schools. I don’t think Obama is capable of understanding that basic fact."
That's exactly right.
Obama and his voters will never understand that basic fact.
So, if someone helps me along the way, I'm indebted to them forever in such a way that they have a forever and unending financial claim on my success?
Channeling? Really? They are like minded morons that secrete their leftard ideology of socialism on the rest as if without them, we would be nothing. That without government the world would fall apart. That you can't have success without government, because after all government is in everything and is everywhere making sure you are successful and if you aren't they will be there to make sure you stay there.
Urkel has never managed a business, has never run a thing, has never turned a profit, much less generated an iota of revenue. He didn't have to, everyone else did it for him.
Elizabeth Warren claims Anthony Wiener would be great for NYC, and added that her Cherokee name is "Stands With Weiner" which was given to her by the tribe shortly after an unfortunate incident blew the ladies room teepee over with her in it.
OK. I made that up, and kinda stole it from Chip S.
If everybody uses infrastructure, everybody gets government loans, everybody has an education paid for in part at least by government why isn't everybody building businesses that succeed? And, if those people who use all those government services are in addition accepting government welfare and/or not paying taxes don't they owe even more to those who do?
That little old lady I used to help across the street owes me. If she didn't leave me something in her will, I'm suing her estate. She didn't get to the other side of the street on her own!
I've met too many rich old farts who THINK they did
You're obviously hanging out with the wrong crowd.
Why am I a pro-business capitalist?
I started delivering newspapers when I was 8 years old. Obama was living in Indonesia doing lord knows what.
I started mowing lawns when I was 14 years old. Obama was laying on the beaches of Hawaii, living with his bank president Grandmother.
I continued to mow lawns, but also worked at a grocery store starting at age 16. Obama was smoking dope.
bagoh20, nobody writes a joke on his own.
Watched that James Franco interview last night with James Lipton of the Actor's Studio. Apparently at UCLA Franco wasn't allowed to audition for any parts or take any acting classes because he didn't apply to the professional actor training program before he enrolled and wouldn't have been admitted if he had. So he quit school and took a job at McDonalds, planning to use his earnings there to pay for private acting lessons. He found the school he wanted to attend and told them he would pay for his classes by working at McDonalds. They laughed at him, but took him on anyway. His acting coach told him pay me for the lessons when you're rich and famous. Franco's three Spiderman movies grossed in excess of one billion dollars. He didn't say exactly how much he tipped his acting coach when he did finally pay for his acting lessons.
Here's the basic problem for Obama: he's already at rock-bottom support.
Each party has a built-in base support of 46-47% of the electorate. For a good example of that, look at the campaign result in 2008 - the worst possible year for Republicans. Even with every single mistake a candidate could make, and with the worst possible headwinds electorally, John McCain still managed to pull in 47% of the vote.
The same is true in reverse as well. Democrats have pretty much the same base number. And where is Obama polling currently? Right around that number.
But here's the important part: these are polls of REGISTERED voters, not LIKELY voters. As Nate Silver has so often pointed out, those tend to skew Democratic to the tune of 4%. So every poll result showing a tie is actually showing a Romney LEAD of 4 POINTS.
Add to that the severely skewed polling in many of these polls which assume Democratic advantages even GREATER than 2008, and you have the makings of a landslide for Romney unless something extraordinarily dramatic takes place in the next 3 1/2 months.
Obama knows this. His internal pollsters know this. Why do you think they were so desperate as to pull out the "Romney is a felon!!!!" charge in the middle of July?
He's thrashing and flailing about, but it's nothing more than the electoral death throes a fish which has already been hooked and landed.
Obama: All that Drew Brees has accomplished, he owes to the Head Linesman and Back Judge.
My husband created his own business in Madison, WI without a bank loan. At its start from our home, many years ago, he paid for ads to broadcast his services. When he rented a building space, he put the rent on his credit card and paid it off as the biz grew.
When his credit cards got maxed out, he asked relatives to help with the promise of 8% return and he paid them all back years ago with that rate of return.If he couldn't afford a needed tool for his shop - guess what - he made it on it own!
He has been in a sole proprietor (a term Obama would never understand) business for many years and his reputation and work is excellent in the community. Stellar in fact - and other than paying rent on his space or then own his own building, he owes nobody nothing but the IRS every year......as do we all.
Spent a week fishing up north with other small biz folks (you know - fly over folks who cling to religion and guns) and nobody can overestimate their vitriol for Obama's comments about the real way small businesses begin or grow.
