This piece is sort of a natural follow-on to yesterday’s post – all the “Deep Thoiughts” about man’s relationship to government, and the different philosophies liberals and conservatives bring to the table on the subject.
But first, a brief digression.
I don’t normally rebroadcast other peoples’ ads – but this one was just too good not to pick up and run with, just a little bit.
It’s a riff on President Obama’s “You didn’t do it” scold to entrepreneurs and, by extension, really anyone outside government:
Nope, nobody paid me to rujn it. Although they sure could.
Of course, this sentiment is pandemic on the left. Yesterday Jim Schowalter, Mark Dayton’s budget director, was at a meeting in Thief River Falls with, among other people, the CEO of Digi-Key. You may not have heard of it – it’s a privately-owned billion-dollar company based out of Thief River Falls that is one of the biggest success stories and major employers in northwestern Minnesota. The company started in the CEO’s apartment forty-odd years ago – guy didn’t even have a garage at the time – and grew into a billion-dollar operation employing thousands (I have family in the area, so I hear things).
And, according to a report from the scene, Schowalter told the CEO that without government, he could never have done it
The theory among lefties is that without all the “infraastructure” government “provides”, entrepreneurs would be huddled in caves, helpless, banging rocks together to try to get fire. It’s only through the nurturing hand of government that any human activity is possible.
But once government – at some level – has dealt with banditry, brigandry, barratry, piracy and piracy, really, you’re into the mundanities of laws, roads and regulations. And when those are the subjects…:
- What? Government wants a cookie for doing what it was set up to do, and for which generations of people before the entrepreneur paid taxes – sometimes grossly overpaid in taxes – to get?
- By the way, where do people suggest the money to build that “infrastructure” came from? Brought down from heaven on the backs of unicorns? No – people, entrepreneurs and company guys and executives and high school kids working at Tastee Freez and trust fund billionaires alike – had it taken out of their paychecks.
So yeah, government – good job and all, “providing” things that I and millions like me paid you to do. Isn’t that like me going to my boss and saying “thank me for the design I handed off, on top of paying me to do it?”
By the way – try as I may, I can not find a single reference to this episode anywhere in the mainstream media.
Mainstream media doesn’t cover stories, they wait by the phone to take dictation from the pertinent public official or more often their publicist. If the public official’s encounter with the public didn’t go well the phone doesn’t ring leaving the msm alone with their thoughts.
Mitch, Wouldn’t ya love to hear President Obama how the Department of Transportation built the Transcontinental Railroad, the assembly line, improved roads & the air traffic control towers that the Wright Brothers relied on?
Oh wait. Those things happened as a direct result of the private sector recognizing a need & creating it.
I would love to hear Obama talk about the guy who wanted to expand his business but was stopped cold by a city planning commission. “Can’t expand your business? You didn’t make that happen”.
And if try to explain this to liberals (as I have), the automatic, talking point response is “That’s not what he said! You didn’t read the whole speech! You’re taking it out of context!” To which the logical reply is “Nope. Got the message loud and clear. I’ve read it and I watched the words coming out of his mouth.”
Lather, avoid rinse, repeat.
Defend the borders, build roads and bridges, place criminals in jail and then get out of the way. You can take credit for peace, if you like, but not prosperity – that’s the residue of the freedoms the Founding Fathers gave us to protect.
They don’t get it.
Obama points out the value of infrastructure, education, all the many things that facilitate business happening.
Romney says the EXACT same thing, but only AFTER bashing Obama for saying those things, by doing a James O’Keefe style edit that omits the part of the quote where Obama makes it clear that government contributes to the function of business.
Typical double standard here, classic right wing hypocrisy.
Ya got nothin here, Mitch. Again.
Where did the money come from to build the infrastructure? Silly Mitch, the government printed it of course, and they’re ready to print more!
Gosh DG where’s your homework? Did the dog eat it?
Obama points out the value of infrastructure, education, all the many things that facilitate business happening.
Yet he does not point out the many more things that government does to stop business from happening.
It’s called Bastiats parable of what is seen and what is unseen:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
You succeeded because had a good public school teacher? You owe the government.
You failed because you had a lousy public school teacher? Don’t look at the government. You own your own failure, citizen.
That’s why conservatives — and any honest, red-blooded American — should be hopping mad when Obama says plainly what he believes.
Dog Gone didn’t get here on her own. She had all these people helping her along. If it was public education, I want a refund.
