Obama: "If You've Got A Business - You Didn't Build That."
 

Obama: "If You've Got A Business - You Didn't Build That. Somebody Else Made That Happen"
How will the economy ever recover with a President that attacks business and success? :disgust


President Obama: "If You've Got A Business - You Didn't Build That. Somebody Else Made That Happen" | ZeroHedge

STFU also.

:1orglaugh

Your taking this completely out of context and then loudly proclaiming he's anti business.

No matter who you are or what you've accomplished, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't pop out of the womb and your instantly a millionaire with a huge business.

You've had dozens of mentors. Your father, your high school teacher, your football coach, your professor, your first boss....

And even if you've never had a mentor you didn't come up with a great idea and put it together all by yourself, your company was still built with the sweat and labor of your employees.

His point was when we do well, we do well together. No man has ever succeeded on his own.

You always try to come across as intelligent yet you don't even know the difference between your and you're.

Blame it on a typo or whatever, but you're still an idiot.

He shows his true thoughts and beliefs when his teleprompter is off. I wish he would speak without it more often so more people would realize just what he really believes.

Rochard that is such a pile of crap!

Just because Obama never succedded on his own, has never started a business and wouldn't know the first thing about running a business for someone like you to agree with him is shameful.

If you don't think he's anti-business you need to to some research. He has said as much. Quote:"The free market, it doesn't work. It has never worked."

No, that was not his point. His point was that anyone who owns a business owes something to others for their success. And it's very easy to prove that's a bad argument.

(1) Your parents paid taxes so that you could go to a public school in which a teacher could help you. That debt has been paid.
(2) Your parents OR yourself (depending on timelines here) paid taxes so that you could drive on public roads and bridges. That debt has been paid.

If anything, the only people a successful business owner owes are their parents, but do parents ever claim they're owed something? No, instead you have this piece of fucking dogshit arbitrary label of "government", these individuals, who think they have the right to extort money from you because you became successful; in order to pander to the unsuccessful to rally their support for votes.

I heard a great analogy from WF, "I don't hear Nike saying 'we are responsible for olympic runners'."

Also, (3) Was a contract ever drawn out between you and any of those who influenced you that you're to owe them a portion of your earnings if you become successful? No. Also don't throw out that bullshit "social contract", a contract requires the signature of both parties.

Also, (4) What about those who were home schooled and run successful businesses? There's a lot of them. Do they owe society something?

why did you put that in quotes when that isn't even a quote? he never used those words.

If you think Larry Flint taking on court cases didn't help you in porn then you are crazy.
If you think the government shutting down megaupload is not helping you then you
are a file sharer.

:1orglaugh

If you think porn would be on the internet without the existance of the ACLU then you are crazy.

If you think the internet existed before the government built it then you are crazier
than all hell.


:)

If it wasn't for the government funding for the creation of the net and Janet Reno's refusal go after adult porn.Your lives could of been very different.
This bullshit Obama is anti business, banks and the market have grown under him. For the mortgage fucking no one went to jail for, they set up new credit card laws but its takes 12 month for them to happen so the banks can fuck the people super hard before it happens. Healthcare is private health care putting money in the pockets of corporations
He is a failed liberal because the man aint a liberal. lol

Be that as it may, he's still correct in this instance.

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you!

But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea — God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

Elizabeth Warren

Well for one, I'm not involved in the adult industry at all anymore.

But let's just say I was for argument's sake...

In any of the 4 cases you mention, was a contract ever presented to you in which you signed that you would owe these people/institutions something upon their success? Was a contract ever presented to you before you entered the adult industry that said you have to pay these people because of their successes?

If it's not voluntary then it's theft. If you want to make donations, go right ahead. But don't force every person and every future person's to pay who happen to benefit indirectly from something another person or group of individuals did in the past. Because if you follow that train of thought, you wouldn't have any profit.

Every business ever built was the sole work product of a single person who owned the company. Nobody has ever benefited from stable financial markets, a readily available highly educated workforce and the publicly funded technological infrastructure put in place by the society at large. Public airwaves, DARPA, NASA, fire departments, the most reliable national currency that has ever existed, roads, bridges, air traffic control systems... All of that stuff doesn't matter a lick. When a man has a name plate on his desk that says CEO you can be sure he is solely responsible for every success of his life. Good fortune,, inheritence, a public school system, permissive immigration policy toward his ancestors - that's all just a thin layer of icing on the cake of his enormous, comprehensive intellect and desire to make something of himself.

