who built it?

Recently people are complaining that the President has been taken out of context. That when he said “if you have a successful business, YOU didn’t build that” the republicans and conservatives are all taking it out of context.
Here is a question for you, How else can that be taken except for “you did not cause that business to exist, others built it.”?
“But he said more than that”… yes, you are right, he also said (before that quote) that there is an infrastructure of teachers and firefighters and police officers and roads that caused the business to exist.

Well that is all well and good, except for the factual point that business existed long before ANY of those things. But, looking at the conditions that exist today, is that really true?

According to what Obama said it seems that he believes the teachers and firefighters and police officers and roadworkers are really the people who are responsible for the success of the business.

Here is the problem.
Today the police are always there. Whether I build a business or not but my business does not/ will not exist because of them. And the same goes for the firefighters and the teachers and the road workers and all the others. But they have not ALWAYS been there. In fact many of them would not exist if it weren’t for business needs CAUSING them to exist.

In fact, for today I want to use the example of some successful businesses. Let’s consider Microsoft or Apple or Google or Ben and Jerry’s…

All of these businesses exist because the people in charge of them had an idea and worked to make them happen. If Bill Gates had not had the idea for how to make software for Microsoft, That business would not exist. Period end of story.
If these people had not taken out loans on their own or worked insane hours or invested so heavily of their own. Then these would not exist.

In fact if you think about it there was a guy who had a couple of thousand different patents and inventions. We would not even be able to live the way we do today if it had not been for him. And yet he was never formally educated past third grade because his teachers kicked him out of school for being “wild, incorrigible and in general, unteachable”
His Name? Thomas Alva Edison. You know inventor of the lightbulb and the phonograph… for starters…

I guess all that “infrastructure” really kinda didn’t work for him did it now? The infrastructure, in the guise of his teachers, completely wrote him off and consigned him to nothing. And yet how many of his peers who went through that public school system were the successes that he was?

As for all those other things, every business pays taxes already. In fact many of them, in order to build in the first place, are required to foot the bill for things like road improvements and easements all on their own. So all that “government help” that Obama touts is really just a bunch of bull pucky.

These businesses exist because the effort to make them work is made by the business owner.

The flip side of the same coin is IF Obama is right and the government is responsible for the success of those businesses and it is not the work and sacrifice of the business owner, then why do so many businesses fail?
If the government is responsible for the success of all those businesses that are doing well then conversely that would have to mean that the government is also equally responsible for the failure of every single failed business.
And if the government is responsible for all the failed business then doesn’t that mean that they, themselves, have failed? And if they are responsible then they also ought to be required to make it up in amends to every man wqoman and child who is suffering for those faliures.
They have to make up the losses for all the entrepreneurs who tried to start a business? (and their families and descendants.)

I would think so.

Let’s face it if we look at the difference between businesses run by individuals and ones run or supported by the government the trend is clear. The successful businesses are ALL the ones that are run by private individuals. All the government businesses are mostly costly boondoggles or they are entirely unsuccessful.

Here is a list of businesses that the government has either taken over or developed that cannot seem to operate in a way that makes a profit.
(in other words, successfully)

Amtrak
The United States Post Office.
NASA
The Veteran’s Administration
Social Security
Medicare
Medicaid
Fanny Mae
Freddy Mac

Also there are businesses that the government has “bailed out” which are still not doing as well as their counterparts like GM or ones that have completely failed (Solyndra).

So I have to say that the idea of the government being responsible for successful business is a total lie. Yes I said it this is a lie.

And there is no way you can take the words of the president and put them “into context” so they mean anything else. In fact, the only way you CAN make the president’s words mean anything other than what the conservatives are saying they mean IS to take them out of context.