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You did not get here on your own!

By: pseudonym (Diary)  |  July 17th, 2012 at 04:46 PM  | 

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As we all heard President Obama made the following comment:

“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.

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…”

So we should examine this particular quote. First, Mr. President, there are a lot of wealthy successful Americans who do give back and not in the form of increased tax burdens. These wealthy Americans participate in the free market. They create wealth not only for themselves but those whom they employ. They create wealth. The government cannot create wealth directly or indirectly. The only possible way a government can assist in the creation of wealth, is by creating an environment that fosters success. This is accomplished is by limited regulations, taxations, and interferences amoung other things.

And yes, many successful people did not get there “on their own” as President Obama told us. However, the help they had was others participating in the free market. The successful individuals in our nation did so by buying goods and services from one another creating wealth, employment opportunities, and all the things associated with wealth. These successful individuals took risks in order to possibly obtain a greater financial reward. The successful business owner is not only intelligent, they are hardworking, goal oriented, business savvy, and creative.

Yes many successful companies, such as Staples, did have help from companies such as Bain Capital. There are small businesses that have had help from the local communities purchasing their goods or services. They had help with small business loans from private financial institutions. And yes there are some good teachers who teach free market economies, individual liberty, and instill a foundation of basic knowledge to take the risk of business ownership. However there are many teachers that prefer to teach their students about broken socialist systems, welfare states, and instill in their students a false narrative that has been proven over time the be in fact false.

How much longer will we allow President Obama to spew this vile and false rhetoric? I for one will continue to argue the principals that made this nation a military, cultural, economic, and unrivaled superpower. In other words, the exact opposite of what President Obama tells the nation on every given opportunity.

COMMENTS

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  • lastgopinillinois

    I thought they were paid for out of my property taxes (which BTW consumes the largest amount of our tax bill here).

    I didn’t know that the govt gave us our roads and bridges. I thought that was paid for by our gasoline taxes, and in some cases there are tolls that pay for the roads.

    I don’t recall ever seeing anyone from the government helping my Dad to build his business. Being an eyewitness to the event, I can tell you he built it single-handedly by educating himself with library books, putting in long hours and lots of hard work and sweat.

    • hal2715

      educating himself with library books.”
      “Library books.” I had to chuckle at that one.

  • Viet71

    Guess Obama forgot about that. He ought to ring up the Harvard Law School fund raising office or the one at Columbia. Michelle could call the “development office” at Princeton.

    The O’s could tithe, like the Romneys.

  • pseudonym

    Nothing the government has or provides could exist without the people (much less the government itself). Comments such as this show the President is the individual out of touch with reality. Not Romney. I have always had a great admiration for those who start their business and through their own labor successful or not.

  • aesthete

    is take, take, take. The closest he’s come to creating a job has been to ask Ayers to ghostwrite his autobiography. When is he going to start “giving back”? As someone who actually knows what it’s like to do things to improve my community, I could direct Obama towards some opportunities to do just that — and as a bonus, they would all be far, far away from the White House and other politicians.

    • demsaresatanic

      Dropping the Greek and sticking to English has done wonders for you.

  • checkmate2012

    I haven’t heard anyone ask this question in regards to his outrageous socialistic comment that “you didn’t build that on your own”.

    He came out of nowhere, got a transfer from Occidental to Columbia which is extremely rare and then onto Harvard. He must have had alot of help along the way that he should share with us.

    Regarding your comment, “The only thing a government can do is assist in the creation of wealth”, the gov’t doesn’t even assist in wealth creation; they can only create an environment that fosters it.

    Your diary points are still on target.

    • pseudonym

      That was the point I was trying to make, guess I should have used better language than I did. Thanks.

      • checkmate2012

        believes that gov’t is the answer and we know have his 31/2 years of failed policies to prove he’s wrong. :)

  • fightnright

    it’s clear the underlying message not only diminishes hard work and success, but also belittles concepts of achieving superiority and even intelligence.

    Obama sings a paean of praise to mediocrity and dependence, one that the left has been planting in the national consciousness from the time kids are in pre-school.

    As goes the individual, so goes the nation. When the Democrat driven downward spiral of the US matches the cultural and economic malaise of the EU (and other nations that encourage their illiterate and impoverished citizens to look to wealthy, powerful America as a scapegoat ) at least Obama’s indoctrinated youths will feel comfortable and familiar with his central fairy-tale of lowered expectations.

    What a difference from the heroic myths America grew up with, though.

  • 6eorge Jetson

    Obama doesn’t believe in Free Trade, he believes in the Coerced Trade of a government economy.

    Wealth is created and maximized through two-sided transactions in which both sides are better off after the transaction. Was the teacher forced at gunpoint to work in the schools? Was the construction worker’s family physically threatened if he or she did not participate in the building of roads?

    No, they chose to engage in those opportunities versus the myriad of other choices available to them, including doing nothing but living with the means of one who does nothing. These were not acts of charity, and were paid for by a tax system in which the top 10% pay the largest percentage of all household taxes (including Social Security)

    As a side note, I wish Hannity would stop making his imprecise over-statement that the private sector creates ALL wealth, when the more precise statement is still overwhelmingly in the Conservatives favor.

    Is wealth created by the trades that teachers make when they exchange their time and effort for their salalries? Of course!

    Is that generated wealth greater than that which would be created by teachers operating in private schools? The answer to that would come at a case-by case basis, and it’s a moot-question, as the forces aligned against a complete substitution would never allow it to happen.

    Now, would the wealth of this country be increased from its present level if we greatly expanded the domain of trades that are made in the Coerced Economy instead of the Free Economy? There are centuries of world-wide evidence as to the level of efficiency of a Command Ecomony versus an economy of many free actors.

    O    /font>bstinate
    B    /font>ankrupt
    A    /font>uthoritarian
    M    /font>ediocre
    A    /font>dolescent