Barack Obama’s supporters have been furiously arguing that the presdent’s recent comments about American businesses have been taken out of context. Obama said at a campaign event last Friday:
According to Talking Points Memo, “The ‘that’ in ‘you didn’t build that’ referred to roads, bridges, infrastructure, education, emergency services and law and order — all services that protect and enable business owners along the way toward creating a successful operation…. This isn’t a new argument. Not only has Obama himself used a version of it countless times in his stump speech, a similar speech by Elizabeth Warren, now running for Senate in Massachusetts, went viral in 2011.”
For the sake of argument, let’s concede that even though Obama hasn’t done anything to clarify his own remarks he really meant to tell business owners that “somebody else” built our infrastructure. But even if Obama had repeated Elizabeth Warren’s argument verbatim, he would have faced the same blowback because Warren’s argument, like Obama’s, is based on the false premise that businesses don’t already pay taxes for schools, roads, bridges, police, etc. Warren told supporters in 2011:
“Now look, 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.”
James Antle writes at the American Spectator:
Mitt Romney rebutted Obama’s argument by making the same point:
The Obama-Warren argument essentially views businesses as parasites on society. But just because businessesmen and businesswomen, like all Americans, benefit from public infrastructure, it does not follow that businesses must pay an even greater amount of taxes to fund a $2 trillion national health care program, and much, much more. You may agree or disagree with Obama’s and Warren’s beliefs. But you have to be living in a liberal cocoon not to understand why their beliefs are controversial.
