If You Own a Business, You Built It

Recently, Obama gave a speech, stating that "If you own a business, you didn't build it.  Somebody else made that happen".  If you listen to the whole speech, he claims that you owe the credit for that business to government, on the basis that they provided you with things like roads, education, and a great country where your business can thrive.  This is just insulting.

My family owns a small chain of fairly successful restaurants. We've owned a few previously that didn't work out.  They were incredibly expensive time costing endeavors that in the end, yielded nothing but a leased building full of expensive equipment we couldn't get rid of.

As for those that worked out, they were a pain to get off the ground.  First and foremost, it required a lot of money.  All businesses have a lot of start up cost.  So you save the money needed, and you put your name on the line.  You borrow money, and you put everything you have up as a collateral.  You spend all this money getting the place up and going.  Getting the perfect building, equipment, etc.  Then you hire employees, and you find that you're paying out more than you're bringing in.  What you have is an incredibly expensive empty building.  It takes a couple years to generate enough customers to make a profit, and years more to make a profit that's worth all of this.  You pay your taxes, and you pay significantly more than most of the country.  You follow the laws, and every time the government shows up with some new ridiculous problem, you comply.  You live on less income then your employees, because what you're working for is a business, not a paycheck.  And Obama dares to take the credit away from you.

Ultimately, the government did NOT build the roads, provide great teachers, etc.  The tax payer did.  What the government did was take a portion of your money, waste most of it on things you rather didn't exist, and then used a small chunk of it to build roads, and higher teachers, many of which should never be described as great.  We'll get into that later.

Now, Obama didn't just insult the businessmen and entrepreneurs of this great country, he insulted the people as a whole.  He gave the credit to the greatness of this country to government.  He insulted all tax payers.

What makes this country great is not it's government.  It's the people.  Despite what Obama said in his speech, this country was never founded on socialism, even if it has been slipping that direction.  This country was founded on liberty from it's government.  It's America's people that make her great.  I know we have issues here, as does every country.  America's people make it thrive by going to work every morning, and knowing it's for a purpose.  The pursuit of happiness.