Obama’s Insult to Businessmen and His Trillion Dollar Fib

The president has gotten some grief over a comment made in a speech last week. While speaking to a group in Roanoke, Virginia he went off on a tangent about how he can’t understand how some people can claim they made it on their own. He even went as far as to say business owners are not responsible for their success. He seemed to be saying their success was wholly due to the government and the workers involved, the business owner him/herself had nothing or little to do with it. His exact quote is “If You’ve Got A Business, You Didn’t Build That, Someone Else Made That Happen.”

For those who are not familiar with where this philosophy originates or whose thought processes do not go beyond the superficial his words might seem plausible. He of course is not the first one to iterate such ideas, a very similar speech was made by Democratic Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren in Andover Massachusetts in 2011. Obama’s statement though seemed to go even further than Warren’s.  He walked it back a little in the end but the basic idea remained the same; people cannot succeed without government helping them.

These ideas have their foundations in socialism, specifically Marxian socialism. Marx believed or at least promulgated the idea that capitalists were just leeches who bleed the excess value from workers labor to enrich themselves. An idea that reduces the engineer, the entrepreneur, and the floor sweep on the same economic level. In fact it actually portends to do something even more, it puts the worker, no matter how unskilled, on the same level or even higher economically than his employer. To those who follow such folly, it is society as a whole that creates wealth and to whom all wealth belongs. To their way of thinking a wealthy man does not deserve his wealth no more than a poor man does.  Maybe because of Obama’s communist childhood mentor or his self admitted Marxian filled days at college he seems to hold similar views.

Contrary to what the President seems to believe it is the differences between people that explain their level of achievement. The fact is that within any high school graduating class there will be those destined to be felons, welfare recipients, small business owners and millionaires with most just becoming average productive members of society. The reasons for the differing outcomes are not to be found in the education they received for they all attended the same school.  Even intelligence is not a sure fire predictor of success nor is having involved parents although both are definitely helpful. What sits the super successful apart is having vision, common sense, perseverance and a willingness to take risks.

Despite President Obama’s rant or that of Elizabeth Warren success is never a function of government involvement. The government for its part provides services equally to all as it should. It does not care if a road is used to pick up a welfare check or deliver new cars. Police and fire are similarly paid by all and enjoyed by all. These are not the tools of success but services for the masses. To equate these to tools for success seems foolish indeed, if such was the case all would be living in mansions and eating caviar.

Unfortunately the United States seems to have a President that does not understand the most basic of economic concepts. Too wrapped up in an ideology that has long been proven false he seems blind to the facts before his eyes. The society American’s live in was built by those who took risk to achieve something more. This includes the small businessman who saw a need and filled it, the visionary that saw what wasn’t and made it so and the entrepreneur who saw a service or product and said “I can do that better.” It is to these people past and present that America owes all that it has become. It is they who gave workers the opportunity to feed their families and dream of a better life. They are also the ones that created the wealth that paid for the roads, the salary of the police officer and fireman as well as the many other services enjoyed by all the people.

Actually if America was to be true to its roots there should be a producers day. A holiday to celebrate those Atlases that made this country possible. People like McCormick, Carnegie, Ford, Edison, Kroc, Gates, Jobs and Whitman. Men and women whose vision and drive made this country what it is. Mostly self-made people from modest backgrounds. These are the people that made America great, the true heroes that should be set up as examples to inspire the next generation.

Unfortunately the current administration and much of the Democratic party has seen fit to demonize those to whom we owe so much. Castigating them for keeping for themselves a small percentage of the wealth the have created for all of society.

It is extremely unfortunate that in such a perilous economic time as this that the leader of the free world is someone who does not seem to understand even the most basic of economic concepts; that of wealth creation. Someone who attacks those whom the country depends on to turn its fortunes around and puts roadblocks to success at every turn. Very unfortunate indeed.

“Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.”   Theodore Roosevelt