America’s leading small business association has slammed Barack Obama for showing ‘an utter lack of understanding’ of the country’s entrepreneurs when he told them: ‘If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’
In a hard-hitting statement to Mail Online, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) said: ‘What a disappointment to hear President Obama’s revealing comments challenging the significance of America’s entrepreneurs.
‘His unfortunate remarks over the weekend show an utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the people who take a huge personal risk and work endless hours to start a business and create jobs.’
President Barack Obama said in a speech at the weekend that governments and not individuals create jobs, telling entrepreneurs: ‘If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’
He added: ’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.’
My father started the family business with a used typewriter, $25.00 in petty cash, and a used oriental rug. There was never a time when he didn’t work killing hours. It eventually grew to employ sixteen people. When the business climate was less than flush, he would borrow money on his signature to pay the usual Christmas bonuses, saying only that, “the laborer is worthy of his hire,” that he knew that bonus money had long ago been figured into their family budgets, and that it simply wouldn’t be right not to come through for them.
He often told the story of how, during the Depression, his dad would take all the bills (in a household of thirteen people, it was a pretty tall stack), spread them out on the dining room table, lay as many dollars as he could on as many as possible, and then gather them all up, stuff them in his shirt pocket, and walk downtown. He would visit every merchant, both those whom he could pay and as well as those he could not, telling the latter that he would see them the following week. To a person, they’d shake his hand and say OK. One man in particular stood out. He owned a local shoe store, and it took my grandfather an unbelievable ten years to pay that man for a pair of duty shoes needed by his daughter when she entered nurses’ training. To the day he died, my father bought every pair of shoes he ever owned from that man.
This small (and, one hopes, not so small) town tradition of loyalty and support among local business people and their employees is part of the fabric that held this country together for a very long time. Obama understands nothing of that, nor does he understand anything about values that transcend ego, money, and celebrity. He is a disgrace to our country, and an effront to our founders, to everyone who has ever loved or fought for this country, and to every American who has ever worked for a living. My only prayer is that the lesson he is teaching us takes permanent hold in the American psyche.
“If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
So speaketh The One, who has never owned a business, managed a business, built a product, delivered a service, met a payroll, juggled account receivables and payables …
Let’s hope small business owners are paying attention.
“Somebody else made that happen.”
You know, the real tragedy here is, he is utterly incapable of wrapping his head around this concept because performing at this level it completely beyond the range of his “abilities.” Effective antidotes for this level of incompetence and stupidity do not spring readily to mind. Ditto anything to combat the “acting white” psychosis.
– handed to him on a platter.
for the rest he peddled favors
He was speaking of his own experience. All of his success is due to the hard work of others, and being incapable of learning any way other than empiricism, he believes this to be true.
Ignorant and arrogant. God help us.
I actually think the President is on to something. It just needs to be tweaked.
“‘If you’ve got into Harvard – you didn’t do that. Somebody else made that happen.”
To continue in the vane, “if you’ve become President, you didn’t do that, someone else voted for you”.
What an idiot. Every time I think he’s peaked in his stupidity, he reaches a new level. He’s fast approaching the coveted Biden level of idiot.