Just ask warren buffet, jack welch, bill gates and the dozens of other people who have become wildly successful CEOs. They will quickly thank the team they work with, the luck they have had and the timing that made it all possible. Nobody of note ever built a meaningful business in complete isolation from the world around them. The moment you pick up a telephone, get an idea from your television, recall a lesson from your education or hire anyone else, the interactive web of elements tat go ino a successful venture expands exponentially.

Saying Mike Bloomberg 'did it all on his own' is as overly simplistic and wrong as saying 'he just got really lucky.'

The government hindered NASA, DARPA, roads, our national currency? I'm pretty sure the point is not eluding me. In fact, I think it's moving slowly enough for anyone to see it.

There is a bit of a flaw in your logic here. The average cost of public school is $13K per year per student. So assuming you went to all 12 years of school that is $156,000 so unless your parents paid $156,000 in taxes while you were in school, that is not a debt paid.

However, you are not asked to pay that back. You don't have go out to every tax payer and give them a few bucks for helping you get an education.

The same goes for roads. The amount you or your parents pay in taxes that goes towards the creation and upkeep of roads is only a small amount of the total needed.

For many things, roads and education just being two of them, the money is pooled together and used for the common good. If you owe anyone for your education it is people who don't have kids who still pay the tax that educated you.

I understand what Obama is saying and in many ways he is correct, he just said it in a strange way and should punch whoever wrote the speech in the face.

He is simply saying that if you are successful there were other people and outside influences that helped you get there whether you realize it or not. If you are a successful webmaster you took the initiative and had the drive to put in the hard work to get that success, but you sure as hell didn't invent the internet. You didn't create Google or Yahoo, or the other places that you are likely getting your traffic from. You didn't invent the computer and then figure out ways to improve it and mass produce it so that it could be affordable to the millions who now have them and use them to access your business. You didn't create HTML code or the software you use to build your site. Hell, you might not have even shot the content that is on your sites and I'm pretty confident you don't supply the millions with their ISP connections. These are all things you had nothing to do with, but they directly affect and influence your success and without them you have no business.

You are the motor that powers the car of your success, but without tires, a steering wheel, a transmission and other parts you aren't going to be getting very far.

Where his speech goes off the rails in not where he points out that a person's success was influenced by others, but where he suggests that the government can help average middle class people to gain that level of success and that somehow his administration is either going help them achieve that without them having to do much themselves.

He was just repeating this sentiment, but the delivery was a bit botched...



https://youtube.com/watch?v=hOyDR2b71ag

Morons think he's got some scary anti-American Muslim Kenyan agenda, but that's just what Rush and Fox tell them to think, so what are you going to do, argue with idiots?

Has anyone mentioned that you're a fucking moron tonight? If so, I apoligize, if not... it should have been said already.

Just so we are clear. You think a national currency and a roads system that are both handled by private companies would be better?

Would the government contract these things out or would multiple companies just create a national currency and the market would decide which one we used?

I agree that the government fucks most things up. In almost every case when the government handles things they end up bloated, corrupt and often broken down, but there are some things that likely need to be handled on that level for the sake of stability.

good points kane.

Her delivery is just as bad.

The contribution of business owners is providing services or products that others want to buy, along with the employment of others (for businesses who actually have employees).

Believing a society can't exist without taxation (theft via coercion/aggression/violence) is similar to how people had a hard time believing who would pick the cotton if slavery were ended.

Taxation is immoral, it is theft whichever way you try to look at it. Taxation is another remnant leftover from our primitive selves, that I can only hope time and evolution will get rid.

The root of the problem is aggression. We teach our children to not hit others, or steal from others; but when they become adults the situation is entirely opposite. Don't do something? Men in black suits will kidnap you, and if you try to escape you'll be murdered. Aggression is our society's answer to solving social issues, instead of voluntary solutions and exchanging of ideas.

In the end whenever you want to question whether or not something the state does is right or wrong, you only have to ask one question, "Is it voluntary or coercive?"

Look, a green triangle!

http://www.inkity.com/shirtdesigner/...1/N6941106.png

Came in here to post this quote. Glad someone else did. :thumbsup

Yeah, roads are for suckers!

Is this dude for real? My money is this is some kind of GFY novelty act to increase page views, anyone know?

He's the most powerful man in the world.

I have to admit, I find his business history - or lack thereof - rather interesting.

I hate this kind of bullshit. You just lied, plain and simple.

Here's what Obama really said: "Limited Gov't That Preserves Free Markets Doesn't Work. It Has Never Worked"

I hate this when it comes to politics. Take a simple quote and twist it around until it says the direct opposite, and then move some numbers around until the numbers say what you want it to say.

