Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 11:56am

Obama Attacks Success

I have always found Mitt Romney to be a fairly indifferent orator, but he was on fire today, attacking the remarks made by Obama that Paul blogged about here.

President Barack  Obama‘s campaign officials are trying to minimize the damage caused by his  campaign-trail comments that downplayed entrepreneurship.

The push-back came midday when Obama’s press secretary, Ben LaBolt, tweeted out that “Romney apparently set to launch false  attack. … Get the facts.”

LaBolt was trying to head off Romney’s new focus on Obama’s July 14 speech  where he argued that entrepreneurs are dependent on government for success.

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that  happen,” Obama told the crowd, while urging tax increases and a larger role for  government.

Romney’s strongest response came shortly after LaBolt’s tweet.

“I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success … [but] I don’t  want government to take credit for what individuals accomplish,” Romney told a cheering crowd in swing-state Pennsylvania.

“The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t  build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc  didn’t build McDonald’s, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft … is not just  foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur,” Romney told the July 17  crowd in Irwin, Pa.

Go here to The Daily Caller to read the rest.  This administration has nothing but contempt for the private sector and Romney has jumped on a major vulnerability of Obama in this speech.  The reason we have a lousy economy is because Obama has instituted policies that are death for a growing economy.  He truly believes that an ever expanding government providing cradle to grave services to a docile and grateful American population, think the Life of Julia ad,  is the future of this country.  Romney has the chance to show the nation how wrong this vision is for America.

 

 

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G-Veg
G-Veg
Tuesday, July 17, AD 2012 8:04pm

As to the speech, if Mr. Romney can do that, deliver that kind of direct, uncomplicated, heartfelt message often enough, he can win this thing. He really seemed to believe what he was saying and i kinda liked him for it.

Americans vote with our hearts, not our heads.

As to the ad, it was perfect. It hits the soundbite, lingers on the hopefullness of the message, and uses blue collar workers as a visual representation of the stark differences in fundamental beliefs.

If the GOP can keep that up, they can sweep the election.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Tuesday, July 17, AD 2012 9:06pm

This is as good a speech as Romney has ever delivered. But first, we must hear more about Bain and Romney’s taxes. Because those are the really pressing issues of our time.

Paul D.
Paul D.
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 12:12am

This is perfectly in Romney’s wheelhouse. He ain’t the picture of conservatism that most conservatives want to see but these are the moments that will tend to make us the most proud of him. Thanks for teeing Romney up, Activist in Chief, BO.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 4:50am

No one would argue that Napoléon did not win the battle of Austerlitz; but, nor would they contend that he won it single-handed.

As for the baleful influence of bureaucracy, no doubt, we have all heard the old proverb that “Frederick the Great lost the battle of Jena,” even though he died thirty years earlier. As Bagehot says, “It was the system which he had established—a good system for his wants and his times—which, blindly adhered to, and continued into a different age, put to strive with new competitors, brought his country to ruin.” Now, the special vice of bureaucracy is that “bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results; or, as Burke put it, “that they will think the substance of business not to be much more important than the forms of it”” (Bagehot again)

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 5:34am

Donald R McClarey

As a general, Friedrich der Einzige [Frederick the Only] was without rival. The proverb refers to the military system he perfected, in contrast to the levée en masse, inspired by the Revolution and so brilliantly organized and developed by Carnot (the real head of the Committee of Public Safety from August 1793) By contrast, Frederick had said that the ordinary citizen should not even be aware that his country is at war. The House of Hohenzollern, ever since the Thirty Years War had displayed a rare talent for drilling mere savages into mere soldiers; it could not form and lead a citizen army.

Actually, the decisive test of the two systems was the battle of Valmy; something Europe had not seen since Salamis and Marathon.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 5:43am

Obama, last week, wrote one of Romney’s best stump speeches, “President Obama attacks success and therefore under Obama we have less success, and I will change that. . . . I don’t think that anyone could have said what he said, who had actually started a business. . . . I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a President of the United States.”

I am not surprised. That is in the liberals’ belief system. It’s in their screed.

