Obama Tells Entrepreneurs “You Didn’t Build” Your Business

Miscellaneous Current Events
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Obama:

"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."

Obama:

“Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.”

I guess in essence he’s telling us that we don’t have natural rights, that they come from Washington. I guess he’s forgotten that it’s the stolen wealth of entrepreneurs that have built this infrastructure.

Here’s the quotes as they appeared in the Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/16/morning-bell-obama-tells-entrepreneurs-you-didnt-build-your-business/?roi=echo3-12563386370-9161355-9d027d5d930b60891fe84484d84b2925&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

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How does one owe anything for things that have already been paid for by others? It’s like parents telling their children, “We brought you into this world, so you owe us for that.” It’s just a mindgame - an attempt at getting people to willingly pay for positive externalities. Certainly, if money is simply taken from people under this pretext, I’d call that “theft”.

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and then he’ll turn around and give a speech to his dependency class that’ll build them up by giving them excuses for their failures. Everything is upside down in his world.

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That right there is probably the heart and soul of the “progressive” mindset: the idea that because you had to interact with society in some way to make your fortune, society has every right to take from you as they see fit, for you were just a beneficiary of favorable circumstances.

Never mind that you already paid “society” for most, if not all of the benefits it provides: educated workers command a wage premium, vehicle taxes pay for the roads you drive on, you pay your utility bill every month and so on.

Never mind that public provision of these goods, which progressives always cite as the ex post facto reason to extract ever more funds, crowds out or outright denies competitive opportunities for the private sector, effectively forcing you to make use of them. Thus, tax-provided infrastructure really becomes essential to your life, allowing progressives to gleefully extol taxes as the “price you pay to live in civilization”.

And lastly, never mind that entrepreneurs aren’t leeches that latched onto an opportunity that just happened to present itself to them. Entrepreneurship is associated with great financial and personal risk and many entrepreneurs fail many times before they finally succeed.

Of course, the progressive preference for cushy government and academic (but I repeat myself) jobs makes them oblivious to this reality.

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Mmm, imagine the President’s mindset right now… All his ‘friends’ coming in to remind him that he did not become President by himself, and that they won’t help him a second time around if he doesn’t help them.

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He wants it both ways - he wants to impose laws that reduce the division-of-labor (tariffs, MW, etc. etc.) while at the same time taking credit for… the division-of-labor. There is no doubt that the individual entrepreneur is not even close to being fully responsible for his own success. And the more thriving and free the market is, the more this is the case! Every UPS driver who has ever delivered one of his packages, every phone lineman who has ever kept his phone call connected, every IT professional who has kept his serverse up, every software engineer who has developed his spreasheet software, every auto mechanic who has kept his fleet cars on the road, etc. has contributed to the entrepreneur’s success and has been paid as he expected to be.

Clayton -

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This reminds me of de Jasay’s “Your dog owns your house,” essay.

Obligation already discharged, sir. Already discharged.

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Considering his PR people built him up as a man of mixed descent who gained everything he has by his own strengths and worked his way to the very top… there must be a communication breakdown somewhere in his staff.

OK, joke time is over. This is just the representation of the Big Government mindset: if you have something is because we allowed you to. Thinking of it is not too far from the mark: any government thug can shut you down whenever he pleases. Think of all the children who had their lemonade stands kicked down by “overzealous” city officials. Think about air travel: you can lose your flight if the “overzealous” TSA officer thinks you are “suspicious”. You are a salesman with an important appointment? Better pray Big Government allows you to get there in time.

Some government officials really think we should be grateful to them because they allow us to keep something after taxation. We should be grateful for the lousy “services” they provide us at inflated prices without even the “opt out” option (Apple doesn’t force me to buy an iPhone if I want a cellphone, let alone forces me to own a cellphone). Their behavior is starting to betray their absolutist mindset: criticism is usually met by the same words usually reserved for an ungrateful child. All in all they resemble my father: they do nothing useful but want gratitude and respect they did absolutely nothing to deserve. You should be grateful to them just because they exist and bear a fancy title.

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Kakugo: yep, this is part of the reason why I consider the state to be an extension of the (authoritarian) family in origin. The mentality really is the same.

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It’s the same arguments that many statist’s, especially liberals, have been using to justify their actions for decades, there’s nothing really ground breaking here. It might be a good rallying cry against Obama, however… Because what we really want is more support for Romney.

Sigh.

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At least an authoritian does something. My father was exactly like many politicians: he did nothing but destroy wealth (my grandfather’s). He wasn’t even good at threatening the use of force, something most government officials at least are good at, because he was afraid to be cut off the dole by my grandfather (who had many fault but didn’t tolerate violence of any kind, especially in the family). But he was very good at demanding “respect” and pontificating about moral values. That’s probably the reason to this day I consider hypocrisy the worst possible vice.

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He’s a socialist statist. He’s a horrible president; he’s like Alexander Hamilton on crack.

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“He’s a socialist statist. He’s a horrible president; he’s like Alexander Hamilton on crack.”

Can you back up that statement? I don’t understand the extreme Obama hatred, from what I’ve seen he’s just like the rest of them, no better, no worse.

