"You Didn't Build That" - a blunder, methinks.

As anyone who reads my blog knows, I strongly support Barack Obama. But even I had to take pause when I read his statement that because business owners got help along the way, they didn't build their businesses.

I have my own business. And yes, I received an SBA loan. But I also paid that loan back and I paid for it with money I earned. I have sacrificed a lot to get myself where I am today. I forfeited vacations and a lot of play time. I also endured an audit that shut me down for 6 weeks. I can assure you, no one else earned my money for me.

I understand where he is coming from but there is still an underlying concern that is gnawing away at me. Karl Marx argued this, too. I believe it was his Labor Theory of Value. Something to the effect that the laborers did all the work not the business owner and therefore the laborers should be compensated with almost everything the product yielded minus the cost of the materials used to create it.

In this argument, it doesn't seem to matter that the owner invested his own money into the capital equipment that made it possible for the laborer to do his job. Everyone ignores the fact that the owner identified a need for the service or product and created a way to produce it and deliver it to the market. There are many things that a laborer cannot or is not willing to do to create such opportunities for himself.

There is a reason that not every real estate agent becomes a broker. It's true that if one is the broker, one can earn a greater percentage from each transaction. But it also leaves one with the responsibility of building a brand, purchasing office equipment, insurance, advertising, etc. I don't know if Karl Marx was ever able to place a value on risk. But if you want to know why more people don't just jump out there and start their own business, the answer lies within one's comfort level in taking risk.

My second major concern about this comment is that even though he may not have meant it to it's extreme, the man coming behind Obama might. If we leave this comment unchecked and unchallenged, someone with very real dreams of power would have the stage set. I can't help but think of Lenin; if I'm not mistaken, when he discovered his "New Deal" was not working, he was going to put property back into the hands of the private sector. Stalin had him killed before he could do it; and well, we know how that turned out. There is someone in Obama's shadow that could see lots of potential here.

Now this scenario is the extreme. We all have seen that communism doesn't work and I don't for one second believe that this is going to lead to communism; but his statement lays the groundwork for it. Our country, and capitalism specifically, is based on the idea that we create our own wealth.

On the flip side, this does not mean that I support Mitt Romney. I think Mitt Romney is a fake and will sell this country down the river. He has abandoned his ideals in exchange for a place in the White House. Once there, he's going to owe a lot of crooked people a lot of favors. He's not going to make this country better. He's going to go with status quo and continue policies that help people that don't need help.

I'm stuck and I need to know Obama knows better.