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The Nation's Pulse
President Obama — Public Employee #1
He has no idea what makes our economy prosperous.
President Obama gave a speech last weekend that was so utterly out of touch with American values, so clueless as to how things work in this country, that I have to add a few footnotes to his performance.
You’ve probably seen this already. It is essentially of reprise of Elizabeth Warren’s famous “Moocher’s Lament” that made such a sensation among liberals on the Internet. It’s all stock footage from academia but here, for the record, is what the President said in front of another one of those 24-and-under junior-college audiences in Virginia.
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.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
Now let’s make a few points here. First of all, anybody who thinks that somebody who starts their own business doesn’t “make it on their own” hasn’t the slightest idea of what they’re talking about. I’ve started two small business efforts in my life. Both of them were complete failures and I lost a lot of money on each. But what I did learn is that when you’re trying to start your own business, nobody is going to help you. You can hire people to work for you, you may persuade a few cohorts of the potential of your vision so that they join you — with the expectation that they will be rewarded later. But when you’re starting a business, the only person who is wholeheartedly interested in making it succeed is you. From the minute you wake up in the morning, you know taking only an hour off, a day off, even five minutes off, means your effort comes to a standstill.
In the opening pages of Socialism, Ludwig von Mises’s monumental 1921 critique of that system, the great free market apostle presents a quote from V.I. Lenin in which the Great Leader of the Future That Works explains that all there is to running a business is keeping the accounts and adding up the profits as they come in. Lenin, said Von Mises, had “the errand boy’s view of what business is about.”
Obama has approximately the same view, spritzed up with a little faculty-room chatter. His is the assistant law instructor’s view. “If you’ve got a business - - you didn’t build that. Somebody else made it happen.” After all, we make the laws. That’s makes a business possible. The difference between them and us has nothing to do with being smart or ambitious. It’s just that some people get lucky or are more willing to take advantage of others. After all, that’s what business is about, isn’t it?
What Obama really embodies is the college professor’s resentment that even though he’s always been the smartest guy in the room — valedictorian of his high school, scoring over 750 on his college boards, editor of the law review — there are still people out there much less smart who are making more money. You can see it right there on the page. “I’m always struck by [business] people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.” Ah yes, I wonder who we’re talking about here? “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.” Indeed, there are millions of people who work very hard at their jobs. But to start a business you’ve got to do more than work hard. You’ve got to create something entirely new. You’ve got to be sensible, you’ve got to be ambitious. You’ve got to be willing to quit your day job, run up a lot of credit card debt and maybe risk everything in order to turn your dreams into reality. It’s a lot different than taking college exams.
A high school classmate of mine became a millionaire. He started a small insurance business in his garage and eventually sold it to a major company. He wasn’t very smart in school. When I saw him at the last reunion he told me he was once featured in the student newspaper as a kid who couldn’t spell. Yet he had the intelligence and gumption to create his own way of doing things and make it succeed. He now wears a little gold earring just to remind you how successful he’s been. I admire him tremendously.
America was built by people like my high school classmate. It was built by people willing to pursue their own dreams, working around the clock, 24 hours a day, sometimes for ten or twenty years before they succeeded. And it was also built by all the people who had similar dreams and tried to build them into something and failed. They succeeded, too.
Our prosperity has been built by entrepreneurs, not by government bureaucrats. The government could pave the road in front of your house twelve times over and it wouldn’t help one bit in bringing a dream to fruition. Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is filled with magnificent boulevards that would make any city in the world envious. They just doesn’t have any cars driving on them or shops lining them or even people walking on them. That’s what government without free enterprise gives you — public monuments without prosperity.
I’ll tell you one other thing about starting your own business. If government takes any interest at all in you, it’s going to involve collecting taxes. I hadn’t been incorporated for a month before I started receiving letters from the New York State Department of Taxation telling me when I could start paying them. There were incorporated business taxes, workmen’s compensation taxes, unemployment taxes, Social Security taxes and on and on. Nearly all the correspondence I received while I was trying to start a business involved the government telling me how much money I owed it. I gave up the business in 2001 yet until last year I was still receiving letters from New York State trying to collect more taxes. They tracked me through three changes of address.
Democrats in general and Obama in particular have no idea what makes our economy prosperous. They think if we put enough people to work paving roads and repairing bridges we’ll have full employment and all be rich. We’ve been hearing this since the first days of the Clinton Administration. Sure we should keep our roads and bridges in good repair, but what does that give us? Are we going to sell them to China? (China may be buying up our infrastructure soon enough, but that’s a different story.)
You don’t become a rich country through public works. You become rich by inventing things to sell to ourselves and to the rest of the world. In order to do that, you’ve got to have creative people who can invent new ideas and who are courageous enough to risk everything to turn them into reality. And you’ve got to let them keep most of the rewards if and when they do succeed. You can’t come around mooching afterwards with, “Hey, we built that road in front of your house. We made you a success! You owe us.”
Obama is Public Employee #1. He’s from the same ranks as those repairmen in the New York City subway system who tell you, “Hey, if it wasn’t for us New York City would shut down in a couple of days” and then go on strike to prove it. He hasn’t the faintest idea what it means to be in private enterprise and hates it wherever he sees it.
And we may have another four years of this.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (106) | Leave a comment
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 7.17.12 @ 6:43AM
Until the business class is crushed the state can not rule supreme.
As long as there is opportunity, the elitists can not rule with abandon.
To seize all power you must destroy the individual who is represented best by the business class.
Brookschwarzenegro | 7.17.12 @ 9:54AM
Jesus WAS a socialist:
business is based on self-interest, which Christ did not approve of.
