Elizabeth Warren made a speech in Andover, Massachusetts on September 22nd 2011 . My comments.
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody."
Of course! The way you accumulate money is to deliver value to people who value your services or products more than the money they give you. To accomplish this very difficult task of delivering value to people, you need to understand what they want, communicate effectively, build trust and deliver a product or service that meets their expectation. And, if you are going to do this for lots of people, you need a team that works well together and efficiently. Additionally, we have the infrastructure that allows people to cooperate, invest and work together with a legal system that supports this cooperation. Yea America! You can't get rich on your own any more than you can get pregnant on your own.
“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"
Ok, now here is where she starts to drift from reality. The fuel taxes we pay are supposed to go for the roads. In fact, this is almost a "perfect" tax because those businesses and people that use the roads, have to pay for them. The larger the vehicle, the wear and tear on the roads, the more they pay. So, our "rich" guy pays for the roads that he uses.
"you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate;"
Actually, the "rich" businessman funds most of our federal services. According to the IRS, the top 1% of taxpayers paid 40.42% of federal income taxes. Those in the top 5% of taxpayers paid 61% of the taxes. And the lower 50% of taxpayers pay little or nothing at all.
I would be grateful to this "rich" person who is paying taxes to help educate our children but he is wasting his money. The federal structure for education (I have read the "No Child Left Behind Bill – it isn't about education or how children learn, it reads like an IRS manual and is about power and control) interferes with good teachers and innovative solutions in a world that is very different than it was 100 years ago. If public schools were to adopt the same administrative to teacher ration as private schools they would have to fire thousands of staff. We know our educational system sucks, I don't have to back that up.
My understanding is that currently, every dollar in tax this "rich" person pays for education, 25 cents is kept in Washington D.C for "overhead" and 75 cents is returned to the school system with rules and regulations that cost another 25 cents in compliance. So, this "rich" guy isn't getting much for his money. I think we owe him an apology.
"you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for"
Actually, he paid property taxes that paid for these.
"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.”
Actually, as mentioned, the "wealthy" pay for most everything. 50% percent of the population pays little or no taxes.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific,
Like getting struck by lightning. It "turned into." This sentence decouples the risk, work, insight, sweat and tears from success. Now since you got lucky...she wants to you keep a "hunk" of it.
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.”
What social contract?
If I read this accurately, the social contract means that we take more money from business people that are delivering value to the rest of us, creating jobs, new products and services and give it to the government to support a failed education system.
What am I missing?