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  • Partially nationalized the banking system
  • Partially nationalized the medical care system
  • Increased fiscal expenditure more than any other president in U.S. History (more than all other previous presidents combined)
  • Has a department of justice that blatantly attacks property rights and has no respect whatsoever for the rule of law
  • Has a department of labor that that’s anti-business
  • Surrounded himself with monetary cranks and old-school Keynesians
  • His regulations and proposed regulations have created torrential uncertainty and moral hazzard in the financial system
  • Wants to dramatically increase taxes
  • Places know-nothing, lunatic liberal judges on supreme court

Presidents suck, no doubt, but this current one is the worst.

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I dont think anyone here wants Romney.

Here’s a video that somewhat ties into this. It talks about how local governments are treated differently when they file for bankruptcy. Usually, if a business has debt and files for bankruptcy, the assets they hold go toward satisfying those debts. Listen to what they do with governments filing bakruptcy. If you dont want to hear about silver, fastforward to 8:45.

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Well look at me, anarchist apologist for Barrack Obama XD

“Partially nationalized the banking system”

This was already being undergone by Bush, I think that it’s hard to argue that any other president other than Reagan who presided in the last 50 years wouldn’t have done the same thing given the chance.

“Partially nationalized the medical care system”

Definitely true, although once more Clinton and presidents dating all the way back to Truman wanted to do a similar thing, it just happened that Public opinion was more in-line when Obama was in office. Indeed you could already argue that this was already done with the advent of Medicare and Medicade. This still doesn’t really qualify as socialist, however, if we want the term “liberal” to actually mean anything.

“Increased fiscal expenditure more than any other president in U.S. History (more than all other previous presidents combined)”

How does this compare in real terms? Although once more you’re almost certainly correct.

“Has a department of justice that blatantly attacks property rights and has no respect whatsoever for the rule of law”

Source?

“Has a department of labor that that’s anti-business”

Source?

“Surrounded himself with monetary cranks and old-school Keynesians”

Isn’t that pretty much what modern economics is?

“His regulations and proposed regulations have created torrential uncertainty and moral hazard in the financial system”

Source? I’ve herd something similar from various sources, especially surrounding environmental issues, but what specific regulations are you talking about?

“Wants to dramatically increase taxes”

I know this is true, at least on the rich, I haven’t heard (because I’m usually too wrapped up in other things to look at whatever idiotic schemes the politicians are trying to pass next) exactly how high he would like them in his dream world. Has he ever come out and said this? At any rate, there have been plenty of presidents in the past who have overseen periods of extremely high taxes, much higher than they are now, on the rich, at least on a federal level.

“Places know-nothing, lunatic liberal judges on supreme court”

Seriously, I never heard a single redeeming factor about Sotomayor, but nonetheless this doesn’t make him any more statist or socialist, just a worse president.

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I’m not defending Bush, but the difference between Bush and Obama is a matter of degree. Obama is Bush on steroids; he carried out what Bush began and then some. This makes him worse than Bush.

Listen, I don’t need all this useless crap. If you concede the point, then just concede it.

  • Pushing for open ballot union elections
  • Wants to make a new rule that businesses must disclose the names and addresses of individuals that are hired during strikes to replace unionized workers, whether permanently or temporarily
  • Didn’t allow Boeing to open up a plant in South Carolina because it’s a “right to work” state

This is just off the top of my head. There’s a lot more, but I don’t feel like doing HW for other people.

No, not at all. Old-school Keynesianism has been dead for a long time (so we thought).

Read up on the Dodd-Frank bill.

This is true, but it’s merely one thing amongst many. Either way, the wealthy are disproportionately carrying the tax burden today, relative to any other period. Tax rates were much higher in the past, but the effective tax rates were much lower. The top 20% income earners account for 94% of federal revenue, and this isn’t enough for Obama.

[EDIT]

  • Blamed persistent unemployment on technological innovation
  • Overturned contract law by placing the unions ahead of prefferred stock holders on the Chrystler deal
18

If you just listen to their rhetoric, Obama is definitely more big-government when it comes to the economy. He wants tons of regulations and taxes and he wants to transfer wealth to the unproductive from the productive. It’s very true that the repubs do a lot of this too, but Obama proudly does it and wants to convert more and more people into this way of thinking. I think that if Obama were given the power to do so, he would most definitely expand the role of government in the economy much more than his republican opponents would.

Look at his so-called mentors. It appears that everyone of them are communists, literally.

Personally, I hate his freakin arrogant guts!

And here’s Bush’s retarded self buying into the ‘housing for everyone’ mantra that emanated from the left.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNqQx7sjoS8

These people are CLUELESS and arrogantly parade their ignorance. Even if Romney and Obama were equally pathetic, I think it’d be better to avoid a lame duck president in Obama because I have a feeling his ambitions know no restraints.

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Looks like he’s playing the bullshit Elizabeth Warren card.

As usual, Peter Schiff was right on the money:

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"If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

What a patronizing and ignorant thing to say. From a guy that’s never started a business no less. The amateur indeed.