The president is actually channeling Massachusetts senate candidate Elizabeth Warren when he told a rally in Roanoke:
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — 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. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
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.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
This is a view of society more utopian than real. Elizabeth Warren spelled it out even clearer last year:
I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”–No!
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
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.
You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
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.
Note that Warren and Obama both are trying to make the case that rich people don’t want to pay their “fair share” in taxes, and take advantage of all these nice things that are funded by the rest of us. In fact, the implication is that those who make less make possible roads, police, firemen, and other infrastructure when, in fact, government makes those things possible for their own sake. Whether there were private businesses or not, we would still have roads, police, and firemen to facilitate civilization — not help businesses make a profit.
And as far as taxes are concerned, not only does the businessman pay taxes, but his company is taxed as well. Using the logic of Obama and Warren, the businessman has more right to use those services because they pay more in taxes than ordinary Americans.
The rhetoric here implies that entrepreneurs don’t want to pay taxes for roads, public schools, and police officers. Of course, this view would be held only by the most extreme of anarchist-leaning libertarians. But let’s put that criticisms aside for now. Let’s also ignore the fact that state taxes — not the federal taxes that Warren would have power over as a senator — generally pay for all of these expenses. Even forgiving these seemingly relevant points, it’s hard to see how her argument makes any sense.
In fact, wealthy entrepreneurs as a group do pay more taxes than other Americans — a lot more. They pay higher rates, as I explained yesterday. And we can take that a step further: they pay many more actual dollars in taxes per capita. And yet everyone has equal access to those common good products, like roads, education, and security. This implies that the wealthy pays far more than their fair share.
The Obama-Warren vision is Utopian. Their idea of a “social contract” is a political invention and has nothing to do with the real social contract for which workers give a full days effort for a full day’s wage, policemen and firemen perform their jobs out of a sense of duty, not because the rest of us pay to protect rich people, and teachers teach in order to pass on knowledge to the next generation, not to enable a businessman to have an educated work force.
Conservative philosopher Russell Kirk wrote of a “voluntary community” where “the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily.”
Although Americans have been attached strongly to privacy and private rights, they also have been a people conspicuous for a successful spirit of community. In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily. Some of these functions are carried out by local political bodies, others by private associations: so long as they are kept local, and are marked by the general agreement of those affected, they constitute healthy community. But when these functions pass by default or usurpation to centralized authority, then community is in serious danger. Whatever is beneficent and prudent in modern democracy is made possible through cooperative volition. If, then, in the name of an abstract Democracy, the functions of community are transferred to distant political direction—why, real government by the consent of the governed gives way to a standardizing process hostile to freedom and human dignity.
The notion that it takes a village to build a business ignores the idea of a voluntary community and smacks of forced altruism. To Obama, we are all cogs in a machine with individual rights and achievements taking a back seat to a collective sense of worth imposed by a soulless government. This argument is now clearly not about taxes. It is about the state’s unlimited power to direct individuals to whatever ends that fit into its notions of a new kind of “social contract” that would destroy individual initiative.
That should be what this election is about.
“And if you fail because affirmative action let some other guy in and you never got the shot, you failed because of thing we did together. And if you failed because the union went on strike and would not let your truck into the dock, you failed because of things we did together. And if you fail because the fake sexual harassment claim was treated as truth and you were automatically suspect because you were a man, you failed because of things we did together. And if you failed because your home value went to zilch because we threw away lending standards lest certain communities of unproven responsibility go without, you failed because of things we did together. And if you failed because it turned out to not be your child, but the court made you pay child support anyway, you failed beause of things we did together. And if you failed because your education was lousy, but the teachers got paid pensions anyway, pensions that never went down, only up, you failed because of things we did together. And if you failed because neither you or your kid could get jobs due to competitors from Mexico, you failed because of things we did together.”
“Aren’t you glad we do things together?”
What Bambi doesn’t want to address is that people don’t object to paying taxes, they object to not getting value for the taxes that they pay. If we go back to first principles, John Locke advocated that only property owners should have the right to vote and the reason is simple – it was their money that the government would spend. Thus, government spending actually was an investment, if the property owners didn’t see any value in building a new road or bridge then that road or bridge wouldn’t get built.
Now, however, the franchise has been expanded to included everyone except Conservatives and if I want a bike path built then you’ll have to pay for it. For a good part of our history government spending contributed to wealth creation; now government is a wealth destruction machine. If you want to study corporate greed then you only need look at government. All government does is take, it produces nothing of value and richly rewards itself for the destruction of the country/world.
Stoking envy and greed to win votes. The response to this sort of stupidity is to state “True – but every business owner helped provide those things through paying taxes.” Obama, Warren and others who use this line are casting the capitalist/business owner as somehow outside of the system when in fact it is the opposite – they are paying for the system that their business uses. Roads, schools, laws, courts – they all come from taxes paid by private citizens.
To claim that somehow people can create a business without paying into the system (via taxes) is disingenuous. The people helped create the system they are utilize for their business.
“You didn’t get there on your own”- BHO
Well, yeah, after all, without the wise and benevolent government big brother, people like Bill Gates would’ve had to start Microsoft in his garage at home, on his own time, on a shoestring budget, and work really, really hard to make it a success…wait…what?!?
