I’ve been on vacation so I didn’t get a chance to comment on Obama’s “You didn’t build that” idiocy. Although I did a takedown of the the whole mindset in this post.

Obviously, there are a number of Democrats, doubtlessly the far left progressive or socialist wings of the party–of which the President is a member, who believe this line of thinking expressed by Obama and earlier by Elizabeth Warren. Concisely, the thinking seems to go that no business could do anything without the help of government. Government provides the infrastructure. Government provides education (stop laughing… they actually used to). On and on.

What these people miss is that government doesn’t “provide” anything. The people provide the government with money which it is supposed to use to deliver back to the people what they want and need. But, it goes far deeper than that. The money the government uses is taxed from individuals ONLY because businesses are generating wealth. Taxes collected from individuals are possible only when a business is created and is successful enough to employ people (or pay a struggling business owner a wage even if they are working by themselves). Business taxes are only paid when businesses are successful. There IS NO OTHER SOURCE OF REVENUE FOR THE GOVERNMENT besides what is generated in wealth producing commerce conducted by individuals and businesses. The government could not do anything, could not build a road or a bridge, could not run a school, could not provide security (through police, fire departments, and the military), could not run departments that regulate anything (FDA, FAA, etc.), or do anything else unless businesses were creating wealth, paying their taxes, and employing people who also pay their taxes. Businesses DO build it, they just farm out some of the projects to the government on the local, state, and federal level.

What Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren and anyone who believes their idiotic statements don’t realize is that the bottom line is that everything the government does is paid for by businesses (if there are no businesses there are no individuals with money to be taxed) and it is done to facilitate commerce. The people pay their taxes to the government and elect their representatives (at local, state, and federal levels) in the hope that the government will utilize the money to do something that facilitates commerce. Build a road. Why? To get people and goods from here to there. Put in sewer and gutter. Why? To provide an environment that is desirable so that people (workers) want to live in a community, so businesses want to be located in a community, and so that people don’t have to use their time dealing with mundane things and can do something else that is more productive (wealth producing). Educate children. Why? So that they can become productive employees, or entrepreneurs, or in some way generate wealth not only to support themselves but to contribute to others. Have a military to provide national security. Why? So that commerce is uninterrupted and the investments people make, as well as their lives, are protected. Same with police and fire departments.

Ultimately, it’s all about (or should be all about) facilitating commerce and building wealth. The government’s job is to help that process. Whatever the government does is either paid for or paid forward by businesses in the past, or paid for by businesses now (and in the future as businesses have to pay off government debt). The infrastructure that Obama and Warren think the government simply gave the businesses of today was either paid for by businesses in the past, or is being paid for by businesses currently. It was paid for by commerce to facilitate more commerce. Governments (local, state, and federal) did not do it on their own. They don’t have the money unless businesses provide the wealth to give them the money.

The difference between the government in the past and the government now is that in the past the government seemed to understand that it was to use the portion of the wealth businesses generated which it took through taxes to do the things necessary to facilitate commerce. Build the Interstate highway system to facilitate moving people and product because it’s needed. Now government imbeciles think they’re wise enough to build infrastructure that is NOT demanded (unlike the Interstate highway system), like high speed rail that people don’t use and that government has to support (losing taxpayer money every year to provide an undemanded service to a few), or “investing” in windmills and solar arrays. Obama and Warren think the bureaucrats in government have been the ones out front, “investing” in things that magically turned out to be useful to business. Not only do they forget where the money came from to make those investments, they forget that the government works best responding to demands from the citizenry for things that support commerce rather than having ivory tower bureaucrats trying to shape the economy to their vision.

It’s all more evidence from Obama and the Dems that they are economically clueless to the point where they don’t even understand where “government money” comes from. We desperately need to rid ourselves of these people.