President Obama, in a speech to supporters, suggested business owners owe their success to government investment in infrastructure and other projects — saying “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”
Obama’s comment Friday during a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., came just days after he urged Congress to extend tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration only to families earning less than $250,000 annually — part of his argument that top earners have an obligation to pay more to trim the deficit.
“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me because they want to give something back,” the president said. “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,” he said. “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
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14 Responses
This is the most inept, stupendously stupid speech gvien in an election. Marxism thinks that way!
This sounds like what that socialist in Massachusetts said (she was running for senator, I believe). Obama is a socialist. He doesn’t even deserve to look at the white house!!
i think he has it backwards the govnt has monet to waste because they keep king from business owners who constantly take risks
of course and soon they will hand out your medicine…..
This is a great excuse for STEALING!
Help please help the real American people stand up and dump this guy out on the street and have a real man run this great republic
This is way over the top!
I suppose President Lincoln and Representative Daniel Webster were also socialists?? Maybe any history prior
to Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity’s nonsense is too old for Fox?
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
Abraham Lincoln
“Labor is the great producer of wealth; it moves all other causes.” Daniel Webster
No one should be surprised. That is why a well known writer wrote a book about this president and gave it a title, “The Amateur”
You all got it wrong. The prez was saying that we all owe our hatzlacha to the Eibeshter. Who can argue against such a statement?
Clueless, out of touch and delusional as usual.
Sam Walton didn’t build up Walmart with the government’s help neither did all the retailers who started out as pushcarts on the Lower East Side. And people who make $250k are not wealthy, Mr President. Thanks to you and your spendocrat friends they’re the middle class!
What he’s really saying is, “What are you going to do about it?”
Now, Obama has a point, from a Torah outlook. Everyone who is successful, should take a hard look at the contributions made by Hashem to his success, the contributions of others, etc.
At the same time, however, Obama is speaking as if he missed his own point. Government investment in infrastructure and projects owe their success to the taxes provided by the business owners and the rest of the nation.
And this is aside from the demoralizing and cheapening of the efforts of business owners.
He’s not totally wrong on this.
Everybody is born into an existing social/cultural/intellectual background that is the product of centuries of development by people long gone. Nobody creates their world on their own. They idea of the individual who existed before society is a myth. The idea that great individuals created on their own, without any assistance no matter how indirect, is false. People owe something to those who came before them.