Each of us lives in and through an immense movement of the hands of other people. The hands of other people lift us from the womb. The hands of other people grow the food we eat, weave the clothes we wear, and build the shelters we inhabit. The hands of other people give pleasure to our bodies in moments of passion, and aid and comfort in times of affliction and distress. It is in and through the hands of other people that the commonwealth of nature is appropriated and accommodated to the needs and pleasures of our separate, individual lives. And, in the end, it is the hands of other people that lower us into the earth.

And this is what people don't get.

Taking politics out of it... I have a lot of single friends who do not have kids, and they have issues with the fact their tax dollars go to local schools. But what they fail to understand is that their tax dollars now are educating the people now that will be taking care of the country twenty years from now.

We could stop paying taxes to schools now and just about the time we go to retire there won't be any power, because we failed to educate the next generation and there is no one left to run the power plants - or fix the roads, etc.

He simply said that no one got where they are today on their own. Each and every one of us were educated in form or another by others, period. Even people who were homes schooled were still educated.

(And by the way, people who are home schooled will get tested by the school system and still use text books.)

I can look back at my life and honesty say there is a handful of people who have mentored me so the point where they altered my life.

So then please explain to me how a private sector monetary system would work in this country that would be an improvement over what we have.

That's a pretty broad statement.

There are still a few actual individualistic people left in this world.

My grandfather for instance.

He never knew his parents and went to work for the railroad at age 15. Married my grandmother at 17. Built his own house by Peace River in central Florida and fished and hunted to feed them.

Then through his own intelligence and work ethic became friends and business partners with other hard working smart men. One turned out to be the local bank president a few years later. The other became the biggest real estate agent in central florida.

Together the three of them formed a loose partnership and all became millionaires in the citrus and cattle industry.
My grandfather was like a mathematical genius. Any figures put in front of him he calculated damn near instantly.
He never went to any school. Public or private.

He paid 7 figures every year in taxes from the time I was born (1961) up until he suffered a stroke in 1998.

He MORE than paid for the roads, schools, etc. that freeloading pieces of garbage on welfare have NEVER contributed even one penny to.

Not "Each and every one of us" are dependent on the govt.

Matter of fact...unless I'm mistaken, the constitution of the United States says it is supposed to be the other way around.

I think it is a bot. Pretty good programmer whomever is behind it.

Why is it that you know how much he paid in taxes, and why did he pay that much? H&R Block?

Because I was like a son to him. He took me under his wing from the time I was born.
My aunt Barbara did the books for his business and I was privvy to all of his business books.

He was rightfully proud of what he did and we spent many hours driving around central florida through his orange groves, having dinners together, and spending time at his offices where he showed me what he had accomplished.

Why? Do you think I'm lying about it? I don't have any reason to. I just grew up a lot different than you did. Much more "country" and much more around people who didn't trust the govt. and didn't want or need any help from them.

Things are a LOT different these days for sure.

But I know for a fact that not everyone needs help from the govt. or general public to get things done.

This country was built by bad ass individualistic men. Not by the U.S. govt.

That kind of talk is pretty much socialism. I know some on here will say it's not and have a different perspective.

But if I hear one more time how the wealthy don't pay their "fair share"...when 50% of the people in the U.S. don't pay any income tax and even get a check from the govt. (the earned income tax CREDIT) I think I'll puke.

How about everybody get angry about the millions of people who don't pay into the system at all? They use the roads and the bridges and whatever other kind of b.s. argument that has been made.

If all it takes is the govt. providing us with public education (they don't...us property owners PAY for everyone else to go to public school by the way) and building highways (they don't...all of us who buy gasoline pay for the highways with the national gasoline tax) then WHY isn't everyone on this message board a millionaire?

I'll tell you why.

Some people are smarter, work harder, and have great ideas. And the majority of folks are lazy and just want to get by.

If we're talking about currency, you legalize multiple currencies. Eventually the market will decide the winner.

For other things, think of it this way..

Who builds the roads, bridges, fights fires, protects us from bad people, ensures justice, etc..? These are all currently public functions paid for via taxes, but who ultimately carries out these actions? People.

In a voluntary society, people still exist and people still solve problems. It's solved through the free market. And please don't make the claim that the free market is what we have now, or is what caused the housing bubble. We don't have a free market and haven't had one for a long time.

Getting back on point, the free market would employ all of those same people, except in a competitive market environment; which is a better system, because competition creates innovation, better quality and better pricing for every budget.. whereas government sponsored monopolies funded by tax dollars don't have the threat of competition, thus lack that drive to succeed, as their success is ensured.

