2011-11-04

I Started This Blog On My Own

I can't accept or reject Elizabeth Warren's assertion "no one ever got rich on their own" because, while ostensibly sounding profound, it makes little or no sense.

I suppose there a several ways to demolish this claim but the ones that stand out for me are A) she declines to define what "on their own" means choosing instead to narrowly funnel the idea of one making it on their own is dependent on what the rest of us do. Which is patently absurd of course. Nor does she bother to consider some some successful businesses don't transport anything. and B) she deviates from that fact that everyone paid taxes (well, except the poor and including the rich)contribute to the infrastructure she highlights-  in the video here -  thus rendering the point of her argument moot. Not only that, even if a business benefits from tax credits or grants the persons receiving it are part of the same tax pool that provided the funds (expropriated by the state) in the first place!

Everyone gets help. Move on. She uses this to push a queer statist (sorry, progressive) perspective I reckon.

Question: If someone collects unemployment for one year after working for 10 years are they not entitled to it since the government grabbed a percentage of their income to provide it?

Moreover, I suppose, one can take her statement to its logical end. If the extending society "helped" someone succeed, then who is to stop them from claiming a piece of the profits?

4 comments:

  1. You invented the internet your blog is on? Al Gore... is that you?

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  2. Warren is right... from her perspective. A business cannot survive without patrons to sustain it. A politician cannot attain office without votes from others. He cannot run that office without the taxes of others. He cannot lead without followers.

    And, so, politicians create and maintain infrastructure. So they can campaign for office, access the voters and collect taxes.

    Without politicians, however, people would still build roads (to get their goods to market and for their customers to also get to market) and have in the past. Power plants would still be built, dams would be erected, transportation would be invented and exploited, and life (and commerce) would continue.

    It is the commerce that drives a society, not the government.

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  3. I agree.

    In her mind it makes sense. As you point out, it has a certain logic but it crumbles to bits pretty fast.

    People WILL move on with or without the state.

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  4. Wow, you guys are mind-numbingly naive.

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