[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKjPI6no5ng[/youtube]
“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.”
Which successful person claims that?
Of course, you would have to look far and wide to find a successful person who had no individual initiative, drive, effort, smarts, determination to overcome adversity, the ability to solve problems as they arise . . . All of that is irreplaceable and nearly impossible to “outsource” to another person — and makes a much bigger factor than the roads and bridges built by (mostly state) governments. Everyone has access to those, but not everyone is successful; ergo, success is more than just a matter of access to government-supplied goods and services.
“I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I’m so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.”
How many successful people aren’t smart in some way or fashion? Of course, we have a difficult time measuring “smart.” Would anyone argue that college dropouts Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg aren’t smart? Restaurateurs, app developers, illustrators, engineers, performers, architects — all of them have some “smarts” in that they figured out how to best use their talents to create something that other people want. They may or may not have high IQs or high SAT scores. But all of them came up with a good answer to a fundamental question in this economy: What good or service can I provide that other people will pay for?
Oh, and the shrugging off of smarts is kind of interesting to hear from a president of whom historians declared, shortly after his inauguration, “IQ is off the charts . . . He’s probably the smartest guy ever to become president.”
“It must be because I worked so hard. There are a whole bunch of hard-working people out there.”
Yes, and their inability to succeed as much as they wish is sad. But big efforts do not always yield big results, and no one ever said that working hard is sufficient. You could be the world’s finest maker of buggy whips and always give 110 percent effort, but if the automobile is replacing horses and buggies . . . you’re just not going to thrive.
And there are a lot of not-so-hard-working people out there who expect to be successful anyway.
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life!”
Okay, but why is that relevant to this year’s presidential election? Why is Obama attempting to hide the entirety of the federal government’s actions, laws, and spending behind our happy memories of our favorite teacher? What about all the lousy teachers? What about teachers at private schools? What about someone who taught us outside of a school, a first boss, a mentor, a co-worker, an employer who gave us a great opportunity? Why is the relentless advocate of ever-greater federal spending suggesting that every time someone has helped us in our lives, Washington deserves the credit?
“Somebody helped create this unbelievable American system that allowed you to thrive.”
One of the big arguments in this election, Mr. President, is the accusation that you’re changing and eroding “this unbelievable American system that allowed you to thrive.” That system included an ability to pursue one’s dreams, like a small business, without running afoul of a thousand different regulations at the federal, state, and local levels. (Some states and localities now require a license for fortune-telling, complete with a fee.) Some think that a system of businesses rising and falling based on their ability to bring quality goods and services to customers at a competitive price is being replaced with crony capitalism, where who a business knows in government is the preeminent factor in a business’ success.
“Somebody invested in roads and bridges . . .”
Yes, and everyone paid for it; by paying higher income taxes, higher property taxes, and higher sales taxes if they purchase more, the successful paid a higher share, in fact.
Yes, somebody did. And liberal/progressives are trying their damnedest to screw it all up.
They put in all sorts of governmental roadblocks to prevent people from being successful, all in the name of “fairness”.
They have their hand out each time you turn around wanting another fee, another tax, another “bribe” in order to let you do as you need to be successful, all in the name of “fairness”.
They limit your ability to be successful by making off-limits certain land, or making it hard to compete in certain marketplaces, or making your product semi-illegal, or adding laws unrelated, on the surface, to your marketplace but which drive up the cost of your goods and services. And all in the name of “fairness”.
“Fairness”, as defined by liberal/progressives, has probably destroyed more wealth in this country than all of the floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters combined over the course of our nation’s history.
Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People contains many first-hand accounts.
This is one:
Gee.
Where were the GOVERNMENT made roads?
Etc.
Sorry I have no clue what he is trying to ‘communicate’….he is not telling his “story” very well…are we suppose to create our own scenario out of his Lefty ‘talking points’…..like Hope and Change???
or did I miss a whole bunch of obamaspew… ?
I feel like yelling you’ve said a lot of words – So really, what’s your Point!?!??
The only line that makes any kind of sense to me is what Johngalt quoted – and even that Ofraud wants to destroy…
I have yet to see any evidence to support the claims that Obama has a “high IQ.” Lacking the ability to examine his high school or college grades or even his SAT score, most of the “evidence” is based on his skill at reciting from a teleprompter or assumptions on the “IQ of an average Harvard Graduate” (Since nobody on the outside has seen his college records, it is not possible to say whether Barry graduated at either the top or bottom of his class). I’ve known scores of actors who can pull of sounding like a genius given a good script, but who in reality were not all that bright.
And even then Ditto, IQ scores do not actually dictate how intellegent a person truly is since a healthy human individual is consantly learning new ways to solve puzzles and problems (in theory of sociology on individual’s attempt to advance and adept.) All it does is give a snapshot of the person’s learning curve when it was taken, and further tests need to be done to measure the person’s advancements or decreases in problem solving since it is not a static number. And so far not a single one of President Obama’s IQ tests (if he’s ever given one) has been given to the public, and as you said, not even the college documents or his grade level has been released to public consumption. So how do they claim he’s so intellegent when there’s no researchable evidence to back it up for fact checkers to confirm or dismiss properly?
In the original article, Jim Geraghty makes Obama’s point:
The operative terms here being ” …the successful paid a higher share….”
The infrastructure of this country was built during a period when the marginal tax rate on the wealthy was between 70-90%. Today, with the tax structure as it is, we can’t even keep up with the maintenance of our infrastructure, let alone build it. In effect, the wealthy no longer pay their share, like they used to.
That’s all Obama was saying—not some sort of collectivism or communism.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
It’s not due to the tax structure today, Lib1. It’s due to all of the unfunded liabilities the various states have on the books. It’s due to paying out money for social engineering programs that have socially engineered anything but poverty in the inner cities. It’s due to the local governments paying more and more money for public schooling, even as the quality of the education continues to deteriorate.
All of the wealth the various governments have collected from the industrious citizens and businesses has been spent poorly in efforts to address “fairness”. And all they really have done is destroy wealth in this country.
States and local governments have constantly been increasing income and property taxes, and for what? To destroy even more wealth, while providing less and less of the services that wealth is supposed to pay for, because liberal/progressives like yourself believe “fairness” is the be-all, end-all, of government’s purpose.