Nobody Got Rich on Their Own!

Only a Harvard Law Professor would say that. Oh yes, also Columbia, Princeton, and the list goes on. So the good Professor from Harvard is quoted as:

An August video of Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail is heating up on the internet, and some commentators are pointing to the clip - in which Warren makes a case for progressive economic policies - as evidence that the newly minted Democratic candidate could give incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown a run for his money. 

In the video ..., which was filmed at an event in Andover, Mass., Warren rebuts the GOP-touted notion that raising taxes on the wealthy amounts to "class warfare," contending that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody."

She continues:

Warren rejects the concept that it is possible for Americans to become wealthy in isolation. 

"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."

 I hate to burst her bubble but in my case I set up a business in 20 countries, my investors were in 8, my customers spanned more, and I moved from the US to the Czech Republic because the conditions were better, less regulation, and the electricity worked, here in New Jersey JCPL seemed to always have business killing outages, and still does. So do I get a rebate!

So should I tell all my subsequent investments; just leave the US because otherwise some greedy Harvard Professor wants your money.

Such a statement, if true, shows the total lack of understanding in the Progressives of how an entrepreneur works. They take risks, sometimes even life threatening risks, to seek a dream, and they get people to follow them in that dream. Is there a payoff, well sometimes, but often it is failure, and they pick themselves up again and start over. That, dear Professor, is what made and can still make America great, unless you want us all to move to Prague! You see in Prague they saw the results of your thinking and have rejected it. They had tanks, they had redistribution. They rejected that.

It was like when my ancestor, Jacob van der Voort came from Holland in 1649 and started his farm in what became Brooklyn. He settled in the unprotected hill tops, growing crops, bring them across the river to what was New Amsterdam. Did the Dutch remind him of the great advantage they had afforded him to take those risks? Doubtful. 

So when the Professor makes a definitive statement of "Nobody" she perhaps ought to think that she is not as omniscient as she thinks she is. In engineering, we always look for the exception, we look at boundary conditions, we look at extremes. Well Professor, look down Mass Ave, and there are hundreds! They, Madam, are your future, try not to send them all back to where they came from! For if you do, then God help this country!

Now The Economist has a more detailed quote:

I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”—No!

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.

You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear.

You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.

You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.

You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.

You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

 But, good Professor, I hired Czechs, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Thais, Koreans, and no one paid to educate them in the US, but I did pay via Real Estate Taxes to educate many here in New Jersey, who for the most part were unemployable, poorly educated. I was not safe in my home because, well it is New Jersey, and perhaps one may seen that television show... my "goods" moved over fiber built by Germans, French, Russians, Romanians, Ukrainians, ... Need I continue.

What "social contract", I did not see Rousseau anywhere on my block, not even Hobbes, perhaps the good Professor could read my book, perhaps de Tocqueville.

So they want to replace a native born resident of the Commonwealth with another wild eyed erstwhile socialist! It will be interesting.And yes, I paid for her education, she went to Rutgers!