And you totally missed it. You call your Grandfather individualistic, and perhaps rightfully so, but where did he get his work ethic from?

Well, he got it from working at the railroad at such a young age. He most likely had a number of mentors there.

You call him individualistic yet you mentioned "friends" and "business partners". And somewhere along the line other people worked for him and made him the success he was.

No one climbed their way to the top on their own without the help of others.

Duh...You mean people actually gather experience as they grow up? Wow! I didn't know that!

So again...why aren't you and 99% of the people on GFY millionaires? You all have "friends" and "business partners" right? Or were inspired by someone (or as the media and you are calling it: a "mentor" lol)

Show me the money baby!

Not trying to bust your balls. but I just gave you a real life story of my grandfather being his own man and building an empire through his own work ethic and with no govt. help...matter of fact the govt. was always a hindrance to him. And you are still trying to tell me he needed "help".

Whatever.
I was there.
I say "no" he didn't need any help from anybody.
If he wasn't just a little bit smarter, faster, and more badass than everyone around him he would have just been another worker bee...like the majority of people are.

We are not all alike. Most people are lazy and unambitious. That's just the truth. You know it...you've seen it in your life I'm sure. And yet you found yourself excelling while others did not. There is a reason for that. And it ain't the govt.
It's you.

First off, don't misunderstand me. I feel the government is way too big and I also think most things handled by the government are bloated, corrupt and don't work nearly as well as they could otherwise. However, I see some things as being necessary evils.

Let's take fire and police for example. If I pick up the phone and dial 911 because my house is on fire they will come and put it out. They don't ask if I have paid any dues, the don't ask me where I live who my contracted fire department is. They just show up and put the fire out. If my calls is for police help because someone is trying to break my door down, the cops don't first look me up and make sure I am a member who is current on my dues, they just show up and help me. If those two things were left up to the free market we could easily end up with a system where there were multiple competing groups. Maybe they would all come running, put my house out and bill me for it. Maybe I would have to choose one and pay them for the service and if that one happened to be busy, well, I'm screwed. The same with police. When you look back at times it the 1700's and 1800's where much of this stuff was free market and privately ran it was a hugely corrupt business. I just can't see how something like that could be run in a free market, privately run way that still assured that everyone had service and that service was good.

I could see a system where roads were privately handled, but there you would have one of two things occurring. You would either have to tax everyone in a particular area to get the money and then hire a company to build the roads/bridges in your city or you would have to make them all toll roads and let companies control certain sections of the roadways/bridges and charge a fee to go on them. There is a huge downside to that.First, if you went with the idea that everyone in the area split the cost those that lived near bridges and freeways would have to pay a ton more than those who live out in small towns. If you let private companies own the roads and charge there is no way to control the cost because, in a way, they hold you hostage. It could turn the roadway system of this country into a giant cluster fuck.

I think when it comes to some things like roads, fire, police, putting them in the hands of private companies and letting them run them as for profit businesses would be a very bad idea.

So then while we are deciding I get to walk around with a dozen different kinds of money that are likely changing in value by the hour and any store I go to will either have to figure out the exchange rate of whatever currency I want to use to pay and/or have multiple prices on every item - one for each currency.

How would these currencies be backed? Who would back them? How does a company operate a currency as a for profit business?

It would be a headache beyond belief.

That's why we do NEED govt.

But just as you said earlier...the govt. has grown incrementally over the last two centuries and now is so big and overreaching and so bloated with bureaucrats and administrative crap that it's out of control.

Dvae that is such a pile of crap!

You need education, skills, an infrastructure to allow you to set up a business and flourish. Policemen to make sure people don't steal it.

If you want to do it all on your own, build a boat, row to a desert island and try it. Man has worked as a team for 500,000 years. What makes one man the leader and another a follower, is often down to his upbringing.

Americans still think they're back in the days of the pioneers trekking across America, to grab land the Government gave them and had the Army to keep the Indians at bay. Without the infrastructure in the early days, you would still be ruled be the UK.

Yes Government is bloated and the US rides on the bloated money. It would sink if it was taken out.

I agree 100%

I think there are some things we need to spend money on that are losing propositions because they help make our worlds better/safer/easier to function in.

Most of the stuff the government does is useless. We could do away with a lot of things and life would be just as good, if not better than it is now and our tax rate would be a hell of a lot lower.

:2 cents: Fuck roads.

You want to know who likes roads? Communists and hippies, that's who!

Real men take the train.