RichTex| 7.17.12 @ 10:32AM
Well, if socialism is mandated by Jesus, we obviously cannot have it here. Separation of church and state, remember. If you want to create socialism (i.e., a theocracy), you’ll have to take your Bible-thumping somewhere else.
benny havens| 7.17.12 @ 1:17PM
The Socialist Psalm
The Government is my Shepherd, I need not work.
It alloweth me to lie down on good jobs.
It leadeth me beside still Factories.
It destroyeth my initiative.
It leadeth me in the paths of the parasite for politics sake.
Yea’ tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of laziness and deficit spending, I will fear no evil, for the Government is with me.
It’s dole and vote getters, they comport me.
It prepareth an economic Utopia for me, by appropriating the earnings of my grandchildren.
It filleth my head with bologna, my inefficiency runneth over.
Surely the Government shall care for me, all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in a fools paradise forever.
Mabel Doble
Circa 1933 Great Britain
Gary B| 7.17.12 @ 7:48PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't socialism require a lot of other people's money to function? Isn't socialism a knee-jerk response to the success of the free market? The very market where other people's money originates? By other people, I mean the ones who were lucky enough to fall backwards into limitless wealth. Of course, they didn't take risk and work hard; they were just lucky.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 10:34AM
The Bible is rather big on caring for oneself and one's family, actually. As usual, Democrats survive be redefining others.
Brookschwarzenegro | 7.17.12 @ 11:47AM
No, Jesus was not Adam Smith, and had no connection to what you value most: business.
Brookschwarzenegro | 7.17.12 @ 11:49AM
... you are all v. commercial minded men-- Jesus was not.
David T| 7.17.12 @ 12:51PM
Read the parables of Jesus. You'll find that a recurring theme is that we should be thrifty, practical, and worldly wise.
Dixon| 7.17.12 @ 1:17PM
That's the problem...Brookschwartz seems ignorant about the Bible in general, the Gospels specifically.
Jesus was clear in his warnings about the evil of secularism, big government, worshiping the material world, and the evil one...who Jesus said uses the LIE as his favorite tool.
Sound familiar.
Skippy| 7.17.12 @ 5:14PM
He "knows" the Cliffnotes distillation of Scripture he read in The Nation.
Dixon| 7.17.12 @ 5:31PM
Ignorance and delusion are not useful character traits to help win negotiations, arguments, or people's minds, Brooks.
In these traits, you and BO have some similarities.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 1:23PM
Business is a means to an end. All worldly ends, actually. You are a textbook liberal; you cannot argue without redefining your opponents.
Petronius| 7.17.12 @ 3:03PM
Jesus' Father OWNED a Business. Joseph had a carpentry shop.
Too bad Sister Consuelo is no longer here to knock your infantile heads a few licks with her stainless steel combat yardstick. On the first day she strode into that classroom picked up her weapon and bellowed, "boys and girls, the world does NOT Owe You a living!!"
Jesus didn't have to say that, because the words concerning not working and not eating as a result came before He walked among us. And the misunderstanding and redefinitions of His parables on earning and producing by those who do nothing to maintain themselves is now dominant in every Christian denomination to the detriment of all. Altruism is a byproduct of prosperity, not a cause of it. And I defy any theologian to show me where Christ took anything from anybody to give it to an indolent fool.
TLP| 7.17.12 @ 4:02PM
In fact, when JESUS was asked about the plight of the poor, HE said: "The Poor will always be among us."
It was up to US, as individuals, to care for them.
spike59| 7.17.12 @ 4:53PM
AMEN
TrueBlue | 7.17.12 @ 5:12PM
And up to the poor to do something to better their own situation. If no effort is made to improve, why should I, or anyone else, be forced to provide for that person?
Gary B| 7.17.12 @ 7:50PM
With natural charity, not with the "help" of government middlemen.
irish19| 7.17.12 @ 4:52PM
"stainless steel combat yardstick" Love it!
Appleby| 7.17.12 @ 7:22PM
Yep, Sister Mary Bernadette taught a generation of girls more with that yardstick than any school principal I have known since then. She also had the perfect punishment for those who committed vandalism and used intemperate language: she made them telephone their mothers and tell Mom exactly what they'd done or said. My youngest sister said it was the hardest phone call she ever made in her life. Catholic school cost money to parents in those days; but the Sisters had a clothes closet of uniforms for students whose parents couldn't afford them, and nobody ever knew when your uniform came from there. I remember a graduate giving an endowment for school supplies, bookbags and textbooks because she gave Christ the glory for her success. We learned a lot from the Sisters back then, besides our reading, writing and arithmetic.
MK48| 7.18.12 @ 12:16AM
Was it sister Mary Bernadette I saw walking across the school yard late in the day heading to the rectory....naaaa. Ya we had a mother superior who walked around with a rubber hose and a chalk board pointer to keep you in line.
But the worst was when a note was sent home...you see my dad ran a tough household. You get out of line out came the razor strap.
His famous line was you got a whippin for what you did that I didn't know about.
Dixon| 7.17.12 @ 1:21PM
You ARE a liar or ignorant or both.
