gut;1234758 wrote:This. The tone is that most of your success is owed to those "roads & bridges". That really discredits the talent and accomplishments of the entrepreneur, while also ignoring (as you point out) that they've paid more than their share for those roads and bridges (and what about the people who provide services and don't use the roads to ship anything?)
And, really, I have to pick a bone with "hiring workers we educated". Technically, the worker is the one really benefiting from the education (in fact, most jobs train people with school/grades being more or less a signal or filter), and that worker pays that education back with taxes on his wages (well, half of them).
Especially when he said "There are a lot of smart people out there...Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there."
That couple sentences set the tone for his 'faux pas' that came a few lines later "You didn't build that".
Yes, when he said the actual words 'You didn't build that' he was specifically talking about roads and bridges. There is NO DOUBT he completely blew the line he was trying to say, since he actually said, in the same sentence "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that
happen."
No doubt it was a 'gotcha' moment that will be played throughout the campaign, but there is no doubt the tone of his whole speach was that there are a lot of people, smart hard working people (aka just as good as you) that didn't make it. He was almost suggesting that if you have a successful business it was the help of the public services and luck that made it successful, not because you were smart about how you set up your business and you worked hard.
There is no denying, even by the isadore's and Boatshoe's of this board, that his tone was to minimize the business owners affect of his own success.
Now, has Romney and conservatives taken his one VERY BAD line out of context? Yes, no doubt.
However, let's not act like his whole speech was just talking about how the government has helped them somewhat, now you guys are minimizing his intended context.