President Obama -- Public Employee #1

[Geee]

American Spectator:

President Obama gave a speech last weekend that was so utterly out of touch with American values, so clueless as to how things work in this country, that I have to add a few footnotes to his performance.

You've probably seen this already. It is essentially of reprise of Elizabeth Warren's famous "Moocher's Lament" that made such a sensation among liberals on the Internet. It's all stock footage from academia but here, for the record, is what the President said in front of another one of those 24-and-under junior-college audiences in Virginia.

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. (Applause.)

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. 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.

Now let's make a few points here. First of all, anybody who thinks that somebody who starts their own business doesn't "make it on their own" hasn't the slightest idea of what they're talking about. I've started two small business efforts in my life. Both of them were complete failures and I lost a lot of money on each. But what I did learn is that when you're trying to start your own business, nobody is going to help you. You can hire people to work for you, you may persuade a few cohorts of the potential of your vision so that they join you -- with the expectation that they will be rewarded later. But when you're starting a business, the only person who is wholeheartedly interested in making it succeed is you. From the minute you wake up in the morning, you know taking only an hour off, a day off, even five minutes off, means your effort comes to a standstill.

In the opening pages of Socialism, Ludwig von Mises's monumental 1921 critique of that system, the great free market apostle presents a quote from V.I. Lenin in which the Great Leader of the Future That Works explains that all there is to running a business is keeping the accounts and adding up the profits as they come in. Lenin, said Von Mises, had "the errand boy's view of what business is about."

[Pepper]

@Geee

 

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."

 

Dat true for Obama. His two books - bought by the deluded - were written by others.