Jesus WAS the Son of God. Assigning a political designation to call Him a human socialist blasphemy.
spike59| 7.17.12 @ 4:52PM
Jesus WAS a socialist:
======================
actually, He WASN'T....He never advocated allowing the Ruling Political Class to seize the fruits of a worker's labor to give to those decreed inferior and helpless by the Ruling Political Class; He taught us to PERSONALLY help those in need...and He never disapproved of 'business', and in fact, taught that a good worker was one who made use of his talents, intelligence and hard work to help his employer prosper...but thanks for amusing us all with the Marxist/Atheist cartoon version of Christ
Belief101| 7.17.12 @ 7:47PM
I always love the comment "Jesus was a Socialist" used often by the left and socialists who usually do not consider themselves or identify in any way as Christian. Jesus said "render to Caesar that which is Caesars". Christ never said the two (Government and believers) need mix to distribute wealth. In fact his message was to his followers to follow the golden rule and after he was resurrected the Apostles sought a "common order", not established by the Government but by the Church. Socialism takes everything and gives to the State to own who deems itself smarter than us to redistribute. Christ would never suggest we do that, nor is that indicated anywhere in the New or Old Testament. Rather, it was in common (food, clothing, etc.) among believers. Socialism in its totalitary would offend Christ for its removal of individual freedom, something he detested ("and you shall know the truth", he said, "and the truth shall make you free"). And 2 Corinthians 3:17 : "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty". Socialism would deny me that liberty and freedom, something Christ would not approve of, as delegated by the State. Thats why our founding documents are so important and why Socialism suffers and dies wherever its tried.
Shiori| 7.17.12 @ 9:15PM
You know nothing of Jesus or the Bible.
So tell me, Socialist Nations are big on Christianity then, huh? Churches and statues of Jesus everywhere? Soviet Russia, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Europe - all big Christ worshipers, eh? What about National Socialists (NAZIs)? They kill millions of Jews and Christians because they just loved Jesus?
You are an ignoramus without peer. Jesus said to help your fellow man directly - not defer your moral duties to the government or others. Giving to the gov't by force is not giving to the poor. Nor is financing abortion and myriad other horrid sins. So, hypocrite, you get to work giving away your property to the less fortunate if you really love Jesus.
P.S. Jesus was a Carpenter...for money.
Appleby| 7.17.12 @ 7:05AM
Last winter a group of employees at a Bell Telephone call centre won $50 million in the lotto. The prize was held in limbo for six months while everybody in the call centre tried to climb on the gravy train and assert a right to the boodle. In our office, which was not connected to Bell, we all amused ourselves making up tenuous connectioons to Bell that would entitle us to a share too: "I can spell Bell!" "I once had a Bell telephone!" "I drive past the Bell Call Centre every day!"
This is what Obama is saying. The difference is, to him it's not a joke.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 10:08AM
Well put. Vague, open-ended debts to others justify any redistribution the Democrats want to invent. Establishing such debts is crucial to them.
benny havens| 7.17.12 @ 7:22AM
He couldn’t be more inconsistent in his statements. Yesterday he said, “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.” Last week he said,” I want to restore America to where everyone has an equal shot at advancing.”
Make up your mind Mr. President, which is it?
Kwan| 7.17.12 @ 8:04AM
Here we are living in a country that has an economic system based on free enterprise/capitalism and the President is treating those that succeed in our system as enemies of the state. This is essentially "Ghetto Leninism" or you got some money and we all want the government to take it from you and give it to us. Obama is antagonistic towards our economic system because it produces an unequal distribution of wealth. So to remedy this state of affairs Obama is attempting to fundamentally transform our country into the old Soviet Union where you had dimwitted commissars (similar to Obama and his Czars) making disastrous economic decisions. The Soviet system based on a command economy directed by the central government produced massive disincentivization. The system did achieve the equality that Obama is always talking about, that is everybody was equally poor and equally without freedom.
Pecos Pete| 7.17.12 @ 8:34AM
Everybody was equally poor and equally without freedom ... except for those in the central government of Soviet Russia.
bluecollarbytes| 7.17.12 @ 8:34AM
"What Obama really embodies is the college professor's resentment that even though he's always been the smartest guy in the room..."
I think Obama was 'appointed' one of the smartest guys in the room, filling the slot marked 'set aside for oppressed minority'. He's the result of the adults telling him 'yes he could', when he really can't. We are stuck with the affirmative-action figure Obama and the sick sick politics that brought him to the table.
LarryK| 7.17.12 @ 8:39AM
Don't you mean "Public Enemy #1"?
TLP| 7.17.12 @ 8:39AM
Once again, our Betters make their assumptions based on a Flawed Premise.
He DOESN'T CARE about Jobs. The XL Pipeline was the final piece to that puzzle. (as if we needed it)
"We are the ones WE'VE been waiting for." (for 100 Years) He didn't say the last part, but then, he didn't need to, either.
People like Mr. Scarf, still think that this guy's a Moron. That he's "In way over his head", and that "He's an Inexperienced, Out of his League, Empty Suit".
And, yet. See what he has wrought.
Napoleon was Nothing. A little Corporal. Lenin was a street agitator. Nothing to be concerned with. Hitler was another little Corporal, who liked to fancy himself an Artist, when he wasn't Hanging Wallpaper.
The Story never changes. Only the names, and the dates.
Ho Chi Min, Pol Pot, Castro and Chavez.
All of them, Inexperienced Boobs.
This "Stupid Guy" has done more Damage to this Country, in 4 Years, than all of the Previous Presidents Combined x 1,000.
And, yet, he is even in the Polls.
History is littered with the Dead Bodies of Innocent People, because too many of us failed to give The Devil his Due.
"I underestimated my opponent. It won't happen, again."
That's a great Movie Line.
In The Real World, however, we rarely get a 2nd chance, where Evil is concerned.
And, this man is Pure Evil.
"And I saw the BEAST rise from the Sea. And he was given a MOUTH, to speak Haughty and Blasphemous words. And he was allowed to exercise authority for forty two months." Revelation 13-5.
