Small-business owners built this country

The Daily Comet ^ | July 20, 2012 | Robert Pontif

[2ndDivisionVet]

I cannot resist responding to President Obama’s comment about small business earlier this week. His statement that small-business people did not do it on own their own is ridiculous. He said if there is a road or bridge in front of your business you didn’t build that. Of course you didn’t. Tax money that you earned and paid to the government was used to build it. Guess what — everyone benefited from the building of that road or bridge or the invention of the internet. A lot of those that benefit pay no taxes at all. Business owners have the ambition, work ethic and drive to use the opportunities this country offers to succeed, and they should not be penalized or envied for it.

The president has a total disdain for capitalism. I think this for two reasons. He has no earthly idea how it really works because he has never participated in the capitalist system, which built America by the way. I further think he does not want to learn about it and does not respect it because his political beliefs are in some other system.

As the owner of a small business stated 45 years ago by my father, I know what he and the rest of my family went through to make this business succeed. I know what it still takes to do that today. Unlike some I don’t go home in the evening after working 12 hours and forget about everything until 3:30 the next morning when it is time to start again. Running a small business is a never ending series of problems and accomplishments. It is not meant for everyone.

The president should stop the incessant class warfare he is preaching. Ask people in the community who are the most involved citizens in civic, school and charitable organizations. You will find that most of them are small-business owners or employees who take time to participate despite working long hours everyday. If the president wanted to gauge the effect small business has on our country, he should imagine all of the time, talent and taxes contributed to our country not being there. Where would America be then? We would be a third world country.

Mr. President, this country was built on certain values that you need to realize. One being that hard work offers the chance for success. Every small-business person that works every day and goes back the next day is a success, no matter what you say, and I am proud to be one of the poor misguided taxpayers that continue to do it.

[raulgomez05]

Obama said that public infrastructure - such as roads, schools, and fire departments - create a community that supports businesses

[mylife]

[1035rep]

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Obama

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Obama said that public infrastructure - such as roads, schools, and fire departments - create a community that supports businesses

No one doubts that infrastructure helps businessmen. It helps everybody. Society makes businesses possible. But the unspoken subtext of that is the planted axiom that “society” and “government” are one and the same thing. I had a social studies teacher in HS back in the Fifties who made that claim, and of course I as a teenager didn’t know how to respond even though I knew he was wrong. Recently someone pointed me to the perfect response:

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

George Washington didn’t write that himself, but he did put his imprimatur on it by ordering his officers to read it to his troops . . .

The other way of looking at it is that the difference between “society” and “government” is freedom. Allow the government to encompass society completely, and there must be perfect tyranny.

As to the issue of the ownership of a small business, entrepreneurs and business owners and churches and newspapers (which are explicitly businesses) constitute the leadership of society, not government. Journalists and preachers are competitors in that arena - and no pastor should be content with the niche to which journalists would consign pastors.