Mary
Mary
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 6:21am

So I guess we’ll soon be hearing from Pres. Obama that anyone who failed in this society did not do it alone either? We’ll hear about those who had no incentive to work and depended upon government assistance, who resorted to illegal activity and violence that landed them in prison and because of their behavior I can blame them for not succeeding. It’s funny that he does not mention that three out of four births in the African American community are children born to unwed mothers and that there is a total breakdown in family life in many African American communities. When is he going to mention that individual responsibility is what helps bring people out of poverty? When is he going to talk about that responsible parenting is key to success? My parents came to this country as immigrants and worked hard to achieve the American dream. They did it through hard work and self discipline. America has always been the land of opportunity. It should not be the land of handouts.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 6:59am

Donald wrote
” His successors, attempting to slavishly follow what they perceived to be his system, came a cropper.”

That is precisely why chose the example as a criticism of bureaucracy.

To take another example, from Sixtus V, who died in 1590, to Leo XIII, who was elected in 1878, we had a virtually unbroken succession of popes, who had risen through the ranks of the Vatican bureaucracy and who were, by habit, taste and training, administrators. Even Benedict XIV, better remembered today as Prospero Lambertini, the great canon lawyer, fits this mould.

It is not unfair to describe the result as one of assiduous mediocrity. Pious, conscientious men though they were, even in Catholic countries, they had the same impact and the same popular appeal, as the average Secretary-General of the United Nations or President of the World Bank. Pio Nono was popular because he was pitied.

Meanwhile, we had the Church riven by the Thirty Years War, the Quietist controversy, the Jansenist heresy, the Gallican controversy, Josephism, the suppression of the Jesuits, the French Revolution and its aftermath, and the Risorgimento, in none of which can the Holy See be said to have greatly distinguished itself.

ioannes
ioannes
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 9:19am

Romney needs to say something like this:

“Anyone can borrow a ton of money from your parents and survive, but that is not real growth! That is not taking a serious look at your life and making the necessary changes! The Fed will always print you money, but that is no way to get out of your slump! You need someone who has the knowhow to fix this country—Obama has no new ideas.. He has no willingness to work with all sides.. He is no Bill Clinton.. America needs someone who can lead a nation, NOT AN AGENDA!”

Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 11:45am

To liberals, the proletariat makes the company and should own the company, not the person whose idea it was to start it and with whose resources those proletariat are being employed. It all goes back to the idea of no private property – everything owned by the State and for the State. It’s communist. And that’s Obama: a communist.

Brutal Truth
Brutal Truth
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 4:23pm

Paul Primavera:
You have no clue what you’re talking about. Obama is the same president who has kept minimum wage at $7.25/hour which is good for business owners but terrible for anyone trying to make a living on that pittance of an income. Obama has done absolutely nothing to push for the Employee Free Choice Act which would make it easier for workers to (gasp!) actually get union representation so it isn’t just them as an individual negotiating with a corporation or business owner. He’s given us a health care “reform” bill that pleases nobody but the health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry when he had a golden opportunity to push for single payer. You know, universal coverage like every other industrialized country in the world except the U.S. has. Why did we get a health care “reform” bill that made share values of insurance companies and Big Pharma corporations skyrocket as soon as they heard it passed in Congress? This is a communist?? Are you out of your mind or just completely ignorant of what a communist is?

As for business ownership, if a person takes out a small business loan and starts their own business, hiring, say, 10 people to do the grunt work guess what? He needs those ten people to make his business a functioning business instead of a failure or else he wouldn’t have hired them. Of course he’s going to pay them as little as he can get away with paying them while squeezing as much value added out of their labor as he can. Those 10 people are what makes his business a business and not a boarded-up storefront. In other words he’s going to have to expect many times the dollar value in labor out of his workers than he’s going to be paying them per hour. But because that guy was able to take out a loan or scrape together the money himself to start a business that means he gets to exploit 10 people, or however many he hires, indefinitely or until they get fed up with being used and quit, to take up another job somewhere else getting exploited probably just as badly? Why does having the capital to own a business equal the “right” to take advantage of other people’s lack of capital?

That’s all capitalism is after all: an economic model in which those who have the capital to exploit others do so, exploiting everyone who doesn’t have the capital to exploit anyone else. That’s a decent economic system? Sounds more like Satan’s own economic model.

The future doesn’t involve capitalist wage slavery but rather direct worker ownership of the businesses regardless of who started the business. Companies need to be transferred into the hands of the only people who won’t exploit the workers, i.e. the workers themselves. That’s the only system that is going to give the average worker an incentive to work harder, to do a better job, because he or she would be actually seeing their income increase when their workplace’s profits increase instead of how it is now where if e.g. Wal-Mart’s profits increase by 15% this quarter their workers whose labor brought about some or all of that increase in profit margin see absolutely no difference in their paychecks.