MK48| 7.18.12 @ 12:20AM
TLP...........polls are overrated
TSD| 7.17.12 @ 8:52AM
Is anyone out there who has something left for this guy to steal not yet aware of his plan?? If you do not get it yet, you deserve to loose it all. If he gets 4 more years you will have all your assets confiscated by his government.... it will not be by the people for the people any longer.
scotchieguy| 7.17.12 @ 9:19AM
I have heard excerpts of this fool's speech more times than I can remember the past few days. Again, he was speaking to a bunch of young idiots. It is almost as if he is speaking to these people in private, nearly every day, and we are mere eavesdroppers. But we are not--this is played on the news. What is astounding to me is that he is even close in the polls. Are we really that stupid? The only thing that will save us is if enough of the moochers stay home in November.
Lullabys Legends and Lies| 7.17.12 @ 9:25AM
Our current President is a complete retard!! I guess if you believe in his logic, then he didn't write that best selling book of his either, we all wrote it together!! So where's my share of his profits then? Actually, he didn't really write that best selling book of his either, if you believe the rumors, Bill Ayers did!! But I wonder if Bill got any of the profits from Obama (not that Bill would want the profits, since he's an admitted Communist, with a small-c)!! So, Obama didn't invent the printing press, or the process of turning trees into paper, or the internet, where you can download the digital version of the book, or the roads that the truck that delivered his book to the bookstore drove on, so at best, he "only" had the ideas that were put down on that paper, that was delivered by that truck, on that road to that bookstore, therefore, it's not really his book at all, it's all our book (but I'm still not gonna read the stupid thing)!! You like how many comas I used in that last sentence? That's called coma abuse!!
scotchieguy| 7.17.12 @ 9:26AM
"If you've got a business - - you didn't build that. Somebody else made it happen." Bullsh-t. I have a business and no one helped me. I agree with TLP. It SOUNDS like he is clueless, but he is not. He has nothing but contempt for this nation and what made it great. He is doing this all on purpose, but we are too stupid to see it. Rush said at least 5 times during yesterday's broadcast that this fool "literally hates this country. He despises it and everything it stands for." The lemmings in the media love to quote Rush. I wish they would repeat that quote daily. Maybe it will wake up enough of the idiots in time to save us. I won't hold my breath.
Anthony| 7.17.12 @ 9:40AM
Obozo and "Sitting Bull" Lizzy Warren show their true Marxist pedigreed when they mock the successful because others built the roads that their employees used to get to work, (those who still have jobs, that is).
Of course this juvenile tautology only makes sense to a 3rd grader, unless of course, you're a Marxist Democrat, like Purp and vtwin.
If you take Obozo's and Warren's moronic statements to their logical extensions, Henry Ford owes all of his glory to the first Neanderthal (who, by the way, was not a D) for rolling the first stone as a wheel.
Yep, that damn first wheel was the first step towards the EPA, car insurance, OSHA, and worker's compensation. It also helped build a culture that can afford to send its children to lefty colleges for $50,000 a year, and pay lefty professors six figures for 8 hours of work a week.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can thank the Romans for their aquaducts, the Chinese for the Abacus, and of course, we all know civilization was built on the back of Mr. Crapper for inventing the flush toilet.
The very idea that civilization, which is the building block for human growth, can be transformed into a Marxist ideology to "get the rich", only shows how morally and intellectually bankrupt Obozo and the D Party are.
They just don't need to be defeated, they need to be crushed!!
Mimi | 7.17.12 @ 9:44AM
This guy is insulting us more and more....He thinks we will elect him?
Where the heck is the leadership in the Democratic Party? Are they CRAZY ??
They better rethink their nominating agenda...they need to quietly walk up to the WH andgive him some walking papers. How can they chance a possible 4 more years? The last institution he destroys might be....Theirs...The DEMOCRATIC PARTY itself!....Oh WELL after giving this country this HORROR...They maybe deserve to die on the VINE !!!
tasine| 7.17.12 @ 10:08AM
Not only is Obama Public Employee # 1, he is also America's Public Enemy # 1. Our foreign enemies have never been able to defeat us, but our President is closer to succeeding than anyone or any country before him.
Rockabilly| 7.17.12 @ 10:10AM
The man is clueless. He equates having roads and infrastructure with government help. True, a stable government is essential to prosperity, that's a given. We've had that for quite a while now but starting a business takes gumption, guts, good sense, and great risk taking. I went the route of being an employee as though I was smart in school I didn't have the moxie to run a business. I earned a good living and don't begrudge those, often with less education than me, who have gotten rich or wealthier in business. I admire them. Most new businesses fail and government often is an impediment. It is government's job to provide infrastructure, police, fire protection, etc. and we all pay taxes for those services and user fees. It is not its' job to micromanage our lives and businesses as O believes. People like O have no concept of how hard it is to run a business as you detail so well in your article. They are creatures of government, academia, the arts, etc. and deep down envy business people and resent them. A pox on all of them.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 10:14AM
Some businesses, such as solar and wind power companies, do owe their existence to taxpayer subsidies. Obama wants it this way; he's bought their votes forever.
But most businesses succeed IN SPITE OF our government. They more than pay for what little the government actually does for them through their taxes. Then they pay more taxes, to subsidize their competitors and enforce senseless regulations that make their lives more difficult.
They don't owe the government anything!
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 10:26AM
Well, it does depend on the business. No high technology company could exist without the investments in academic and applied research made by governments all over the world. And many of our small businesses are helped by government – such as with the the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
It was the pioneering industrial model of DARPA that gave us Silicon Valley, and the majority of innovative drugs are discovered in academic settings.
And even if you're starting say a simple business in your garage you may well need the Internet, the mail and roads to distribute your goods.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 10:31AM
Well, well, look who's back? You ran away from our conversation yesterday. And you're running away again today, I see, making points after they've already been debunked by others here.
