Tag Archives: You Didn’t Build That

Obama: You Didn’t Build That

Posted on August 12, 2012 | 1 comment

Obama’s words are now famous.   In context, out of context, fair not fair, it’s all out there.  The republicans are running with it and the president is denying it.  However, this much is true.

Obama was making reference to the fact that business owners did not get to where they are entirely on their own.  Much of their success is based on the fact that those who came before created an infrastructure, roads and bridges, teachers and firemen, who have made their success possible.

And because of this, Obama feels, the very wealthiest among us, should be willing to “give a little back.”  Now, it’s important to put this in context, as ironic as that might be.  Here Obama is talking about his desire to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans.  Those Bush tax cuts that he wants to keep are the federal income taxes for all Americans earning less than $250,000.

President Obama is creating the narrative.  Federal income taxes.  The wealthy.  Business owners.  Roads and bridges and teachers.

Obama.

The conversation is federal income tax.  We’re not talking about sales tax.  No mention of property tax.  Not a whisper about social insurance taxes.  This conversation begins and ends with federal income tax.  Keeping the Bush rates for everyone but the wealthiest using the logic that those business owners didn’t build the infrastructure that allowed them to be successful.

In researching TPC’s critique of the Romney tax plan I found some numbers that will prove to be illustrative to Obama’s, his own logic, argument:

It turns out that the middle class didn’t build that.  The poorest among us didn’t build that.  Just as you would imagine, the wealthiest among us built that.  Those few wealthy who not only provide jobs for the rest of us but also provide for the roads and bridges to get us there.

 

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Posted in Elections 2012, Middle Class, Politics: National

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The Rich Don’t Pay Their Fair Share

Posted on July 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

Obama’s now famous quote out of Virgina, ” If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen. ” is surprising not because he believes that.  No, it’s surprising because he actually said it out loud.

Everybody knows that Obama is a big government guy.  We all know that he sees the world through the lens of unequal results rather than unequal opportunities.  But one has to wonder if Obama himself hasn’t channeled the villains in Atlas Shrugged:

“He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”

“Who?”

“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”

She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”

If it were as easy as picking mangos that had dropped from the tree, everyone would be a mango seller.*

But the context of Obama’s speech wasn’t about government building out infrastructure, it was about the rich paying more taxes; paying their fair share.  But what is that fair share?  Ask a liberal and you’ll get a look that’s either:

  1. Glassy and confused
  2. Arrogantly silent – as if the question is beneath them to answer

But tell them that the rich already pay their fair share and they’ll start to object.  Tell them that they pay MORE than their fair share and you’ll see real denial.

Take the above chart.

Every single income group earns more share of the income than they pay share of taxes.  Everyone, that is, except the wealthy.

Fair indeed.

* My wife’s family is Puerto Rican; I visit often.  Every time I visit when the mangos are in season, there are people with bags gathering them from the little rural roads.  It’s dangerous enough to drive those narrow winding roads, but with the folks on the roads to boot?  Anyway, these people then lug the mangos 1/8 of a mile to the main road and sell them to people driving by.  Mangos literally lying in the ditch are picked by some people and sold to to others.  This makes me think of liberals every time.

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Posted in Liberty, Middle Class, Politics: National

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You Didn’t Build That

Posted on July 18, 2012 | 3 comments

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Posted in Fun

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Obama: Government Invented The Internet

Posted on July 18, 2012 | 1 comment

You might have heard by now that Obama gave a speech in Virgina.  And in that speech he made a statement.  He made a statement that individuals can’t claim credit for their successes.  Rather, they must acknowledge that what they have labored to craft is the result of the collective.  And, more importantly, that leading the way is the government.  After all, it invented the internet.

Right?

Maybe not.

Most people give credit to the invention of the internet to ARPANet, a DOD agency.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the world’s first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet. The network was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense for use by its projects at universities and research laboratories in the US. The packet switching of the ARPANET was based on designs by Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory.

But did ARPANet really invent the internet?  Not so fast say some:

In February of 1966 I initiated the ARPAnet project. I was Director of ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) from late ’65 to late ’69. There were only two people involved in the decision to launch the ARPAnet: my boss, the Director of ARPA Charles Herzfeld, and me.

Numerous untruths have been disseminated about events surrounding the origins of the ARPAnet. Here are some facts.

The creation of the ARPAnet was not motivated by considerations of war. The ARPAnet was not an internet. An internet is a connection between two or more computer networks.

-Bob Taylor

Interesting.

But if ARPANet didn’t create the internet, who, or what, did?

On further analysis we come up with at least five distinct theories, each of which can be credibly discussed. We state from the beginning that we do not personally see the theories as mutually exclusive – we have for many years believed in a multiple origins theory rather than a single point of invention one.

But the theories which need to be examined are:

1. Packet switching represents the origins of the Internet
2. The TCP/IP protocol represents the origins of the Internet
3. A range of telco-led activities from the 1960s represents the true origins
4. The birth of the Internet is best explained through a history of applications rather than the protocols
5. The range of inventions and activities emanating from Xerox Palo Alto laboratories, including Ethernet, represent the true beginnings.

All five theories are interesting.  Personally, I find theory 1 and 3 the most compelling with theory 3 possibly encompassing theory 3 almost completely.  Digital transmission and switching was accomplished in 1962, seven years before ARPANet claimed that accomplishment.    Further, the languages of the internet, C and Unix, were developed not by ARPANet but by AT&T.

Who knew?

In any event, what we CAN conclude is this:

So then, where and when did the Internet begin? The only thing historians seem to agree on is that it was not 1969, or the Pentagon, (or for that matter Al Gore). From there on, there is a wide divergence of views as to when, where, and by whom the Internet may have been invented.

Contrary to what Obama would have you believe, it wasn’t the government that created the internet, it was individuals engaging in business that invented the internet.

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Posted in Economy, Politics: National, Technology

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