Capitalism is a dead idea. It belongs in a museum.

Paul Primavera
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 6:16pm

“Brutal Truth”,

Please continue to stay and read what people far smarter than I am have to say here at The American Catholic blog site about the Faith once delivered unto the Saints, the conservative principles of personal responsibility and accountability, free enterprise, private ownership, and patriotism. I have neither the time nor the energy to debate you. But I will say this: if capitalism is so horrible and dead as an idea, then first, where did you get that computer on which you composed your message except from a capitalist, and second why don’t you live up to your principles and emigrate to a non-capitalist nation like Cuba or North Korea?

PM
PM
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 7:23pm

” … But because that guy was able to take out a loan or scrape together the money himself to start a business that means he gets to exploit 10 people, or however many he hires, indefinitely or until they get fed up with being used and quit, to take up another job somewhere else getting exploited probably just as badly? Why does having the capital to own a business equal the “right” to take advantage of other people’s lack of capital? … ”
Private business does not necessarily pay minimum wage to people for wanting to use their particular and individual talents productively, not to mention incentives or an owner intending to take advantage of anyone.
Exploitation sounds cynical and something for the unlawful or unjust or careless.

” … The future doesn’t involve capitalist wage slavery but rather direct worker ownership of the businesses regardless of who started the business. Companies need to be transferred into the hands of the only people who won’t exploit the workers, i.e. the workers themselves. That’s the only system that is going to give the average worker an incentive to work harder, … ”
Sounds inefficient and costly with too many chiefs, no scouts. Breeding ground for distraction, waste, and mistrust.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, July 18, AD 2012 8:20pm

They have been devouring the private sector since 1933.

For 80 years, it’s been spend, spend, spend, tax, tax, tax, regulate, regulate, regulate until they bust the private economy and unemployment goes through the roof. Many state and local government go bust due to sweetheart deals with employees unions and stark declines in tax revenues. Soon enough, the US government can’t pay interest on the debt, or for anything else.

Then, they blame capitalism, dump the Constitution, and declare a dictatorship.

Only thing lacking, over the last 80 years they were unable to disarm we the people.

simonne
simonne
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 3:11am

I’m so sick of hearing about Bain & tax returns. Bain has a very good success rate of turning companies around. He gave what his required when it comes to tax returns & if I was him I would offer another year of tax return for Obama’s college record. I read an AP story the other day & if it is true, it is very disturbing. If that came out about Romney, all the newspapers would have picked it up, true or not. I think we have a choice in November someone who believes in socialism or capitalism period. Obama really scares me as he doesn’t even respect the separation of church & state.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 3:18am

Although I am sceptical about his proposals, Brutal Truth does raise real concerns.

One, of course, is the intractable problem of usury. I say “intractable,” because the last major papal encyclical on the topic, “Vix Pervenit,” promulgated on 1 November 1745 does more to indicated the difficulties of the subject than to offer solutions. Bearing in mind that Benedict XIV was probably the greatest canonist ever to occupy the chair of St Peter (the other contender is, of course, Innocent IV), it is not to be expected that others will do any better.

What Vix Pervenit does do, is to require Catholics to examine very seriously the real nature of a contract, in the light of the Church’s perennial teaching on the evils of usury, that is, taking money simply and solely for the use of money. It certainly cannot be treated as a dead letter.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 5:55am

I want to see Obama’s official (not forgeries) college transcripts, medical records, and passport records. I know that Romney made a lot of money.

Speaking of evil Bain Capital, Obama mega-cash bundler, Jonathan Lavine, ran Bain while it killed jobs at GST Steel.

MP-S: You’re correct about usury. The US gov (Clinton, HUD kapo Cuomo, Bush) decided every American, Honduran, Mexican, et al should own his/her own home (the ownership rate jumped from 66% to 69%). Prior to those edicts, US banks would only lend money to people that didn’t need it, i.e., people that could repay the loans.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 7:43am

T Shaw
Curiously enough, the mortgage or wadset, as the Scots called it, was designed, during the Middle Ages, for people who wanted to invest their money, without committing the sin of usury. The borrower disponed his land to the lender on condition that, if the loan were punctually repaid, the land would revert to the borrower. That is why the borrower had to obtain letters of regress from the superior, undertaking to re-enter him as his vassal. In the meantime, of course, the land belonged to the lender, who could do what he liked with it. What he usually liked to do was to let it and the person he let it to was the borrower. Receiving rent for land was not usury, for land naturally yields an annual increase.