So this week it will be Bain vs Obama cronyism. FIGHT!
Ken 8:30PM:
"The basic idea is not obviously true"
Thanks for this does of reality. The overwhelming proportion of the nation's communications infrastructure on which the internet runs, going back as far as the invention of the telegraph, was created by private entrepreneurs spurred on by the evil profit motive. BO's assertion that "Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet" is bullshit on multiple levels.
does = dose
Obama can't even plagiarize properly. Here's the Elizabeth Warren quote he was trying to copy:
"You built a factory out there? Good for you! But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for . . . Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
Even this condescending claptrap carefully leaves out the inconvenient fact that private enterprise already foots the costs of road building, worker education, police protection and all that, and what's more provides the paychecks and tax dollars that allow "the rest of us" to pay for them, too. But at least Warren gave private entrepreneurs SOME credit for their accomplishments.
That's too much nuance for our brilliant President, whose Cliff Notes version of the idea cuts private enterprise out of the equation altogether: "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."
Limited reading comprehension, abysmal economic ignorance. How did anybody ever fall for the myth that this arrogant, inexperienced idiot is so smart?
This is also a comforting message for those who are not successful. It says:
It is not your fault. You have not been helped, for whatever reason. Probably all those people who are rich now are refusing to help you. You do not need to change a thing about yourself. Just keep demanding someone stop being selfish and help you.
This is like saying the guy who built the garage where Bill Gates invented Micro Soft is really the guy who deserves the credit/reward for MS. I call total BULLSHIT on this argument. One has to be simple to follow this line of reasoning in my view.
He needs to understand that commerce came first before all the government/education stuff. Roads and bridges come into being thanks to commerce, not the other way around.
He needs to understand that commerce came first before all the government/education stuff. Roads and bridges come into being thanks to commerce, not the other way around.
The FHA only underwrites mortgage loans made through private banks; it doesn't loan the money itself. Same with student loans. The banks are happy to make money without assuming any of the risk. The govt. is happy to make money without running loan services. The govt. is happy to underwrite loans to borrowers who can't afford to pay them; bankers didn't care because they'll get bailed out.
Can you see how we wind up with banks 'too big to fail'? And this is supposedly a recipe for fiscal success? Horseshit.
If rcocean didn't say such dumb stuff, the rest of you wouldn't seem as smart as you are. Someone else showcased your intelligence. You all owe him.
"Is government, then, useful and necessary? So is a doctor. But suppose that the dear fellow claimed the right, every time he was called in to prescribe for a bellyache or a ringing in the ears, to raid the family silver, use the family tooth-brushes, and execute the droit de seigneur upon the housemaid?" --H.L. Mencken
He needs to understand that commerce came first before all the government/education stuff. Roads and bridges come into being thanks to commerce, not the other way around.
Actually, if you look at the history of Indiana you'll see that infrastructure development was a condition for their conferral of statehood.
The state suffered from financial difficulties during its first three decades. Jonathan Jennings attempted to begin a period of internal improvements. Among his projects, the Indiana Canal Company was reestablished to build a canal around the Falls of the Ohio. The Panic of 1819 caused the state's only two banks to fold. This hurt Indiana's credit, halted the projects, and hampered the start of new projects until the 1830s, after the repair of the state's finances during the terms of William Hendricks and Noah Noble. Beginning in 1831, large scale plans for statewide improvements were set into motion. Overspending on the internal improvements led to a large deficit that had to be funded by state bonds through the newly created Bank of Indiana and sale of over nine million acres (36,000 km²) of public land. By 1841 the debt had become unmanageable.[95] Having borrowed over $13 million, the equivalent to the state's first fifteen years of tax revenue, the government could not even pay interest on the debt.[96] The state narrowly avoided bankruptcy by negotiating the liquidation of the public works, transferring them to the state's creditors in exchange for a 50% reduction in the state's debt.[97][note 7] The internal improvements began under Jennings paid off as the state began to experience rapid population growth that slowly remedied the state's funding problems. The improvements led to a fourfold increase in land value, and an even larger increase in farm produce.[98]
Indiana agreed to build a canal from Lake Erie to the Ohio near its junction with the Mississippi at a time when Native Americans occupied and far outnumbered white settlers along the course of the proposed canal route. The project was originally proposed by George Washington, who basically bet the country's future on it. Land speculation was rampant over it, though the project didn't get underway until three decades after it was first proposed and wasn't completed for another two decades, by which time railroads and steamboats had rendered it obsolete. It did, however, accomplish its primary goal, expanding the population from 16, 000 when it achieved statehood in 1816 to more than a million three decades later. It also furnished a plausible justification for Native American removal.
