Lenas wrote:
What are people even mad about? The fact that Obama made a good point? Jesus Christ. None of us have gotten where we are, good or bad, on our own. At no point did he say that the fruits of your labors are not your own. He's saying that we as a people should strive to help others because it's guaranteed that someone helped us out at some point. What's wrong with that?
Why do you believe he said this?
This is a reiteration of Elizabeth Warrens comments:
Quote:
"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "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 marauding 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."
She continues: "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."
So it's not a "by the way, businesses use roads" or a "the more you know!" PSA. It's a prelude to raising taxes on businesses and "the rich" (queue evil music). Not to mention, how big of a douche do you need to be to tell people they didnt build their businesses. My Dad owned a small business and it's no easy task, quite risky. At best it was a stupid thing to say even conceeding that yeah, infrastructure is great. Small government not no government.
So sure society in general and infrastructure is needed. Society =/= government and infrastructure like roads, police and fire are State functions not federal. Add to that the fact that businesses already pay more than their fair share in taxes and the question again comes up: why did he say this?