He could have just as easily said, “Maybe I was successful because of this bridge. But everyone can use that bridge.” That’s why it makes no sense.
I said they were before. But I dispute that this is some kind of right-wing lie. The words in context sound worse to a lot of people.
BTW, remember the hay the Obama campaign made out of Romney’s, “I like being able to fire people.” comment? Taken out of context. I’d like to think that he’ll learn something positive from this about being honest.
Last I heard it was a buck-oh-five.
Yes, everyone can use that bridge[sup][/sup]. A few of them use it to become millionaire businessmen; their individual traits set them apart from the rest. Without the bridge[sup][/sup], none of them do.
What part of this are you not understanding?
It was taken out of context, and in context it’s worse? Romney is giving the president a break by only quoting part of the speech. How nice of him.
That depends on how you define freedom. If you mean the freedom to be naked, hungry and vulnerable, well yes, that costs nothing. But the freedom to be educated, to be secure, to have a functioning market system, to travel from place to place efficiently in safety and comfort, all of these cost money. It’s true that first amendment freedoms don’t cost much. But first amendment freedoms alone can’t build companies.
The bridge is common to all. That means that the bridge was not the cause of the person’s success, except to the extent that oxygen is critical to the businessman’s success, as well as a functioning liver. It’s a completely banal thing to say.
When we determine what makes people successful, we don’t first start with the Big Bang. Can you understand why people would interpret the President’s comments as they did? Either he said something provocative, or he said something so banal as to question his intelligence. Or at least question how dumb he thinks his audience is that they would have to be reminded of such basic things even a 3-year old understands.
Anyone can use the infrastructure, an ongoing discussion is who should pay. If you choose to use it and make a lot of profit, you might have to pay a little more than the person who opted to not use it.
You can’t go to a bar and drink all day and they say “Everyone else could have been here drinking, they should pay an equal share.”
Of course this is just an analogy and I wouldn’t take it much further than countering the argument that a progressive tax rate is unfairly punishing the successful.
And that does not require 20% of GDP at the federal level. Our country was making lots of success stories while spending a fraction of that.
The progressive tax is not necessary to pay for infrastructure, so the argument the President is making is not valid. The progressive tax was necessary first to pay for a standing army, and is now necessary to pay for a welfare state. Infrastructure has always been paid for quite easily with relatively small taxes.
The conservative critique against government that Warren and later Obama are ostensibly pushing back against is not government has a basic concept, but the vision of government’s role since the New Deal. All the things the President listed existed before the New Deal and thus are supported by almost all conservatives and libertarians. Is the President making a case for returning to that form of government, the kind that actually performs its core functions?
adaher:
The point, though, is that America is still an infrastructure. It’s like if I said you could crash at my place for a while as long as you chip in around the house. Otherwise you run the risk of being a freeloader. Therefore, if you want to come to America and run a business, you chip in your price of participation/admission. Otherwise, try your luck elsewhere.
NOBODY is arguing (including Obama) that intelligent and hard work don’t matter. The fact that you keep repeating this implies that you’re trying to make a controversy where it doesn’t exist just because you feel like bashing Obama or something. He isn’t saying this. Nobody is saying this. I’ll repeat it. Nobody is saying this.
A bridge that anyone can use is just a starting point. The bridge is not what MAKES you successful. It ALLOWS you to be successful. It doesn’t matter if you’re a genius with a crazy work ethic if you’re born in the middle of a starving African nation where bandits can loot you at a moment’s notice.
Obama said what he did because the right-wing talking point is frequently spread that any success you acquire in this nation – any money you earn – is yours and yours alone and that you shouldn’t have to pay tax money since you don’t use what it pays for.
Here’s the bombshell:
The reality is that we all use it. So what if you go to a private school and tax money pays for public schools? You don’t go to public school, so why should you help pay for it? Why pay for bridges you don’t use? The answer is that you benefit, too, from a society that has a better-educated population: Would you rather do business with educated people who add value to society, or poor, unskilled people? You benefit from an economy that pumps freely because people can get around because of bridges you helped pay for. You benefit from a society that has a legal system that will fight for your rights and personal liberties.
So when someone comes to this country to start a business, they absolutely can feel proud for using their brains, blood, sweat, and tears to get ahead. But you can’t also forget that you’re doing it in a country that’s being held up by everyone else’s efforts. That’s why they need to pay their fair share of taxes. If you profit a lot, you pay a lot. Right now it’s cranked down to a level where the rich pay very little tax as a portion of their net incomes/profits.
No one is arguing that we should pay no taxes. The argument is over whether the rather high taxes we have should be yet higher. The President observing that we need relatively cheap stuff to be successful doesn’t really make that case. Almost all money raised will go to shore up entitlements, not to build more infrastructure.
The rich don’t have high taxes. Taxes are extremely low.
I am not part of the mega-elite or anything but I am extremely well off. The American tax system is so ridiculously geared in favor of the rich that it’s funny when I see people try to imply otherwise. I pay more tax in terms of absolute dollars, but I also make a ton more in terms of absolute dollars. Relatively speaking, my tax burden is miniscule compared to others.
If it weren’t a right wing lie they would have included the full context. That they did not shows that they did not think the full context was worse.
The context there was not that it was about companies serving him, but about the context of his career where Bain made money partially by firing lots of people. If your average Joe had said that, it could easily be seen as a statement of commitment to using only high quality services. We don’t know if Romney as CEO of Bain liked making companies fire people, but he certainly didn’t mind it.
So by “minimize” do you mean he suggested that success takes more than intelligence and hard work? Is that what you are objecting to? If everybody who is intelligent and works hard was successful, we would see a lot more thriving businesses. Intelligent, hard working people fail at business all the time. What were they lacking?
Progressive taxes are not necessary for anything. Taxes are necessary for anything the government does. The “progressive” part indicates a strategy/philosphy for setting rates.
First water, now oxygen and livers. The huge difference is that there is already oxygen in the atmosphere. We are born with a liver. No one needs to put in a lot of effort to make those things available to us. Bridges (and all the other things I mentioned) are different. Someone needs to make those things happen before we can all enjoy the benefits.
And here is the problem. You think of all the man-made infrastructure in this country as banal. You only responded to part of my post #569, so I’ll go over this again. To treat these things as banal, as givens, as basics, is to neglect them and risk losing them. It takes effort to invent, build, and maintain these things. Someday, even something like the internet will be surpassed. I hope it happens here first; there are great benefits to be had. That won’t happen if we think of it as being like the air we breathe.
The internet existed before the New Deal?
I learn something new every day here.
Historically, lower than usual, but middle class taxes are historically lower yet. But that’s not really what matters, what matters is whether they are too high based on what the person is willing to pay. When our government mainly spent its money on the things the President talked about, taxes were too low to have an impact on most people. When taxes became as high as necessary to support a Cold War military and an entitlement state, you got tax revolts.
Yeah, when someone says something and it gets taken out of context, it’s justified as being a clue into their deeply held views. I think it’s entirely reasonable to see the President’s and Warren’s statements as an insight into their love of the state.
Where he goes wrong is in saying that the difference maker was the bridge or the public school.