I’ve had many a lefty argue that the wealthy should pay considerably more in taxes because they use considerably more of our nation’s infrastructure, suck up a greater share of the commonweal. I’ve even had them argue that the wealthy should pay a bigger share of our national defense costs because they have more stuff to protect. Seriously.
I point out, of course, that while the wealthy are heavy on the supply side, they’re relatively light on the demand. They use no social welfare services. While they pay substantial property taxes to fund public schools, they send their own children to private schools and colleges. They customarily have private security. We all know that at some point in the near future, they will be means tested out of SS and Medicare benefits while they continue to pay into those programs at a higher overall rate than the rest of us. I can’t for the life of me find where the wealthy make excessive use of our highway system (sure, business owners, not all of whom are wealthy, send their products around the country by truck, but they pay heavily for that privilege). Developers are required to build roads, schools and highway interchanges (costs that are passed on to the eventual property owners, of course). And so on.
So despite what the redistributionist-in-chief and Daughter-of-the-Moon Nokomis say, when it comes to give and take, the wealthy, be it through taxes or charity, do the majority of the giving and relatively little of the taking. (And, yes, I know all about government subsidies, corporate welfare and special tax provisions, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.)
Class Warfare – another way for Obama to BUY Votes from stupid people & i sure hope the simple minded liberals in Mass see thru Sitting Bull’s Daughter BS, or welcome anoteh Barney Frank with boobs to MASS
Actually, judging from what I saw when Barney wore that silky shirt on the House floor, his boobs are bigger than hers.
But Mr. Entrepreneur _also_ paid his share for those roads and services as a citizen, just like the rest of the citizenry. So really, a bit of misdirection – sure, it’s a community good, but he already paid his share.
So what’s left of the thesis here?
‘give something’ – Obama
‘you take a hunk of that and pay’ – Warren
Uhh, no thanks.
Perhaps Barry or Pocahontas can show us exactly where this “social contract” is written and where my signature appears on it.
Show me where in the Constitution it says “Life is supposed to be fair.”
I worked 12 years in public school, six years in college and business school, 40 years in the workplace, 26 with my own business, retired, and I’m enjoying my life. I worked hard. Nobody gave me a damn thing. Every step of the way the government tried to take from me, not give. I fought them every step of the way.
And every day I wonder if my grandkids are going to end up paying 90% taxes and burning worthless dollars to stay warm.
I see Obamee and I see the type of con man who came in for job interviews with all charm and no work ethic and for three decades as hiring manager and then owner I showed them the door within ten minutes. The type of lazy fools who destroyed this country with talk of something from nothing.
Only one thing matters in this world, and that’s hard work. Hard enough to get ahead and I taught my kids that. I made too much money to qualify for government college loans. So two of them earned scholarships. One’s an engineer, one’s a lawyer, the third is an auto mechanic. He put himself through school. Proud as all hell of all three of them.
And I see this smiling con man, and I know another four years and my kids futures are gone, and my 4 grandchildren are going to have to give every drop of blood to the nanny state this fool is building so that all men are equal.
All men are not equal. Life is not fair. But we all will be equal, soon. We’ll all be crushed and in the dirt and miserable together. Then things are going to get nasty once the people who aren’t equal get up and get out of the US.
What happens when all the people left are on welfare?
Elect this clown again, we’ll find out.
Obama’s contention that anyone who is making it financially is beholden
to all of us is scary. It is right in line with Hillary Clinton’s
contention that it takes a community. Growing and maintaining a
successful, legal business with all the reports, labor regulations, OSHA
and EPA laws and now health insurance mandates is a statistical miracle.
And becoming successful in the only three real wealth builders (Mining,
Farming and Manufacturing) is now tougher than ever! For Obama to think
that the government is the friend of most successful companies is
delusional. Our government is a ever growing CANCER which thrives on
sucking the life’s blood from the entrepreneur. There are exceptions .
Clarence Thomas’ Monsanto has all but monopolized our food supply with
impunity and GE ( Obama’s poster child) has avoided Obama’s wrath while
not paying their “FAIR SHARE” of taxes! Obama has yet to realize that you
can’t destroy companies without hurting the little guy who votes.
“The notion that it takes a village to build a business ignores the idea of a voluntary community and smacks of forced altruism. To Obama, we are all cogs in a machine with individual rights and achievements taking a back seat to a collective sense of worth imposed by a soulless government.”
It’s this kind of self-centered, egotistical thinking that’s gotten us into this current mess. We stand on the shoulders of all that came before us.
Are you going to build that business in a vacuum? What’s wrong with individual achievements taking a back seat to a collective sense of worth? I’m not at all surprised at the backlash to Obama’s and Warren’s speeches. They both bring home the fact that no-one makes it on their own. They both point an accusing finger at greed and inflated self worth. They both insist that big business should and must be held accountable. They both try to inject morality and social concern into the hearts and minds of everyone and specifically into business administration.
No, I’m not at all surprised that so called “self-made” business men would reject this philosophy. It undermines their entire ego structure. It tweaks at what is left of their conscience. They might not be able to buy that new yacht next year. Maybe they won’t be able to take that trip to Monte Carlo next summer. They may need to forego a few self-gratifying, self-serving moments. It might cost them a few dollars!
So, you go on picking at the specifics and ignoring the broader message.