Paul D.
Paul D.
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 9:45am

Context its everything. It might be sinful today NOT to engage in usury given that fiat money is the predominant form of currency. If I don’t charge you interest then you are effectively usuring me under today’s inflationary fractional reserve banking system.

Thank you Paul Primavera for inviting that drive-by socialist to live under the suppression that he advocates by moving to Cuba. At some point it may not be as genteel of a suggestion as it is today.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 10:17am

Instapundit has it.

Atlas Shrugged isn’t a novel.

It’s a “how-to” manual.

“He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”

“Who?”

“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”

She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 11:32am

Paul D

You are right about context.

The old writers all treated a loan of money as a “mutuum,” the term used in Roman Law for a loan for consumption. Thus, the present French Civil Code. Art 1892, following the Roman Law, says, “a loan for consumption is a contract by which one of the parties delivers to the other a certain quantity of things which are consumed by use, on condition that the latter shall return as much to him in the same kind and quality.” So, if I borrow a pint of milk or a cup of sugar from a neighbour, then that is mutuum.

Clearly, the old writers were thinking of money as a tangible, fungible thing; thus, the French word for silver and for money is the same – l’argent. Our word “money” derives from the name of the Roman mint, which was in the undercroft of the temple of Juno Moneta [Juno the Warner – It was her geese who famously gave the alarm, when the Gauls made a night attack on the Capitol in 390 BC]; likewise the French word, “la monnaie,” which means specifically a coin.

Now, the rules around usury were never applied to a mere instrument of debt, such as a bill of exchange or a promissory note. If a bill of exchange had been given for the price of goods, say, no one ever suggested that negotiating it at a premium, or taking it at a discount was usury. There was a brisk market in foreign bills in the City of London from around 1300, the price being governed by the balance of trade.

It is a good question how “fiat money” should be classified.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 12:07pm

Point of information: the so-called US money in circulation is debt owed by the Federal Reserve. On the side with the face of the dead president, in the top border, it reads “FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE.” And, below it says, “THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.”

Money and US Constitution – ‘Create a more perfect Union.” Article I, Section 8 “The Congress shall have Power . . . ; To coin Money and regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, . . . ” Nowhere does it say create money.

Your money is backed by the full faith and credit of the government (whatever that is pwrth).

Many believed paper currency was unconsitutional. In 1871, Knox v. Lee, the Supreme Court declared United States notes (i.e., government debt instruments) legal tender and constitutional.

Mary De Voe
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 2:00pm

In the post about money. When a loan was made to start a business venture and the venture failed it was considered the money’s fault. Bad money. Before 1962 paper money had SILVER CERTIFICATE written across the top. After 1962, it then became illegal to hold silver except as boullion. When the Fereral government begins seizing private property to pay off its debt, they are dancing on our childrens’ graves. All public and private property is held in trust for all future generations. When 70% of the country is owned by foreign interests we are no longer a sovereign nation. America’s sovereignty as a nation is on the choppng block by one world government under the world bank. Without sovereignty, we, the people, are slaves.

Brutal Truth
Brutal Truth
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 2:16pm

Let’s face some unpleasant facts: Capitalism literally could not survive for a week without there being an enormous difference between the amount of value added to a company per hour by a worker’s labor and what that worker is getting paid per hour to perform that labor. That difference is called surplus value. I’m not talking about someone doing $12/hour worth of work and getting paid $10/hour. No, in order for the business owner to be able to meet his overhead costs like building rent and utilities as well as materials costs if it is a manufacturing enterprise or wholesale goods if it is a retail store etc. and especially in order for the business owner to be able to take home a profit, there has to be a huge surplus value extracted from every worker in his employ. In other words someone has to be doing $40, $50, $60 or more dollars in work per hour in terms of value added and getting paid $7.25 or $8 or maybe if the business owner is feeling “generous”, $9/hour to do that $40 or $50 or $60 worth of work/hour. Or more. State chambers of commerce routinely advertise how much value they extract from their workers for example North Carolina’s brags that it squeezes $5 in value out of the state’s workers (on average) for every $1 in wages they get paid. Meaning if I’m getting paid $8/hour I would be actually doing $40/hour worth of work. Put a happy face on it all you want, try to rationalize it all you want, that’s exploitation pure and simple. And without this egregious, blatant and endemic exploitation of the average non-wealthy working person capitalism falls apart under its own weight.

