Brad Sallows said:
By strict rules of grammar, "that" would refer to "the business". But from the full context of the paragraph as spoken/written, it should be understood to refer to "the infrastructure".
Government depends on taking a "squeeze" of the revenue generated by an active economy. Infrastructure development is government investing in its own revenue stream. It is a grave mistake to deprecate the risks undertaken and the achievements of entrepreneurs, or to imply they are the ones who should feel beholden. I suppose there is a large segment of the private and public (especially the latter) work force that quails at the thought of striking out on their own. For them to claim that business is the one receiving the piggyback ride and that entrepreneurs should be grateful is ridiculous.
Government should be grateful that there are people willing to risk capital and jump through all the hoops and red tape.
Of course. that's what drives the economy. Societies accept that a system of government needs to exist to take that squeeze to pay for that infrastructure and anything else that society wants that is not provided efficiently by the market. It is those who are willing to take the initiative and risk though that create wealth. They do, however, require things like infrastructure to do so, and the free market does not provide those things. That's why humans organized themselves with things like government.
The whole point is that no one ever said that business is a getting a piggyback ride. That's Fox ginning up a fake controversy based on selecting a specific extract from a much larger speech which solely highlights that in contrast to the efforts on the right to suggest that government is nothing but an impediment to everything, government does indeed have a role to play and that it's important make sure that it's focused on doing that job well.
The USA faces a massive (several billion dollar) deficit in infrastructure. It faces a need to reform its healthcare system. It faces a need to fix its budget mess. President Obama's decided to stump on the idea that it will take working together and everyone contributing to do so. That's what the speech was about. Nothing in there actually slammed businesses or entrepreneurs. It simply said that there's more to that. It's part of his campaign narrative that expecting people to pay in and work together is in fact what made America great. The fact that that is a message that will likely resonate with a large number of American voters who are seeing the impact of those things every single day is what terrifies the GOP, especially given that they're being somewhat effectively painted (whether true or not, but I have to admit to finding it true) as a party with no ideas except doubling down on what already hasn't worked and being more interested in protecting the interests of the wealthiest at the expense of the vast majority. Contrast that with what that speech actually said - that people who took risks succeeded because where it was necessary people worked together to help each other succeed. I cannot fathom for the life of me why an average working family would support the GOP, because the GOP will never, ever make them rich. At least, not with the policies they're peddling now.
It is to me the greatest evidence of the intellectual bankruptcy of American conservatives that they cannot counter that message head on, and instead have to resort to quotemining like this, creating fake controversy, supporting (OPENLY!) disenfranchisement of their opponents, and using their vast media propaganda machine to support those efforts. Are some on the left guilty of that? Maybe, though I can't think of any contemporary examples. I can't think of times where left organizations have been caught "accidentally" distributing false information about voting dates, locations or procedures, but I can think of several cases on the right. I can't think of such egregious quotemining by the media that tends to support the Democrats. I have seen hysterical leftists simple go on about the right being manifestly evil, and they're as annoying and useless as most of the right who base their "arguments" on chain emails or things they heard on Fox or Limbaugh or wherever and couldn't be bothered to fact check.
It distresses me that money is what drives the electoral processes, not discussion of ideas. It irks me that polarization has gotten so severe that there's no prospect of working together, and that leadership of one party has said that getting their opponents defeated is to them more important than the interests of the nation. I do not for one second belief that that is what the Founding Fathers of the United States of America had in mind. And what really, really bothers me is that the same thing is starting to happen in Canada. I don't want this system to spill over our borders.