Government doesn't make investments. People do. Government uses people's money. With our ludicrously "progressive" tax system, the wealthier Americans have already paid for more than their share of the services government so inefficiently provides.
What of the bottom half, who benefit from the fruits of all this labor while paying no taxes?
You Democrats are despicable. You force us to subsidize your programs against our will, then claim the existence of said programs as a reason for us to owe you an open-ended debt. You're like the burglar who injures himself while breaking into a house and sues the homeowner!
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 10:53AM
Would you eliminate the SBIR program, JD?
I think you could usefully spend a bit of time reading up on the conditions in countries that foster innovation – I think you'd be surprised just how much we and other countries such as Japan owe to partnership between government and industry, and how vital it is now.
Here's something to get you started:
http://triplecrisis.com/pulling-away-the-curtain
JD| 7.17.12 @ 10:57AM
This is where you pretend that eliminating the program would somehow not eliminate the taxes that fund it and put that money back in the hands of private research, right?
Never mind that the whole point of Obama's rant was that people should owe MONEY for this stuff?
The vast majority of meaningful innovation in history was accomplished privately, and this continues to be the case. There is no evidence that research directed by politics comes anywhere close to matching private research in effectiveness.
As I already said, you force your social programs on us, then claim we can't live without what we never wanted in the first place. Despicable.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 11:09AM
"The vast majority of meaningful innovation in history was accomplished privately, and this continues to be the case. There is no evidence that research directed by politics comes anywhere close to matching private research in effectiveness."
This is utterly untrue. I gave you a start at reading about reality but you choose to remain ignorant. I guess that's one way to live a life - good luck with that.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 11:30AM
Read your own bile before you pontificate.
First, your entire article covers something that's happened over the last 30 years. A lot of major innovation happened before that time. Second, the entire basis for the claim that government investment is a major factor is that 77 of 88 inventions cited by one particular magazine got "some" federal funding. What's so great about that magazine, and how tiny a slice could "some" be?
And most of all, none of this in any way proves that research wouldn't have happened without the "some" funding. I claim tax deductions I'm eligible for, but not claiming them wouldn't prevent me from doing what I do. Once again, you need to stop acting like lack of a government program means no action at all in an area, especially when lack of government program means funding for said program is returned to the private sector.
The most telling sentence in your article is "Without public engagement, the system lacks legitimacy and safeguards against being captured by business interests." That says it all. The author is tremendously biased by the idea that "noble research" is diametrically opposed to "business interests." This ignores business's history of innovation.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 1:59PM
I take it you want to go back to the age of the inventor. That ended about 120 years ago - federal investment in vital research built up throughput the 20th century. There is no prospect for you, i'm afraid, of private investment taking the risk in areas the government invests in, or of developing the decentralized networks of innovation between academia and industry that have been the hallmark of our stunning success in so many technology areas. Why change something that's working?
JD| 7.17.12 @ 2:48PM
I must have missed the government guys with the big checks when I watched The Social Network.
I work in unsubsidized R&D, so don't tell me we don't exist.
I don't know what's more ludicrous - your claim that businesses don't take R&D risks (they do, and reap great rewards!) our your claim that a government run model is "decentralized". Decentralized? Versus what? Doing all research in a single room?
"Why change something that's working?", he says, as we preside over an era where increased government R&D ownership has correlated with the rest of the world catching up to America.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 3:14PM
Well, as a nation i think we'd be much worse of we shut organizations like the National Cancer Institute or DARPA, which are decnetralized, by the way, because they work with networks of universities and contractors. That's because industry won't invest in most of the research they do - which is why they do it. You do understand that?
JD| 7.17.12 @ 5:08PM
Industry DOES invest. They did in the past, and they do today. Of course, if the government announces that it will hand them money to invest, they'll gladly take it, but to insist that there would be no investment without money ignores the great many counter-examples in our world today.
And no, they are not "decentralized". The money is gathered by a single entity and distributed by political overseers. If you call that decentralized, then don't bother calling any multinational corporation a monopoly, because they have offices all over the world, too. What exactly would you call "centralized"?
Government-directed research suffers from several flaws - inefficiency, waste, and undue focus on politically-directed goals instead of going where science and the market lead us.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 6:12PM
Mr dear friend, 'science and the market' are not the same thing. Thankfully, we still invest in basic research with no market in sight - in fact the US is a world leader in much basic research. For the priorities of the market, look no further than Romney, Bain and maximising shareholder return - and not maximising the return to humanity.
I'll take the way America is now thanks - I'd hate to live in your America, where we only research what makes the most profitable products and leave such areas as orphan drugs to die.
Truth to Power| 7.17.12 @ 7:14PM
Science and big government are not the same thing either. Big government provides the money to corrupt science and has.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 11:43PM
If I thought "science" and "the market" were the same thing, I would not have written both terms.
I'm not sure what to make of "orphan drugs", or how such things would die, but let me point you back to previous conversations you've run away from.
"Demand" - what is it? You think demand drives economies, but the need of someone with nothing to offer in return doesn't buy anything at all. Only those with something to offer in return can be the customers required to sustain any endeavor. Such "demand" of course is actually "supply" - supply in the hands of those who want to trade it for someone else's supply.
Your orphans won't get what they need under any system unless supply is produced. Complaining that the producers actually need to get paid for their production is pointless. And incidentally, the concept of the orphanage is a lot older than the American welfare state.
