Mr. Obama,

You recently made a statement to the effect that, ‘If you have a business you didn’t build it, you had help” inferring that the federal government helped build our businesses by virtue of paving roads and building bridges and keeping the nation safe from foreign invasion.

First of all, Mr. Obama, if I’m going to take advice about business it will not be from somebody who has had absolutely no business experience like yourself.

Secondly, Mr. Obama, I vehemently disagree with your premise.

Where was your government when I spent as much as 16 weeks away from my wife and infant son to get a business started?

Where were you on those cold winter nights when my old bus broke down in the middle of nowhere and we had to scramble to make the next show, nobody from the government came along to give us a ride.

Where was your government when I had to borrow money from a bank to make my payroll?

Where was your government while I was digging out of a two million dollar debt, playing every smoky beer joint I could to keep from losing everything I owned?

Mr. Obama, I want to make you aware of a fact. It is the federal government’s responsibility to build roads and bridges and keep the nation safe. That’s what the federal government is supposed to do, not create an entitlement society that is totally unsustainable and pile up debt that we can’t pay.

And who do you think paid for those roads and bridges in the first place, and have been doing it for 200 years before you were even born.

The citizens of this nation do not need to pay more taxes, the federal government needs to stop spending money it doesn’t have and has to borrow. Because the truth of the matter is that no matter how much taxes the government collects, things are only going to get worse because you’ll only spend it and demand even more.

Mr. Obama you have divided this nation by making the have-nots believe that anybody who has been successful has done so at their expense, that anything they’ve accumulated has been stolen, not earned. That hard work and risk had nothing to do with their success, they’ve just been lucky and should give a big part of what they earn to the government to pass on to those who don’t even try to be successful.

Look at what’s going on with the many black Americans who have put their hopes and complete confidence in you and voted overwhelmingly for you. The unemployment rate is 14 percent and the unemployment among the young African Americans is something like 40 percent. Is that what hope and change is all about?

Look at what’s happening in your hometown of Chicago where the murder rate is through the roof.

Do you think your baseless rhetoric about the unfairness of the successful in America is going to help soothe the situation?

Have you ever considered reaching out to them, instead of fanning the flames?

Mr. Obama I don’t think you like America very much. I think you’d like to redesign it from the ground up, to turn it into a lazy, unproductive, secular, socialist society.

Well, that just won’t flush in a lot of ways, the most prominent being that when all the productive people have given up and stopped trying, when all the investors stop investing, when 80% of the population is living on government hand outs, your government is going to run out of money and this nation will sink into chaos.

But Mr. Obama, I’m beginning to think that’s what you want.

My help cometh from the Lord who made Heaven and Earth. Not the government who made debt and class envy.

Source

The fact is, a lot of people who are wealthy DID work insanely hard to get there. There is no shortage of “rags to riches” stories across all industries and trades.

Some lucky people are born into wealth, but a good portion are not.

Personally, I feel the way this whole thing is being positioned is incorrect.

The overwhelming belief among many of the wealthy is that they are continually being asked to give more and more to the government, which is in turn used to pay for those people on entitlement programs, the so-called “have nots”.

I don’t have any statistics handy (and I don’t know if any even exist for this scenario), but I’d be willing to bet a significant percentage of those on government assistance don’t WANT to stay on it for the rest of their lives.

Paying taxes is part of living in a governed society. It has been for thousands of years and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Nor is the preference of the citizenry to dislike them. People griped about taxes way back during the Roman empire, just like today.

With particular regards to Mr. Daniels, I can fully accept that he never used any government assistance of any kind whatsoever when working his way towards a successful career. This is a free country, no one is forcing you to use government assistance if it’s available. If you want to do it yourself, that’s your choice.

But I don’t think his case represents the majority. I think a lot of very wealthy individuals have gotten that way due to government help. Look at people who become wealthy through holding high positions in corporations. Many of these corporations have received millions or even BILLIONS of dollars in government help in the form of reduced taxes, subsidies, grants, contracts and so forth.

The notion of this whole thing as a “class war” in which the rich and poor strike at each other on the basis of distorted truths gets us nowhere.

No society can survive on selfishness. There needs to be a community, there needs to be some co-operation and SOME sharing of resources. This is true of governments, corporations, non-profits, even churches.

I believe if you are wealthy should be allowed to keep the majority of what you’ve earned because you worked hard to earn it. But I also believe you should never be allowed to keep all of it so long as you live in a country and use resources it provides.

This is not a “class war”, it’s a misunderstanding of how a healthy society works.