Here is a Good Example of What Mr. Obama Was Talking About When He Said No One is Successful All By Themselves - From the Archives

From the Archives, and Relevant Today as Mr. Obama is being Pummeled for Suggesting that Successful People Actually Had Some Help

The Dismal Political Economist

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2011

Herman Cain Got a Free Master’s Degree Paid for By the Government

But When Asked to Pay Something Back, He Became a Conservative

The Wall Street Journal has an in-depth report on the history of Republican Presidential hopeful Herman Cain.  It is not a particularly interesting report, not because of the reporting, but because Mr. Cain has not lead a particularly interesting life (although recent revelations about his personal activities may contradict that statement). He was well educated, climbed the corporate ladder, was successful as a manager and now has gone into politics.  His life is not remarkable, by his own admission he has been motivated in life almost solely by the desire to make a lot of money, which is fine.  He has neither made major contributions to society nor has he in any way harmed society.  He just is.

But three things do stand out in the article.  The first is this.

He said he drew few political interpretations from his career, except that his success demonstrated to him that racial barriers for African-Americans had largely fallen away. He regarded his achievements simply as proof of what personal focus and hard work could accomplish

The second is that like many self made men, he attributes his success to what he has done and not from any help from the government.  But there is this

After Morehouse, Mr. Cain took a job as a civilian ballistics analyst with the Navy. While working there, the federal government paid for him to pursue a graduate degree at Purdue University, where he earned a master's in computer science.

An event which seems to be totally missing from any discussion Mr. Cain has about his background and the sources of his success.

And the third interesting commentary from the report is this.

Mr. Cain believed a push in Congress to raise the minimum wage imperiled his efforts to rescue the company. "I'm going, 'Wait a minute. I fixed all the stuff inside the company that I can fix, and now I'm going to get hit upside the head by the government?'" he said.

Then came 1994, the year after Democrats passed an income-tax surcharge to reduce the deficit. He says he was stunned when his personal tax bill increased. "It was just a sneak-a-tax,'" he said. "It only affected people of a certain category…That's why I became a conservative."

That’s right, after getting access to the corporate world in part from the government’s civil rights efforts and in part from the experience in a government job and in part from a government provided Master’s degree Mr. Cain became a Conservative.  Why, because the minimum wage, which doesn’t even support a person to live outside poverty or outside near poverty hurt his business profits and because a tax increase that was imposed only on very high income persons affected him.

Everyone, absolutely everyone who is even mildly economically successful in this country owes part of that success to both public and private organizations that have helped each and everyone us become what we are today.  But only Conservatives seem to want to deny to others what they themselves have been given.

That concludes our services, be sure to attend the church’s Lady Auxiliary French bread picnic in the parking lot.