Really, Dog crap? That’s you usual lame ass argument?
Obviously, you didn’t build your puppy mill then, did you? Did you suck off of the government teat to do it, so now you have to defend the Kenyan Klown?!
You are pathetic!
Dog Gone, the President’s exact words show you are mistaken in his meaning and his implication.
President Obama said: “If you are successful, you didn’t get there on your own.” So how did you become successful? Because you’re smart? Not according to the President: “There are a lot of smart people out there.”
Because you work harder than everybody else? Nope: “There are a whole bunch of hard-working people out there.”
He said “If you are successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.” You had a great teacher. The Founding Fathers who created the American system that allowed you to thrive. Government built roads and bridges.
But Dog Gone, EVERYBODY in America today grew up in the Founding Father’s system. EVERYBODY gets free public education. EVERYBODY enjoys the same roads and bridges.
The President’s analysis misses the fundamental point: what makes some people successful business-starters who employ others and pay taxes while other people spend their lives as employees, at best?
Worse, the reasonable inference to be drawn from the President’s analysis is that successful people don’t DESERVE to be successful, they HAPPEN to be successful. They had family connections or an inheritance or maybe they just got lucky, but it’s nothing they did themselves. They didn’t EARN success, it fell into their laps.
And since they don’t deserve to be successful, they don’t deserve to keep the rewards of success. They don’t deserve a bigger salary. They don’t deserve a nicer house.
Allowing the hard-working to keep more than the lazy is just. But allowing the lucky to keep more than the unlucky is not. So logically, a just society must tax the successful and give that money to the unsuccessful. We must share the wealth, exactly as President Obama promised Joe The Plumber he would, regardless of who created that wealth.
In other words: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The President’s speech lays clear the class-envy justification for his tax-the-rich agenda. It’s straight out of “Critique of the Gotha Program’ written in 1875 by Karl Marx.
Dog Gone, the implications go further than roads and bridges. “Successful” is one of those Silly Putty words that stretches according to the user.
JK Rowlings is successful but that couldn’t be because she’s spent her life working to become a better writer than you, it must be she has a nicer street on her block, right?
If practice was the reason for Tiger Woods’ success, President Obama should be right alongside him; it must have been Tiger’s golf coach, right?
The analysis is insidious because there is no lower limit. Are you the shop foreman? You didn’t earn that. For that matter, do you have a job at all? Compared to teh 50% who are unemployed, you are a success. President Obama says you didn’t do that alone, someone helped you. In other words, you didn’t earn that job or that promotion and you don’t deserve the pay that goes with it.
What, you think that because you stayed in school, got an education, worked hard and played by the rules instead of dropping out, smoking dope and getting pregnant out of wedlock, that you DESERVE something? You were just lucky, that’s all. Your paycheck is a gift, you didn’t earn it and you shouldn’t get to keep it when others who weren’t so lucky have less than you.
This reasoning is the fundamental underpinning of the entire socialist school of thought. It’s why doctors are paid the same as teachers in Cuba and also explains why Cuban medicine is so awful. Nobody wants to spend 10 years in college, medical school and residency working 80 hours a week to end up being rewarded the same as the second grade teacher or the drone at the driver’s license counter.
The President doesn’t say where he got his intellectual concept, his words sound reasonable and people who don’t think past the speech don’t realize the implications. Those of us who do, see this as worse than enlightening – it’s terrifying. That you and millions of voters like you don’t, is terrifying, too.
As usual, Dog Gone puts out a comment that could have been cribbed from DU or HuffPo. So, you know, she probably didn’t build that.
Well I did say “Dog Gone didn’t get here on her own.” She needed someone to tell her what to think.
When he was talking about lots of people being smart, perhaps Herr Obumbler was referring to the millions of his drooling, entitled fans that have used their creativity to game the system rather than get real jobs.
I think it was Iowahawk yesterday: Oh, you got laid last night? Sure, thanks to government roads! “You’re WELCOME.” Barack Obama.
I notice that DogGone doesn’t have a reply to these comments.
But perhaps you people took her out of context.
The REAL message in the President’s “you didn’t build that” speech is this:
“America is not exceptional, and neither are you.”
It is his way — the Left’s way — of attempting to make us all beholden to government and The System.
Dog Gone doesn’t reply to comments. She delivers her homily and then withdraws.
Sort of like the blog she writes for.