Ed Morrissey had a certain point to make to Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama, who of course are currently feeling the need to lecture to small business owners that people paid for infrastructure (so shut up):
Er, well, so did those small business owners. In fact, because they generate more tax revenue directly to the locality, small business owners actually have more claim to have “built that” than others. Both Warren and Obama seem stubbornly ignorant of the fact of the origin of the capital that got confiscated to build that infrastructure. Without people willing to take risks to create and expand markets, there would be no capital to confiscate in the first place. Every road and bridge that Obama and Warren use as an example got built because people took risks, created and expanded markets and employment, and generated the wealth that funded those projects.
I think that the major disconnect here is that people like Obama and Warren think that money is something that the State creates, and that must be fairly distributed to the populace in an equitable manner; while the populace still quaintly thinks that money represents their own industry and skill, and that it must only be given to the State when necessary, and with restrictions attached.
Annnnd that’s pretty much it, really.
Moe Lane
They think not taking your money is a government expense.
Maybe we should avoid the whole argument and go back to the barter system.
Of course to the left it is the government money, why else would they refer to tax cuts and deductions as “spending in the tax code”?
Man, talk about your dystopian futures. Obama is pushing that the individual cannot succeed without the collective. Should Romney’s campaign video just be ‘Rollerball’?
If Romney can make this the central question of 2012, then I will gladly vote for him (as opposed to voting against Obama, which I plan to do anyway).
Honestly, I don’t think either Warren or Obama understood the reaction that something like that would generate. I think they actually saw that as being self-evident and by the time Obama realized that few saw it the way he did, it was too late to actually do serious damage control.
And for this I am grateful that Warren’s statement didn’t go too far within the press, leaving it for Obama to bring all the attention to himself.
At last!!!! Something Obama can claim to have built!!!