America: Sometimes a Great Nation

Disclosure: I am not a private business owner but would love to be one and respect anyone who has made the sacrifice to build a business and in so doing continues the American dream.

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” (Ronald Reagan)

“… look, if you’ve been successful, 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…If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help…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.” (Barack Obama – July 2012)

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You built a factory, and it turned into something terrific or a great idea: God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along” (Elizabeth Warren – Democratic Candidate for Massachusetts Senate – September, 2011).

Was President Barack Obama unknowingly channeling Elizabeth Warren when he denigrated America’s entrepreneurial spirit? Or was this just another unscheduled, off-the-teleprompter comment that turned into a Joe Biden plagiarism moment that Mr. Obama thought would fly without question? Or could it be that this type of thinking is just one of your standard liberal talking points that invariably found its way to the top of the heap?

Exactly what is the purpose or function of government?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (Thomas Jefferson – Declaration of Independence).

For some reason, Ms. Warren and Mr. Obama seem to forget that the roads, and whatever else they are referring to in their comments, were designed and built by people being paid to do so and, incidentally, paid by all the people. Everybody uses the roads, not just business owners. Additionally, those roads are maintained by tolls collected from users and taxes collected from everyone, or should I say, theoretically collected from everyone since 50 percent of us don’t pay federal income taxes, and presumably paid for at a higher rate by business owners and the wealthy. So, what’s the point?

One wonders how people conducted business and made money before we had publicly funded highways?

From my understanding, government serves more to impede people from succeeding than it ever does in helping anyone succeed. It might be safe to say that people who succeed in business do so from their sheer willpower to succeed rather than any help that Mr. Obama claims they received from government. In fact, it’s a miracle anybody succeeds in business at all given the impediment that government has become.

Statistics from the Small Business Association state that 34 percent of new businesses fail within the first two years and that the number of failures rises another 20 percent to 56 percent by the five-year mark. These are not very good odds, in my estimation, so it would seem to take a lot of intestinal fortitude to risk it all looking at those types of numbers.

And what about government regulations; what part do they play in helping or hindering people in business? It is reported that the EPA’s carbon emission rule for new power plants will ensure that no new coal plants will be built in the U.S. What role has coal had in the building of this country’s manufacturing infrastructure and what role does it still have to play? If you need power in your new manufacturing facility, get ready to fork out a larger portion of your overhead for energy. Is that what Mr. Obama conceives as government helping the independent businessperson?

So, try to start a business and see how government helps you succeed. In fact, just finding out what the government requires of you before you start your business might be enough to discourage you from ever trying to start that business. Maybe you should read Chef Fred’s and decide whether government is a help or hindrance in establishing yourself as an independent businessperson.

“Nobody can make a pencil.” Have you ever heard that? How much does a No. 2 pencil cost? Very little thanks to the division of labor and the evolution of mass production that followed in its wake. But if you couldn’t get a pencil, would you be able to make one yourself? Could you fashion the wood barrel and get the graphite needed to make the lead portion and get it into the barrel and top it off with an eraser? A lot of work goes into bringing pencils to market. Two important things happen when pencils come to market: All the individuals involved in the manufacturing and selling of pencils make money and the user of the end item gets an important business tool for very little capital outlay. Voilà. What exactly did government have to do with it unless it was to try to regulate the heck out of the process involved in getting that pencil into your hands?

Do you own or know anyone who owns and/or makes a living with a guitar? Have you heard of the Department of Justice’s war on Gibson guitar? Have you ever been at your work station and looked up to see federal marshals adorned in full SWAT gear and armed with assault-style rifles swoop in and confiscate the items you were innocently working on? Were the SWAT gear and assault-style rifles really needed? I’m not talking about a company dealing in drugs or some other nefarious substance; I’m talking about wood used to make guitar necks for Gibson guitars.

The roads were not made for business; that was a sidebar, a consequence of the advance of civilization. In fact, it is the innovation of entrepreneurs to take what was available to all and through innovation and imagination make something that you and I want and are willing to pay for and will ultimately profit the entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs have, at bottom, a desire to profit; that’s what drives them. For the prize of that profit there are many things they might be willing to do. “The customer is always right” springs out of that desire to turn a profit. Many a businessperson will work late hours and make changes to his or her daily routine to close a sale or make a customer happy in hopes of future business, if nothing else. On the other hand, try to get any government worker, who, by the way, is usually paid a handsome salary, to go out of their way for you. Again, how is it that government is our benefactor and has made it so easy for America’s business owners to succeed?

Tell us again, Mr. Obama, who invented the internet? So, government extracted money from Americans and paid it to private individuals to develop the technology that led to the Internet. Would anyone care to suggest that private business would not have done the same given the chance after seeing the need? Was private business involved at all in the rise of the Internet?  In fact, would anyone be willing to suggest that private business had no involvement in the innovation of the Internet? Again, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.