David T| 7.17.12 @ 12:39PM
Why should taxpayers fund the dubious "research" that comes out of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program? Leave venture capitalism to the capitalists. SBIR is crony capitalism at its worst. Even the OMB said the SBIR program should be eliminated because it hasn't demonstrated any results.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 2:06PM
From Wapo:
What doQualcomm, Symantec, ViaSat and iRobot each have in common?
Each were recipients of the U.S. government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants. iRobot received the most — six rounds of funding totaling $4.4 million. Qualcomm received $1.5million. Symantec was the first recipient of the newly funded federal program established back in 1982.
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The $275,000 of phase I and II grants awarded Symantec by the SBIR stands as the poster-child success story for government and private collaboration. ViaSat leveraged its SBIR grant success into more than $175 million in Department of Defense contracts that propelled the company to its current position in the communication technology field.
The SBIR program provides grants to small businesses to conduct research of innovative concepts that meet specific government priorities principally in the defense and health fields. Because of the high risk of failure associated with this type of research, the private sector is typically unwilling to invest in it.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 2:51PM
As "greatest successes ever" go, those are pretty sad. Heck, I'd take the invention of the segway over that list!
Not to mention the amounts contributed to them are small in the grand scheme of things.
Now, where's your list of failures? I bet there were more than a few. And once again, we haven't even gotten to the fact that these types of inventions would probably have come about anyway if the private sector got to keep more of their money!
Drunken Sailor| 7.17.12 @ 3:09PM
Hell JD, you have to look no farther than the "Green" industries to find a entire list of failures.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 3:16PM
Some of the green energy research is working and more will work - are you suggesting we abandon the sector and leave it to other countries?
DRed| 7.17.12 @ 3:47PM
Qualcomm invented the technology that's used to make almost every cellular radio in the world today. It's one of the most successful American companies of the last 30 years.
C'mon Man!| 7.17.12 @ 3:27PM
Sorry Clown act, I was there at Qualcomm in the beginning, they didn't need any gov't (ie, my) money. They only took it because it was free.
Seems you only know what you read in books, which omit most of the relevant facts.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 3:42PM
Funny then that Jacobs, Qualcomm's founder, appeared before a senate committee last year urging the funding of the SBIR program, citing their own $1.5m startup funding as vital. Guess he was lying then.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 5:11PM
He was asking for money. What did you expect?
As for green energy "working", it "works" in the way that Obama defines "success" - as "successfully" passing legislation, regardless of whether said legislation actually achieves its stated purpose!
Today's "green energy" subsists entirely on subsidy. The subsidy per unit of wind power exceeds the sale price of the same unit of energy produced by coal. That is not "working" by any rational definition of the concept.
Truth to Power| 7.17.12 @ 7:20PM
"Working" from a big O perspective is the giving of money to political supporters. Green energy from a rational view is a joke. Like bullet trains it makes progressives feel European, broke and unproductive.
George S| 7.17.12 @ 12:54PM
Jack,
Does government build roads first and then businesses build around them? Or do businesses build first and roads are built to accommodate?
Did the first settlers choose Jamestown because of roads, internet and post offices?
Government sponsored infrastructure is the result of economic growth, not the cause of it. Cities and towns grow around industry, thus requiring roads, sewers, water, police, fire, etc. That's where tax dollars are earned to fund those things.
David T| 7.17.12 @ 1:38PM
So you're saying all those new, modern cities the Chinese have built (but not yet populated) are not destined to become future Hong Kongs? You need to be re-educated.
George S| 7.17.12 @ 1:58PM
Since future events, apart from death and taxes, cannot be accurately predicted, no amount of education can alter that fact. The future population of those Chinese cities is as unknown as the future ridership of the high speed rail California just approved.
David T| 7.17.12 @ 3:16PM
I predict that the taxes for the high-speed rail will hasten the death of California as we have known it.
Skippy| 7.17.12 @ 6:12PM
I predict I will be long dead before HSR is cheaper or faster than driving to L.A. from Wine Country.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 2:03PM
I'm not talking about basic infrastructure so much as networks of innovation in areas such as semiconductors, defense technologies, pharmaceuticals etc - all of which have seen stunning success for partnership between government, academia and industry.
George S| 7.17.12 @ 2:25PM
"If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." -- Obama
Nothing in that statement says 'partnership'. It is Marxism in its purest form.
A more accurate statement will be:
"If you've got a government job -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
"If you've got a presidential life style -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
"If you've got a job as VP of community affairs at the UCMC -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
"If you've got a best selling book -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
Seriously, who is the freeloader off the taxpayers... the Obamas or the owner of a hardware store chain?
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 2:35PM
Like Romney likes to do, you're quoting Obama out of context - what he said was:
"Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own."
If you think he literally meant that a mom and pop have never opened a business - and not that they depend on other things - then there's not much hope for you.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 2:53PM
I literally think he's suggesting that moms and pops have unpaid debts to other people, and that they owe money to liberal initiatives to satisfy that debt. I think he meant this because it couldn't be more clear that he meant this.
And he's wrong. Mom and pop pay more than their share of the costs of those roads and that internet through their existing taxes, while many others use both and pay nothing.
George S| 7.17.12 @ 3:11PM
How do you translate roads and bridges into "semiconductors, defense technologies, pharmaceuticals etc "? Or how roads and bridges means SBIR grants? Or, partnership between government and industry?
Obama was talking to the stupid, lazy and greedy who think they are entitled to other people's money. After all, their sales tax on beer and lottery tickets built America so the motivated, hard working doers and shakers can steal all the wealth from the money tree.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 3:21PM
It was you who misquoted him. Why don't you make a list of the things you'd like to withdraw government funding from tomorrow and then let's see what shape our R&D and infrastructure will be in.
I'll give you one to start you off: all NCI molecular biology research into cancer.