We live in a society in which the social class someone is born into largely determines their chances for success in life. Capitalist apologists can brag all they want about how America is supposedly some “land of opportunity” but the facts don’t bear this out, not by a long shot. Ask yourselves: does a person who is born in the ghetto, goes to ghetto schools through no fault of their own with windows broken, no A/C or heat, teachers who don’t want to be there and textbooks so out of date they refer to the Civil Rights movement as “troubles ahead”, a kid who studies hard but has parents (or parent) with no money to send him or her to college even if they had grades to warrant it, and graduates high school if they’re lucky with the wonderful career opportunities of working in McDonald’s, Burger King or slinging crack on a street corner have anywhere near the same kind of opportunities as a kid born to rich parents, living in a gated community, going to the best private schools and has a college education paid for by daddy’s big bucks and a sweet cushy job at daddy’s stock brokerage all lined up after college whether or not he has any aptitude for it? Making most of his income from capital gains and paying 15% in taxes instead of a rate nearly double that for a person who actually does hard work for a living? Those two people are not even in the same universe of opportunities. Why should a small percentage of the population be born into wealth with little risk of failure or of being destitute no matter how inept they are while a much larger segment of the population also through nothing they themselves did be born into soul-crushing poverty and have to claw their way out of a well their whole life? Why does the so-called “richest country in the world” have tens of millions of people who can’t afford their own food without assistance from the government? Why does this country have hundreds of thousands if not a million or more homeless people? Why does this country have 20% (one in five) of its children going to bed hungry at night because their parents can’t afford to feed them adequately? Why does this country have the least social mobility of the industrialized world? Why does it have the least worker rights in the industrialized world?

Read in Genesis, read Cain’s impudent question to God: “What, am I my brother’s keeper?” That is a question people have been struggling with ever since but if you all have truly read the Bible as I have you would see that most of the point of the Bible is that YES, we most certainly ARE our brother’s and sister’s keeper in the sense that we are to not ignore their suffering, not turn a blind eye to their misery. Do you think God wants an economic model in which a tiny percentage of the population has more money than they could ever hope to spend in several lifetimes and are the ownership class that exploits the labor of everyone else who doesn’t have the capital to exploit others? Really? Of course not. Satan, yes, this is his ideal economic model in which it benefits a tiny percentage of the population while basically enslaving everyone else through lack of opportunity, simultaneously destroying the environment for future generations through lack of concern for literally anything beyond short-term profit. Capitalism is an evil, heartless, yes satanic economic model that doesn’t deserve to enslave humanity for one more day let alone indefinitely. It’s a great and wonderful system for the wealthy elite. It is a spectacular failure for everyone else.

The future is working towards a classless society in which nobody is born into poverty, nobody is born into wealth and everyone starts out from approximately the same economic starting line. This is not a guarantee of succes. This would be a guarantee of having an equal opportunity for success as everyone else, big difference. We cannot achieve this through wealth redistribution. It can only be done by a drastic reappraisal of what we value in life and a clean break with current notions of bourgeois property relations, meaning the transferring of the ownership of businesses into the hands of the workers, not as punishment to the business owners for their exploitation of the workers but to PREVENT future exploitation which is inevitable under a capitalist system. A government truly representing the average non-wealthy citizens (rather than the small sliver of the population that are millionaires and billionaires) would have as much right to effect this transfer of the ownership of the productive assets as it would have in taking custody an abused child away from its abusive parents or confiscating a snake oil salesman’s supply of snake oil. Nothing else will get workers fair compensation for their labor and nothing else will give them an actual stake in the success of their workplace.
The future is a worker ownership classless society. Anything less is barbaric.

