Good grief, NBC Nightly News just played the sound bite starting with “If you’ve got a business…” as their intro to Romney responding to it. No mention of selective/context.
Please explain to me how you think “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” is any worse than the actual, full quote “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build [those bridges]. Somebody else made that happen.” The point is the same - you haven’t paid enough in taxes for teachers and bridges that ‘let you’ succeed. And how anyone can miss how both statements are equally insulting is beyond me.
Because the economy performs better for more people with a more progressive tax rates. It’s simple economics; the higher the top marginal tax rate, the higher the per capita GDP. The trick is to not raise the tax rates so high as to slow the economy. Fortunately, we are no where near having the highest taxes in history, so we have room to increase the rates on higher incomes to invest in the recovery and eventually reduce the deficit.
Why should we? Because we are a republic with a representative democracy, and constitutional powers to tax and spend. We the people decide who carries out our will, to achieve the best outcome for the most people. We celebrate your success, and ask more of those who get ahead to help those still struggling.
From that speech, immediately proceeding the part that’s being quoted everywhere:
" 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.)"
Sounds kinda scornful to me.
You might have a point if Obama wasn’t a millionaire himself.
Then you aren’t paying attention to where the scorn is directed (and I think that’s obvious to anyone who’s been reading this thread and your posts in it).
The scorn is not directed at business people, or even at only successful business people. It’s directed at (successful) business people who will not and do not recognize the many factors that enabled them to be a success, who instead try to insist, both internally (to themselves) and externally (to the rest of the world) that their success owes little or nothing to the vast systems in place that they utilize on a daily basis in order to create, maintain, and grow their businesses.
As others have said, if you want to prove to the rest of the world that your success owes little or nothing to the fact that you live in this society, feel free to go to Somalia and start a business there. When you reach even a modest level of success, please post here and let us know.
Exactly right, Bo. The scorn is not towards the successful - in fact Obama praised them for their initiative. The scorn is for the ones who claim that the system which made them so very successful is so fucking unfair. That an increase in the top marginal rate by 3% is treason and economic suicide but extending the payroll tax cut has to be offset. That asking that Mitt Romney pay slightly more than 18% of his income in taxes is un-American but keeping teachers and firefighters on the job is something we just can’t afford right now.
It’s at them that the scorn is (rightfully) directed.
The classic economic answer to this, accepted by all mainstream conservatives, is that if society left it up to individuals they would share 0% in taxes. Everybody understands that everybody’s perception of their “fair share” is “less than what they now pay.”
The history of the income tax shows that it was first placed entirely on the tiny slice of those with the highest incomes. That changed quickly because of the extraordinary needs of WWI and a broader spectrum of society was taxed, but rates went down quickly in the 1920s. The core idea of a progressive tax rate remained. Tax rates rose again because of WWII and the rates on the highest earners became the highest in our history. This stayed true through the 1950s, despite the three recessions under Eisenhower.
Economists on all sides agree that 90% tax rates are excessive, so the maximum rate has fallen fairly consistently ever since. So why did such a rate persist for so long after the war instead of being immediately cut as in the earlier example? Probably because government accomplishments were so overwhelmingly obvious so that the correlation between paying taxes and getting benefit from them was equally obvious.
It was only later that Americans became so used to prosperity, so blase to enormous wealth, so distant from real national problems, that they could make the mental disconnect between their gliding along on ice and the machinery that froze the water.
We are not and never have been a nation of rugged individualists making it on our own. The federal government created a platform for that success in a thousand ways. It still does, and it always will. That’s why you - and I - are asked for a share. The details of how much and what it is spent on can always be argued. That a share is necessary isn’t. And a progressive tax system is equally necessary to collect that share. That used to be a universally understood truth.
So did Reagan and every other president until GW.
Your argument is so lame I’m surprised that you aren’t too embarrassed to use it. There is some optimal level of taxes. If the current rate is too low then we aren’t raping the rich to raise them. So far you have shown no interest in saying why tax rates, which are near historic lows, should remain where they are and not be raised back to the level they were when the budget was in surplus.
But business owners did not do that, since the infrastructure had to be there before they were a success. Same as with paying for teachers. You have a moral obligation to pay for the next generation’s infrastructure in return for the last generation’s paying for yours. My parents didn’t mind paying taxes for schools, because growing up in the Depression schools and libraries gave them services their parents could never afford. Our generation seems to have forgotten what we owe to those who paid taxes to pay for our teachers.
I’m responding here because your misconception comes through very clearly.
I’d be fairly certain that he would file a Schedule C, if they had those things back then, and so would officially be a business.
No, it’s funded by the blue states who subsidize the rural areas of the country. Luckily liberals think that some things are so important we should all get together and pay for them.
Sometimes I secretly hope that conservatives will live to see the consequences of their own policies. The Gulf Coast can pay for their own rebuilding after hurricanes, the south can figure out how to deal with decades of drought caused by AGW, and Mississippi and Alabama can come up with revenue to make up for the subsidies sent to them every year.
I’ll just point out that those bridges were mostly built when the rich were paying more than they are today. And had a smaller slice of the pie. Do you think the rich were oppressed in the '90s? if the rate then was a reasonably fair and equitable one, then the rich are paying less than their fair share today.
Did you read the speech?
I even very conveniently quoted it for you.
He thinks businesses succeed because of the initiative of the owner.
How much clearer do you want him to say it?
He is also smart enough to realise that it takes more than just initiative.
How many home runs, for example, would Babe Ruth have hit in cricket?
How many gold medals would Torville and Dean have won skating on sand?
You need an environment that nurtures you and your initiative. Who and what do you think provides that environment? And that’s a very specific question I would like to ask of you Shodan.
What provides the rule of law, the roading, the infrastructure, the education, the IP protection, the power grid, international agreements and everything else without which you wouldn’t even have a home - let alone a business?
At least some is:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/consumerawareness/a/uspsabout.htm
So when I buy a taco, I’m funding the taco stand?
I had no idea that payment for services rendered was the same as “funding”.
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As to the quote in the OP, I think it’s ambiguous what the word “that” refers to in that sentence (i.e., whether it’s “roads and bridges” etc. or “the business”). But I think Obama’s point was clear enough from the rest of his speech (i.e, that a person who builds a business is not solely responsible for the success of the business) that I’m not going to jump on either bandwagon here.
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Whether a person is solely responsible for their own success or is just a lame victim of the whims of fate or something in between DOESN’T MATTER ONE DAMN BIT. What does matter is actual policy choices–whether taxes should be increased or decreased, regulation should be strengthened or loosened, etc. etc. Policy arguments are all that matter. Whether any particular person believes that rich people “deserve” their wealth or not doesn’t matter at all.
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(To respond to a random tangent I saw above:) Kaylasdad99, haven’t I set you straight about the post office thing several times now? The USPS has a government-granted monopoly without which it could not do business. So, it is publicly supported even if tax dollars aren’t flowing into its coffers.
I don’t get your meaning. Taxpayers are funding a service (free mail to blind, etc).
If you’re going to nitpick, lets nitpick.
The USPS does have a monopoly over first class mail. It has a monopoly over mailboxes. It does not have a monopoly over mail. Or packages. You can send anything you want via competing services. Even the protections afforded by the first class mail monopoly are offset by the Private Express Statutes. That’s a very poor “monopoly.”
Of course, the actual statement in this thread was that tax dollars were going to the USPS. That, as you know, is wrong except in a trivial way. The USPS is being hurt by Congress in several ways that it would not be subject to as a private company.
The implication that the USPS is publicly supported in wrong in every technical way. Government causes it a net loss.
Holy crap, I actually agree with you about something.