The biggest error is fantasizing that all these accomplishments which allow business to exist stem from this entity called "government". Did Elizabeth Warren or Barack Obama build the transcontinental realiroad? Earlier taxpayers sacrificed a portion of their production to create the law, infrastructure, and institutions the left is trying to take credit for. In other words, capitalism built them.
The result is the left justifying taking your current production on others' past production. It makes so little sense only a leftist could believe it.
"Obama cut funds but did he have to humiliate us by outsourcing it to the Russians?"
Small correction... Obama did not cut funds. NASA budgets have steadily increased during Obama's admin. Obama cut the mission and replaced it with more global warming nonsense and muslim outreach - because as you know, we couldn't have done anything without them.
Two Obamas in one!!
"If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that."
"I won."
I think the Indiana government used and overspent funds the federal government borrowed from France.
This is like saying the guy who built the garage where Bill Gates invented Micro Soft is really the guy who deserves the credit/reward for MS.
Exactly!
Have you ever considered applying for a position as a writer for The Colbert Report?
Eh, I like the fact that Obama is making this argument.
It is a defensive argument.
At its core, it is trying to defend the importance of govt.
That means that the Obama campaign senses that more people are embracing the argument that the govt is inefficient, wasteful, and above all: largely unnecessary.
So if they are defending govt at its most basic, they are way behind the curve and unable to even get to the point of defending a big govt vs a small govt.
It is a bait and switch.
This is the same as a governor facing a budget shortfall and arguing that unless he raises taxes, he'll have to cut police and fire depts. (Instead of forgoing his office renovation this year)
In essence, making this argument means the argument is already lost.
Now we'll see if people are smart enough to recognize that, or if the liberal education system has done its work to make enough people ignorant to vote Democrat.
It's a battle re-fought every few years.
Bridges, roads, internet.
You're right. My business couldn't exist without them.
And guess what? You know who paid for them?
Taxpayers like me? NOT THE GOVERNMENT.
The work I'm doing now, the taxes I pay, are providing for future generations to do the same.
It is part of the social contract. But, to imply that business owners haven't done enough is bunk.
Paying taxes and fees that employees never see. Dealing with regulations a bureaucrats to have the privilege to provide a job.
We do the heavy lifting and government takes the credit.
Spare me the patronizing crap about how the government provides me with so much that allows me to run my business.
They take it out of mine and other business owners' earnings. Then they provide those things back, usually in the most inefficient way possible, wasting vast sums of our money--and the current president has the nerve to portray us as greedy.
When is the government going to wipe my ass?
Shit, the government (not workers, not with taxes) planted the trees, built the roads, placed the telephone lines, created the internet and made all the cars and trucks that got toilet paper to the grocery store they built, and gave me the money to buy it.
So when are they gonna send someone around to wipe my ass?
The work ain't done until the paperwork is through.
The railroads were initially built with British capital channeled through the federal government. If you look at a rail map from 1850 I think you'll see that Indiana, the smallest state west of the Alleghenies until Hawaii was admitted to the Union, had more miles of track than the rest of the country combined. Samuel Prescott Bush got his first job as an apprentice railroad mechanic in Logansport, Indiana. He transferred briefly to Wisconsin before relocating to Ohio where he rapidly climbed the corporate ladder at a steel foundry that manufactured rail couplings. He got ahead by providing benefits demanded by the steel workers.
Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system
Maybe it was foreigners!
Obama is scheduling $30,000 a plate fundraisers in Europe? What the fuck?
Now we'll see if people are smart enough to recognize that, or if the liberal education system has done its work to make enough people ignorant to vote Democrat.
Education isn't capable of "making people ignorant."
If you find that you have to suspend common sense to make your political arguments, then your argument has little or no merit.
When is the government going to wipe my ass?
We'd have to expand our government for a job that big.
Don't I have to work at least four or five months of the year to pay my taxes? When was Tax Freedom Day this year, April, right? Businesses and people -are- paying their way. If we want to readdress how we pay it/how much we pay, that's fine. But I'm tired of it being assumed that I'm not paying my way when I cut a check every year and see with-holdings every pay check.
"Education isn't capable of "making people ignorant." "
Of course it is. The USA is full of proof.
Our educational system is unparalleled in its capacity to train the populace to a state of complete idiocy, yet presuming knowledge.
You must not be from here.