You dont realize 200 yrs ago. You would be a lowly worker and with not much,no chance of building yourself up. Without the gov funded internet where would you be ? You start a store there is electric service there ,a road to the store,police force,fire. A basically educated work force the gov provides that. Courts that will uphold your contracts.You guys need to read up on history, the facts not the bullshit. The gov basically created the middle class which you are all part of, it didnt exist before ww2. In a total free market most of the people here would be a lowly worker at best nothing more.

That would be a nightmare. It's been tried before in other countries and it doesn't work.

You only need one currency, but it MUST be backed by something tangible.

We just went off the gold standard back in 1933, which is not that long ago. I don't understand why everyone is so against going back to a currency that is actually backed by something real, or by a collection of various commodities. A currency backed by gold, silver, palladium, copper, or whatever they want so long as it was real, would work.

Sure, that means the Gov can not borrow endless amounts of money and send the country into massive debt again, but that is the way it is suppose to be! The system we have now is not supposed to be this way. We are not supposed to have trillions of dollars of debt! Money is supposed to be worth something, not worthless. They create money out of thin air! How stupid is that? But the ignorance doesn't end there. They borrow more money that someone else created out of thin air in another part of the world, by selling them IOUs for our fake money, and then are in debt to them for money that doesn't even exist in the first place, all the while giving our borrowed and printed fake money by the billions to other countries who are broke! It's lunacy! But more importantly, it is unsustainable.

Someone here talked about letting the private sector do it. I was reading states where they are bidding to get a private contractor to take over their prisons. The scary part was the company said they had to guarantee 95 percent occupancy. And how is the state going to do that and who is going to pay for that?

Actually one of the first things our founding fathers did was set up a treasury so they could borrow money. Gov doesnt run debt free, you are going to build a road with no debt or go to war.
Debt doesnt matter,the right is playing you. In fact Dick Cheney said it himself. Its all part of their game plan.

"The Two Santa Claus Theory
The Two Santa Claus Theory is a political theory and strategy published by Wanniski in 1976, which he promoted within the United States Republican Party.[6][7]
According to Wanniski, the theory is simple. In 1976, he wrote that the Two-Santa Claus Theory suggests that "the Republicans should concentrate on tax-rate reduction. As they succeed in expanding incentives to produce, they will move the economy back to full employment and thereby reduce social pressures for public spending. Just as an increase in Government spending inevitably means taxes must be raised, a cut in tax rates?by expanding the private sector?will diminish the relative size of the public sector".[7] Wanniski suggested this position, as Thom Hartmann has clarified, so that the Democrats would "have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections"[8].
The theory states that, in democratic elections, if one party appeals to voters by proposing more spending, then a competing party cannot gain broader appeal by proposing less spending. The first "Santa Claus" of the theory title refers to the political party that promises spending. Instead, "Two Santa Claus Theory" recommends that the competing party must assume the role of a second Santa Claus by not arguing to cut spending but rather offering the more appealing and publicly sellable option of cutting taxes.
This theory is a response to the belief of monetarists, and especially Milton Friedman[citation needed], that the government must be starved of revenue in order to control the growth of spending (since, in the view of the monetarists, spending cannot be reduced by elected bodies as the political pressure to spend is too great)[citation needed]. See also Starve the beast.
The "Two Santa Claus Theory" does not argue against this belief but holds that such arguments cannot be espoused to try to win democratic elections. In Wanniski's view, the Laffer curve and supply-side economics provide an attractive alternative rationale for revenue reduction: that under reduced taxation the economy will grow, not merely that the beast of the government will be starved of revenue, and that that growth is an attractive option to present to the voters. Wanniski argued that Republicans must become the tax-cutting Santa Claus to the Democrats' spending Santa Claus. "


Look at it everytime the right isnt in power they scream about debt. Then once they are they spend like drunken sailors. After ww2 debt was over 120 percent of gdp.

Sure you can have debt, you have to have credit. But that is the reason we have a debt ceiling that somehow keeps getting raised every time we hit it. That ceiling should never be raised unless there is a national emergency due to someone attacking us or a natural disaster.

If you hit the debt ceiling, then you can't borrow any more. This is not rocket science. You borrow what you are allowed to borrow, no more. Then you pay it down and then you can borrow some more. That is how credit works. Credit does not mean you can continue to borrow beyond your limit with no ability to ever pay it back. If you and I have to balance our budgets, so does the government (and states).

If that means they have to cut back on government spending, government entitlements, government employees, foreign aid, or build less roads that take you to the same location as 10 other roads do, then so be it. That is how it's supposed to work. If we can not afford it, then we can't afford it.

And why on earth are we giving billions of dollars in aid to other nations when we ourselves are drowning in debt?

It's crazy, irresponsible, and unsustainable.