Your turn.
George S| 7.17.12 @ 3:55PM
Nope. You were the one who said:
"'I'm not talking about basic infrastructure so much as networks of innovation in areas such as semiconductors, defense technologies, pharmaceuticals etc".
Cancer research is not what Obama was talking about. You made the inference to defend his grossly inappropriate, ignorant and Marxist comment. And then you try to paint us as against cancer? Gather your thoughts, man.
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 5:57PM
Sorry George, you've lost me here. Are you saying it's Marxist to raise taxes to fund roads, but not to fund cancer research?
JD| 7.17.12 @ 5:13PM
My list, Jack, is "everything". But you can't keep the money for more social welfare when you stop using it on research. You have to give it back to the people from whom it came, via tax cuts. Then we'll see the private sector continue to do what it has always done - innovate to meet whatever market needs it sees.
Skippy| 7.17.12 @ 6:14PM
Everything except weapons and Western water projects.
Your turn.
Shiori| 7.17.12 @ 9:52PM
Where does the government get it's money from sweetheart? Hmm? Taxes right? And who generates the wealth that is taxed? Magic unicorns? You think private companies can't build roads and bridges? We can, and better and quicker - because we wouldn't stop construction in order to 'save' a salamander or prevent carbon footprints.
Government cannot exist without the wealth generated by the people. The people, however, can exist without government, and just pay for 'infrastructure', etc., themselves, as before. We created the government, they did not create us. Government workers do not work for free either - their income is taken from the private sector too, including the unelected bureaucrats you seem to put all your faith in. And no, the gov't cannot claim credit for innovations whether or not they coughed up some 'funding'. They do not create wealth, they only confiscate it and distribute it as they see fit, which is not necessarily sanctioned by the people nor is it efficient distribution. They use it to gain more power over our lives, and take more of our money.
spike59| 7.17.12 @ 4:56PM
"Somebody invested in roads and bridges."
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true enough....and by and large, that 'somebody' was the 'EEEEEEEEVILLLLLLL rich'
John Navratil| 7.17.12 @ 6:36PM
Jack London,
There you go with your pie-eyed bullshit, again! Stunning successes, indeed. Please name something this clown for whom you would drop to your knees and pucker up has done with his $5 trillion dollars?
Jack London| 7.17.12 @ 6:53PM
I hardly know how to reply John - you surely know we are world leaders in so many areas of science and technology, with about the best structures for creating businesses from research. Don't tell me you too want to shut down places like Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Livermore the NCI and most university research labs. Say it ain't so.
John Navratil| 7.17.12 @ 8:20PM
Jack London,
Use your imagination and consider answering the question. Stop the bullshit, quit thinking you are part of the solution.
I'm not saying every dollar the government spends it wasted - just most of them. The greatest defenders of these labs are the labs. They are just like the teachers unions without the pederasty and corruption of students. Bell Labs, PARC and George Mitchell's billions in hydraulic fracturing investment would have existed without government dollars
Try the Black Cherry flavor - I'm told its tasty.
Jack London| 7.18.12 @ 7:02AM
Most federal research funding is 'wasted'? What proof do you have? Brookhaven alone has seven Nobel prizes. Bell Labs no longer does basic research, and modern fracking technologies were developed in federal labs.
Are you one of these anti-science religious nuts?
John Navratil| 7.18.12 @ 8:40AM
Jack London,
Bullshit, again! Fracking WAS NOT developed in federal labs. Ask George Mitchell for the billions he spent cracking dense shale (fracking has been around for 70 years, of course). If you want Nobel prizes, don't look for Federal money, go to Israel.
You've got a lot of gall asking me for prof when you spout aspirational crap continuously. The nut is in your hand.
Jack London| 7.18.12 @ 9:42AM
You're badly informed about fracking John - go read here - http://thebreakthrough.org/blo....._and.shtml
I'll just have to take you at face value I guess - someone who really believes we'd be better off without a top science and innovation culture. I can post links all day showing how federal investment has led to world-class research and development, but you can't post one – not a single one – that shows that the majority of such investment is wasted. I think that rather sums you up: a modern day, Internet quack.
John Navratil| 7.18.12 @ 12:28PM
There's an objective source! Piss off!
Jack London| 7.18.12 @ 12:41PM
How old are you John? About 10? Why does it hurt so much to recognize say the contribution made by Sandia in imaging? Why can't we have partnerships ? Without academic research we really would be in nowheresville.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 11:56PM
It's interesting, Jack, that your praise is echoed only by liberals with no connection to actual research and people in the act of begging for and receiving your programs' handouts. All other business leaders and researchers seem to say the opposite.
As is common in liberal thinking, you consider your programs successes simply because the money was spent. There is no effort to measure the benefit against the cost, because the cost is not even acknowledged.
C'mon Man!| 7.17.12 @ 2:56PM
Acadamia? You mean that is supported by business tax dollars and donations, and college tuitions paid by people who work in businesses?
What you libs don't get is that Gov't is stealing our money and usurping it to waste, then claiming to create, which is what business does best. Gov't needs to get out of the way, nothing more.
spike59| 7.17.12 @ 4:57PM
oh, no...academia created and funded itself, just like government....right?
JD| 7.17.12 @ 10:26AM
A business pays more in taxes than it gets from the government, unless it is subsidized by Democratic favors like "green energy credits", which Democrats use to buy votes with our money.
Democrats allege that there are further debts, though. They think that employers are responsible for the tax subsidies to publicly educate their employees. And other taxes for services that support their employees. Most of all, they think employers owe eternal, open-ended debts TO their employees, for "helping build their businesses."
