Agree. I am always amazed how people think that they are smart, but in reality reason for their sucess is built on someone elses misery.
Some entrepreneurs take personal loans and mortgages to bootstrap their business - if they don't start making money soon, they are out on the street. BO should distinguish between these guys and well connected preppies getting millions in VC funding for some lame web idea.
You are right in that thinking you're smart because you're successful shows you have no understanding of probability (these guys need to read NN Taleb's Fooled by Randomness). The only exception to this is if you got rich following a strategy that has a proven edge. But success being built on others' misery? Excluding outright slavery, every individual has a choice about whether he or she wants to be a customer or employee of any enterprise.
i call it a pavlov dog reflex. Once long time ago someone created truly real business out of nothing. like microsoft. todays money is released from pension funds to support web ideas like LDKN with excuse that this is next microsoft. long gone, times of true enterpreneurs. you need good schools to get any chance. it is true
If I got a dollar for every partisan hack job of a political speech I'd be wealthy and not have to trade this manipulated drivel we call the stock market. For rightwing hack jobs I'd charge double because they waste more of everyones time. Roads and infrastructure are built using gasoline taxes which can be 30% of every gallon in some states. A billionaire uses 1 vehicle, just like everyone else, to get to work. The infrastructure his business uses was funded by millions from the middle class driving millions of cars paying billions in gas tax. The lefties lie as well, but their lies tend to favor guys like me, the working stiff. Righties lies are usually geared at giving me the shaft, even worse is the righties make up the most serious lies and do the darnest things that damage the country as a whole. I don't expect Romney to win simply because it'll take more time for guys like me to forget bush and his righties clusterfk of the country.
If bridges and roads were built by a private company and we would use them for a fee, it would cost less than taxes private businesses are paying for it. Beware US people, your politicians are talking more and more like europeans.
I'm curious to know what proportion of voters who flocked to Obama in '08 will abstain this time due to disappointment. Will Romney be able to attract middle class votes? I doubt it. The Rs need to find a man of the people, another Nixon or Reagan, fast.
And nobody is realizing how weak Obama argument is :" You have been successful because you have been able to use roads and bridges"... How moronic is that? I am not even talking about half the businesses who don't use roads and bridges( internet, finance, various services ), even a transportation company can't work just because infrastructure is there ... God bless the "roads and bridges" for them because it is just about the only thing positive for the economy paid on public funds. All the rest( regulation, taxes ...) is just a brake , an ever increasing beast you need to feed. Politicians know most of the state activities are useless and they use the smallest economic link to bind high earners. Just like Sarkozy in France who wanted to link taxes to nationality because "it's not normal that french people living abroad continue to get the benefits of french nationality without paying taxes". Nobody knows what these "benefits" are...