Jake, 'big ass' jokes?
Really?
Do you still make fart jokes, too?
you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate
Who, exactly, are "the rest of us" anyway?
The 48% with no federal income tax liability?
The chronic 15% on welfare?
The millions working in government jobs?
I don't think the phrase "the rest of us" means what she thinks it means.
Jake Diamond said...
Education isn't capable of "making people ignorant.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Education making people ignorant is a theme that's... well, well-known.
"A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." -- Pope.
Pogo,
Unless you've adopted a nonstandard definition, "ignorant" means "uneducated." It defies logic to blame education for ignorance.
Ignorance stemming from supposed knowledge is pretty common also in comedies. And, that's before we get to talking about education that intends to mislead or misinform. I don't think the American education system is set up like that, but some people argue that it is not structurally designed to, it is just a sort of happy accident.
To the degree that what the president said is inherently true, it is also childish. Did you know that we do not exist in a vacuum? No shit, I'm not kidding.
Anyone, and I mean anyone who has ever started or run his own business is deeply offended by the President's bullshit, because they know that whatever minor contribution government has made to their enterprise, they have already paid for it in spades (racist). They also know that government has already cost them much more than that meager return in ongoing expenses through continued taxes, uncertainty, ridiculous regulation, paperwork, and the list goes on. In almost every case, businesses succeed in spite of government.
The President's ignorant arrogance is nauseating.
Jake Diamond said...
Pogo,
Unless you've adopted a nonstandard definition, "ignorant" means "uneducated." It defies logic to blame education for ignorance.
No it doesn't.
Reason would tell us some people are incapable of learning despite the effort extended.
You've offered an excellent example
Jake Diamond said...
Unless you've adopted a nonstandard definition, "ignorant" means "uneducated."
Um, no it doesn't.
Your buffoon shift is now over.
Go away.
"If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that."
"In fact, hand that business, that you did not build, over to the government. The collective knows best."
Creepy. Creepy. Creepy. Leftwing creepy.
Jake Diamond, you are correct that the standard definition of ignorant means uneducated. That is exactly how I used it.
However, since you are a dishonest troll (also standard definitions), I will point out that I clearly said "liberal education system".
Education is the opposite of ignorance, yes, but the goal of the liberal education system is indoctrination, not actual education. If actual education were actually the result, it wouldn't have the modifier "liberal" on it.
If you have to suspend honesty and/or reading comprehension someone to make your political argument, you are conceding your political ideology has zero merit.
Obama's campaign platform: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
That'll resonate.
Beta Rube wrote: Is he taking credit for the porn industry?
LOL.
Old dad nails it.
Nauseating, indeed.
Those of the left who don't think we have enough regulations are people who have never tried to run a small business. They take everything around them for granted.
The bottom line is the left are ignorant of basic economic realities. The left are flat-earthers when it comes to economics. The left either operate out of economic ineptitude, economic ignorance, or they are corrupt.
They are so absorbed in their failed leftwing ideology, facts will never penetrate. Instead we get arrogance and a dangerous amount of poisonous divisive rhetoric.
So what is the point?
I'm curious about that. What point is Elizabeth Warren and Barak Obama making? That is a compelling restatement of the human condition as a social creature they remind us but what leap am I supposed to make from that reiteration? We are social creatures therefore socialists at the core? If it is an attack on individualism then it is an attack on cartoon individualism and misses entirely exceptionalism based on individualism. I think it is an attack on exceptionalism, the idea that US is outstanding in any way due to exceptionalism based on individualism. If only liberalism could do for everybody what it has done for Elizabeth Warren and for Barack Obama their own very real and personal accomplishments notwithstanding then I think we would all share a similar attitude of cartoon individualism.
Let us not forget that in "Dreams of My Father", Obama writes that in the short time he had an actual job, "He felt like a spy behind enemy lines."
Again, creepy.
In the end, bagoh did things I either lacked the ability or comfort with risk to try. Why does he owe me anything? My failings are my own. I don't need others to compensate my poor decisions.
The government may have initiated the Internet but private industry made it useful to the public.
Without private industry, we would all be reading Althouse on text screens using Gopher.
Wow, that is SO good to know. I thought I was the sole employee of my business and that everything was up to me. Knowing that I have help is very, very encouraging!
Now if I could just find this phantom helper to do my billing today.
Trey
"If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that."
The unspoken next line to this statement is:
"and since you didn't build it, we have the right to tell you exactly how to run it, to tax your profits as much as we want, and to take it away from you when we wish."
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