But then, in separate conversations, Democrats will speak to the employees themselves, as individuals, and say "you owe the government for all the things it does for YOU."
Seems like a double-count of these debts, doesn't it?
Democrats are less wrong in the second case. The person who owes government for whatever it does for an individual, including education, is that individual. He is the lifelong beneficiary of his education. The employer owes only one thing to anyone for the benefit the employee provides for him: the employee's salary. The salary is the full payment for all the benefit that the employee provides to the employer. There is no further obligation. The salary reflects education and other forms of value. Any paying for the education comes in the form of higher salary, which the employee, the true beneficiary of the education, then uses to pay for the education.
JD| 7.17.12 @ 10:27AM
If one wants to invent open-ended debts, what of government's debt to business, which funds it? What of the employee's debt to the employer, who provides opportunity to work?
No, these philosophical problems of societal debts which Democrats claim to have discovered and worked to solve are classic ivory tower ignorance. They were solved a long time ago, through cash payments between entities. Most commonly, the basic paycheck.
Only Democrats, those fools who have so outthought themselves that they don't understand a concept so basic as money, could have lost sight of that.
C Smith | 7.17.12 @ 10:36AM
"If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen" (President Barack Obama during a partisan address in Roanoke, Virginia, July 14, 2012).
No: the American family farm is the ultimate small business. I grew up on one that my grandfather and father literally built from the ground up. We survived not because of the somebodys in Washington but in spite of them.
"There are some things, just like fighting fires; we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service" (President Barack Obama during a partisan address in Roanoke, Virginia, July 14, 2012).
Wrong again: Fight fires? Had no choice. Remember one windy spring day when a grass fire jumped the road and was accelerating toward our house, livestock barn, granary, and other outbuildings. Ripped off my coat and beat them back long enough for a tractor to be hitched to a plow. Then as I sunk to the ground in total exhaustion. The tractor began cutting the first of a series three furls perpendicular to the advancing flames. The line held, but had to remain vigilant as trunks and roots smothered day and night for days to follow.
WallyG| 7.17.12 @ 11:04AM
If you look at Obama's entire life, you see a pattern of his never trying anything on his own. HIs first and only instinct was to use others to get where he wanted. His Marxist prism is his life story.
davelnaf| 7.17.12 @ 11:12AM
Obama long ago morphed into a form of entertainment. His failure to understand the capitalist system is just another facet of his cluelessness about reality in general. Can he get any worse than this?
Yet, it might be Team Obama’s strategy to pursue this line of awfulness and, then, shortly before the election, we might see a new, more ‘pragmatic’ O emerge. The working theory being that even the smallest improvement from his standard awfulness might persuade some voters that he isn’t so bad after all.
C Smith | 7.17.12 @ 11:14AM
C'mon guys, cut Obama a little slack, seriously! He is partially right if he is talking about Black businesses in America.
Skippy| 7.17.12 @ 6:15PM
I work for one.
You are so right.
Who Knows?| 7.17.12 @ 12:23PM
Spot on, Mr. Tucker. As one who also tried to start a few businesses, and failed, and with a brother in law, who earned a CPA, became controller and shareholder of a company that hit it big, and became a millionaire, I say, right on.
Jack Welch and his wife had a piece in the WSJ recently, proving that corporations ARE people, not “buildings”.
I just read that even Barney Frank knows this, although he was defending his constituency when he said government is just organized groups of people.
Well, duh.
Who was it that said the proper study of mankind is---mankind?
Here’s the probable problem---“advanced” societies are so spoiled by the almost freely available wealth, which needs very little physical work by most Americans, that they are locked into the symbols, instead of what symbols stand for.
It’s the hoary “liberals like mankind, not individual people” realization that needs to be applied.
“Business” and “corporation” are words, and what else concerns our most highly evolved masters, the lawyers like Obama, except WORDS? They are woefully out of touch with flesh and blood people, as are, truthfully, quite the majority of Americans.
Obama---what a card! What a cad!
JimH| 7.17.12 @ 12:26PM
BO and his ilk view the economy as a zero sum game. For one person to gain, another must lose. They have no understanding at all of how wealth is created in a free market.
Dixon| 7.17.12 @ 1:28PM
In the ignorant, arrogant obamaworld, the American Dream gets transformed into the American entitlement to your property.
Taxes cannot be raised enough to support the exploding dependency, massive debt and interest, and bailouts of blue states (IL, CA, NY, etc) sure to go bankrupt if BO finds a way to stay in power.
This means the odious BO regime will need to come after your saving and property....to "save the collective".
Dependency is a next door neighbor to bondage.
Brandon_Dutcher | 7.17.12 @ 3:31PM
Another public employee said this year at a public forum in my home state: "Dr. Laffer made a very impassioned plea there for not taxing the rich, but I’d like to remind everyone that the wealthy don’t become wealthy on their own. They became wealthy as part of a system, as a part of a country that has supported and educates the populace, that provides roads that allows commerce to take place, that supports the infrastructure in this city, this state, and this nation." The worst part of it is that the person who made that remark is dean of a (gulp) business school.
Bill84728| 7.18.12 @ 3:49PM
When I came into my business this morning, to the offices that I share with two other guys who do what I do in their own businesses, I asked the receptionist where the goverment guy was. She looked kind of funny at me. When my assistant came in, I asked her the same question. She looked at me funny too. About an hour later, the lady who runs a little business selling candy and snacks to the businesses downtown here came in, and I asked her where the government guy was. She said "Huh?"
I then explained to her that she didn't build her business, somebody else, probably the government, did, and I wanted to know where her government guy was to run her business. Everybody laughed. Then we all started talking about the Small Business Tax and how the government might justify its existence.