No, this is all false. “You didn’t build that” referred to the collective actions of societies that individuals cannot accomplish – roads, bridges, education, transportation, and other infrastructure that’s necessary for any business (and especially new, small businesses) to thrive.
It did, and I don’t disagree with the statement in a vacuum. It’s actually the context, the politics around it, that makes it worse. Obama was aping Liz Warren, who was using the argument as a justification for more collectivism. The media reported it exactly as they should: rather than just being stenographers that time they explained why it was a big deal. It was an insight into this thinking.
This is what Warren said:
Sorry, but using that argument as justification for taking a HUGE hunk out of a person’s livelihood is just wrong. The things that make businesses function well in this country cost a tiny fraction of the overall budget. The majority of the budget these days is just taking money from one group of people to give it to another group of people. There’s no way to put lipstick on that pig.
Saying that she just wants business to pay it forward is especially galling. We already throw more money at our past(the elderly) than our future(the children), and Warren sponsored a bill to increase Social Security benefits.
No she wouldn’t, because you’re using “collectivism” like the right uses “socialism” and “communism” – wrongly.
Using that argument to justify raising high-income taxes from 36% to 39% (or similar amounts) is entirely reasonable. This “HUGE hunk” stuff is hyperbolic nonsense.
Cite? And you better include the local and state spending that accounts for a whole lot of this as well.
100% of every budget in US history was “taking money from one group of people to give it to another group of people”. That’s what budgets are – there’s no place on the budget for “money that we don’t take in and don’t spend”.
I’m sure you can muster up outrage at such typical Democratic policies, which have been Democratic policies for decades, but that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable.
BTW, here’s Clinton’s quote, which is clearly just a gaffe:
http://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-says-businesses-don-t-create-jobs-155608850.html
But gaffes that reinforce what people already think about candidates are unhelpful. BUsinesses don’t create jobs? Yeah, I’m sure she didn’t mean to say that.
Progressives can’t turn us into a collective, for the simple reason that we already are a collective. Humans can’t live without being part of a collective.
Humans are both social and individual. Part of being human is deciding whether you’ll be more social or more individualistic. Humans like to form social groups, but how those groups are formed, how big they are, and how the yare governed varies greatly. The roots of the culture war are based on liberals wanting to centralize government, whereas conservatives see value in voluntary and smaller groups. And since freedom of association was created exactly for the purpose of promoting the primacy of such groups over the federal government, since those smaller groups are the basis of a healthy society. The federal government that liberals support is not only a fairly new phenomenon, it’s also completely artificial.
Note for nitpickers that when I say the founders intended such groups to have primacy, I do not mean supremacy in lawmaking. I mean social primacy, that society would be organized around families, churches, associations, local governing bodies, etc, not organized around Washington DC.
Jeb Bush sees the party’s prospects as so bleak - Bobby Jindal? Chris Christie? Haha - that he thinks he might have a chance at this thing after all.
No, or at least it depends on the issue. Being against gay people, against science, against abortion, making it harder to vote, opposing immigration, etc., has nothing to do with “centralizing government” vs “voluntary and smaller groups”.
This is another misunderstanding of what liberals actually believe and support. Again, since you’re so bad at trying to imagine how liberals think, just ask. Instead of saying “liberals think X”, ask us how liberals approach an issue, since you almost always get it wrong.
More misunderstanding, if you’re saying liberals in general don’t also place these groups in “Social primacy”.
That’s because Jeb Bush’s side of the GOP civil war is losing. Perhaps if his family hadn’t given K street Republicanism a bad name, like er, K Street Republicanism…
Jeb Bush was a good governor and I’d probably vote for him on that basis. We need competence after his brother and the new guy let the federal government self-regulate for the last 14 years. But I don’t agree with him about a lot of things.
You can’t even say his name now? Are you like Woody Hayes who used to speak of that team up north?
But to say “you didn’t build that” implies that the business didn’t pay the same taxes to build those same roads. It implies an “us vs. them” mentality with regard to private industry. Like: we’re the good guys building roads and they’re the evil ones taking advantage and not paying into the system. Which, of course, is nonsense since businesses do pay a lot in taxes.
If Progressive Democrats want us to buy into the collective mentality of society, which is certainly their right to do, isolating the rich and private industry achieves the opposite. It serves to divide.
No, only the willful would infer any of that.
Context is not your friend.
The implication from this remark is that businesses did not contribute to the building of roads and bridges. Using the words “somebody else” is quite clear about that.
To put it another way: who did build that? Is it the collective? If it is the collective, are businesses not a part of the collective? Does the tax money paid by the business and its owners/employees not count?
It was inartful and bad optics. He should have said something like “you didn’t build that on your own”. Earlier in the speech he said “You didn’t get there on your own.”, which in addition to the statements about infrastructure and education, make it clear that this is what he meant.
No, that is not the implication. The implication is that those roads and bridges need to be maintained and/or rebuilt today and on into the future, and we do not currently have enough money for this. So the businesses that are fighting for lower taxes or to move overseas and pay no taxes at all, knowing that these things need to be funded, are in fact abandoning their shared responsibility for the continued maintenance of our infrastructure. Roads and bridges are not a one time expense that has already been paid in full, it is a continued shared responsibility for the benefit of us now and for those who will follow behind us. If we were currently funding our infrastructure needs you may have more of a point, but we are not.
And why aren’t we? Because entitlements are taking up an increasing share of the budget. In addition, Democrats are more fond of starting new programs than funding the old ones. The Democrats had plenty of opportunity to fully fund an infrastructure bill from 2009-2010 and chose not to do it. They prioritized health care and climate change over it.
So why try to lower your taxes when you know we can’t pay for what we need? How does that help us “build it”?
Because they DON’T WANT TO HELP BUILD IT! The GOP would be totally content to watch every bridge and road in the country crumble into rubble as long as they and their buddies don’t have to actually pay any taxes.
Because we don’t believe the government has a shortage of money. They just don’t set priorities properly.
If Democrats truly considered it a priority, then they’d call for an across the board tax increase, not promise Americans that we’ll somehow pay for all the country’s needs by taxing the 1% more.
That’s…wait, what?