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 2:25pm

“The future is working towards a classless society in which nobody is born into poverty, nobody is born into wealth and everyone starts out from approximately the same economic starting line. This is not a guarantee of succes. This would be a guarantee of having an equal opportunity for success as everyone else, big difference. We cannot achieve this through wealth redistribution. It can only be done by a drastic reappraisal of what we value in life and a clean break with current notions of bourgeois property relations, meaning the transferring of the ownership of businesses into the hands of the workers, not as punishment to the business owners for their exploitation of the workers but to PREVENT future exploitation which is inevitable under a capitalist system. A government truly representing the average non-wealthy citizens (rather than the small sliver of the population that are millionaires and billionaires) would have as much right to effect this transfer of the ownership of the productive assets as it would have in taking custody an abused child away from its abusive parents or confiscating a snake oil salesman’s supply of snake oil. Nothing else will get workers fair compensation for their labor and nothing else will give them an actual stake in the success of their workplace.
The future is a worker ownership classless society. Anything less is barbaric.”

Didn’t they try that in the Twentieth Century in a number of countries? Wasn’t the outcome barbaric?

I’m also interested in others dissecting (?debunking) the numbers presented.

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 3:02pm
Paul D.
Paul D.
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 3:42pm

loe future is working towards a classless society in which nobody is born into poverty, nobody is born into wealth and everyone starts out from approximately the same economic starting line.”

In other words a perfectly idealistic world.

In the immortal words of Gandolph:

Fool of a Took!

Paul D.
Paul D.
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 4:11pm

And more importantly the inspired words of Holy Scripture:

Mark 14:7

“For the poor you have always with you”

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 4:25pm

Opposing collectivism, financial repression, and high taxes is not the same as opposing Charity.

St. Matthew writes that it was the disciples. St. Mark says it was some of the people. According to S. John 12:1 – 8, the one who was angered by the woman anointing Jesus with expensive perfume (in anticipation of His burial) was Judas, the one that would betray Him. John goes on to say it was not because Judas cared for the poor. It was because he was a thief.

Social justice is not the same as Charity.

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 6:15pm

“Opposing collectivism, financial repression, and high taxes is not the same as opposing Charity.”

Nor is it opposing Catholic Social Teaching. Though I have come to believe that many who promote a particular form of social justice in the name of Christ are little concerned with authentic Catholic Social Teaching.

Ivan
Ivan
Thursday, July 19, AD 2012 7:21pm

The future is a worker ownership classless society. Anything less is barbaric.

commisar for the enlightenment: Comrade, what is Capitalism?

stakhanovite: The exploitation of man by man.

“And what is Communism”

“The reverse”

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, July 20, AD 2012 2:42am

Brutal Truth is implicitly adopting the labour theory of value.

According to this theory, labour alone creates value and, under capitalism, the labourer’s wages are invariably less than the value he creates, the “surplus value” being filched by the capitalist.

To take a hackneyed example: yarn is more valuable than wool, because of the labour involved in spinning it (including the labour that went into the plant and machinery used in the process). For the same reason, cloth is more valuable than yarn and garments are more valuable than cloth.

But this is false. Garments are valuable, because people want to wear them and cloth, yarn and wool are valuable only insofar as they are garments in the making. Let the garments go out of fashion and all the labour in Christendom will not give them value.

According to the Labour Theory of Value, goods derive value from their past, to which the purchaser is supremely indifferent, whereas, in truth, they derive their value from their anticipated future use or enjoyment and labour derives its value from its product, not the product from the labour bestowed on it.

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, July 20, AD 2012 9:37pm

A good commercial from the Romney Campaign:

Phillip
Phillip
Saturday, July 21, AD 2012 8:25pm

Here’s a great one. Pass it around:

trackback
Sunday, July 22, AD 2012 7:11am

[…] Hattip to commenter Phillip.  A truly devastating reply to Obama by the Romney campaign.  Put me down for building my law practice.  Did I do it alone?  Certainly not!  My right hand woman, Chris, my secretary for 27 years and counting, deserves a large share of the credit, as does my wife, with her love and support, along with helping out at the office.   My parents, who taught me that with hard work I could be what I chose to be, will always get all the credit I can muster for anything good I’ve accomplished in this world.  Finally, my clients who have blessed me with their business over they years will always have my humble thanks.  All that having been gratefully acknowledged, I think my usual 50 plus hours a week that I put in at the law mines might have had a wee bit to do with it.  Most owners of successful businesses take a fair amount of honest pride in what they have accomplished, and the denigration by Obama of this, and his blindess as to what makes the American economy go round, the drive and hard work of millions of entrepreneurs, is truly the biggest political blunder I have seen in many a moon. Tagged Election 2012 […]

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