Obama’s take on business
“If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Nothing more needs be said about President Obama’s views on business and success in America. Coming from an individual who had everything handed to him in life, I’m honestly not surprised to hear it. However, hard-working business people across the nation need to wake up and smell the coffee.
If you haven’t figured it out already, President Obama believes that you owe your success in everything to someone else. He believes that without government, you would not – COULD NOT – be successful.
All those late nights, cramming for tests in university. Those early mornings doing payroll and HR. Those long days, dealing with impatient or angry customers. None of those were because of your drive and motivation. None of the dollars you earned were because of your investment of time and money. In Obama’s mind, everything that you have achieved is because of government.
Don’t forget that fact when you vote this November. You can choose to re-install a man who believes you are just a cog in a big machine, or you can (this time) vote for real change and remove this grotesque, divisive, and destructive attitude from power.
In any businesses, there are people who support them. These people might not have created the business, they might not have had that idea, but they are the backbone. A manager, a ceo, or the business owner will not be the one in the long run greeting customers, pulling that trash can. The idea here is simply that as much as business owner are bright thinkers they should not forget about the people who will be working with them. Those people deserve respect. It’s not because you own a business and someone else is your doormat that you should ignore his contribution. in order for you to do that payroll, manage that hotel, someone has definitely to open the door for customers.
In many (perhaps the majority of) small businesses, the owner or manager is very likely the person greeting the customer and cleaning the trash bin. I co-own a small business, as do many of my friends, we are the CEOs, receptionists, and janitors in our businesses.
I disagree with your main premise. The “backbone” in any small business is the person with the idea, the courage, the initial investment, and the vision. Obviously employees are important and no one should discount their input, their time, their care, their part in the process. But without that initial person, there is no need for the other employees.
I outright reject your assertion that business owners see or treat their employees as doormats. Most small business owners that I know are friends with and both value and respect their employees, or even see them as part of their family.
I do agree that people rely on each other and no person is an island. To be honest, however, in this speech, Obama is equating “somebody else” with government, not employee(s), as he points to “roads” and “bridges” being a principal source of success for our businesses. But, who is really providing those roads and bridges? Without business owners paying the taxes that they do, there wouldn’t be the roads, bridges, teachers, etc. Remember that under our progressive system of taxation, the bottom 50% of wager earners only paid 2% of the federal taxes, but receive the lion’s share of benefits. In contrast, the top 10% of wage earners paid 71% of federal taxes.
Obama only mocks successful business owners as seeing themselves as “a little bit smarter” because he clearly doesn’t comprehend how much his entire world view rests on their broad shoulders, ideas, and ability to foot the bills for his grand schemes.