Beat me to it.
Posted on 07/26/2012 12:57:55 PM PDT by Kaslin
Obligatory “rhymes with”...
I see a trap in arguing this point too much because there is some truth in Obama’s statement. We have created an environment that encourages and supports business creation and development. Arguing that this existing environment does not contribute to successful businesses and that success comes solely from the entrepreneur then we weaken the argument that government regulations and taxes will have a major impact on these folks. After all, they do not government.
I am sure you know who he is talking about
Say, Jack Lakoff, that's not working out so well, is it? I think we have figured out "lying."
Beat me to it.
That argument assumes that "an environment that encourages and supports business creation and development" is equally as helpful as "government regulations and taxes" are harmful.
Businesses can withstand some of the latter but when regs and taxes are cranked up to high levels, the symmetry of the argument is lost and the positive is overwhelmed.
yea, it’s odd how that helpful environment apparently only trickled down to 1% of the population. One wonders why having roads and bridges didn’t ensure the success of 100% of the population
The making of a fortune requires that an individual have the ability, power,and willingness to use the ingenuity and take the the actions that are required to build a great fortune. He must earn a high rate of return on capital and then constantly and continuously reinvest almost all of it so that the high rate of profit rapidly compounds of a period of many years.He hires workers to help him and pays taxes for legitimate functions of government to provide an environment of freedom and respect for private property that is conducive to earning and investing.It is when government uses force and confiscatory taxation and pro-union legislation that hampers the market that businessmen and capitalists object to.
While the President and his surrogates attempt to portray "We, the People" as some sort of collective who are helpless without the guiding and controlling hand of a large and powerful government master, America's Founders saw "We, the People" as masters of their government, who retain sovereignty over that government by the provisions and limitations of their own Constitution for controlling elected representatives in that government.
There is a huge difference in outcomes between the two concepts. America's Founders were clear in their understanding that economic progress, for instance, relied on the degree of individual freedom which existed, and they stated it clearly:
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
". . . the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." The word "benign" takes on special meaning today, when almost every person understands the implications of the word "malignant"--a word which might be used today to describe the kind of debilitating and destroying government "influence" we encounter at every turn.
No wonder so-called "progresssive" leaders like the Democrats who represent the current Administration must use misleading semantic maneuvers in order to sell their misleading and counterfeit ideas.
1801 Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson
(Excerpt) "Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. . . possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
"Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." (end of excerpt)
To me this is just an expansion of the "it takes a village" philosophy. You know, you are not qualified to raise you own child and should be under the guidance of licensed professionals. Children must be brought up to understand that the government knows best and parents are just other citizens to whom you happen to be born.
The expansion would be that you are not really the builder of your business. You are merely a person who has taken advantage of the opportunities that where provided to you by the government and the citizens who came before you and laid the groundwork that allowed you to have a business.
The collective has provided the business to you and therefore the business belongs to the collective.
resistance is futile.
Obama would say "You didn't make that cake".
Some reader in Townhall.com had made a comment several month ago to one of the columns about the progressives and said they should not be called progressives as they aren’t. I wished I could remember the word the reader used, because it fit perfect
Beat me to it.
This may appeal to the masses, but my observation after being in the work force for 50 years is that there are an awful lot of lazy-assed people out there too. And some of them of them even become President.
If new roads are a neccessity for building a successful business, how did Wells Fargo get started? They sure weren’t running those stage coaches on interstate highways.
Exactly
Obama's mission is to break America's spirit.
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