James C. Roumell, one of those wealthy job creators, has a brilliant piece in The Washington Post which pretty much puts the last nail in the coffin on all the mouth foaming about President Obama's recent comment on having help to build a business. He also breaks a few myths about Detroit but I'll leave the denizens of Bill Whittle to continue to live in their fictional world on that subject.
First, let's find out a little about Mr. Roumell.
Today, I own a small business, an asset management firm with $300 million in assets. Last year we launched the Roumell Opportunistic Value Fund (RAMSX) and hired three more people. We’re growing and creating jobs.
Sounds like someone Mitt Romney would like to cozy up to as an example of what's great about America. But wait!
I suppose I could pound my chest and take credit for my journey from Detroit to Chevy Chase, from working class to professional. I could say I built it myself. But this wouldn’t be true.
Aw, snap. Well, fuck this guy. He's a collectivist!
It gets worse.
I went to college with the help of Pell Grants and government loans. Twenty years ago I met Claiborne Pell and was able to thank the former Democratic senator from Rhode Island for introducing the Higher Education Act of 1965, which allowed me to go to college.
My business has been made possible by the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. These laws created practices and transparency that enabled a financial services industry to emerge. After the stock market collapse of 1929, the public rightly did not trust Wall Street and needed assurances that the industry would operate within a reliable set of rules.
A collectivist and a statist. Is he even an American?
Since Mr. Roumell is an investor, doesn't that mean he is a victim of Barack Obama's policies that have created uncertainty in the marketplace?
Nope.
Nothing in terms of “regulations” or “business uncertainty” has stopped me from investing capital for a return. In fact, the stability that government involvement brought to the capital markets over the past three years, evidenced by a 100 percent increase in the Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index since March 2009, probably enabled my business to survive. The federal government’s back-stopping of money market funds in the fall of 2008 ended, effectively in one day, what was turning into a 1930s-style bank run.
I thought the government was supposed to just let the free market do its thing. Otherwise, it always makes things worse, right? Oh, and on Friday, the S&P closed at 1418.16, near a four year high.
Mr. Roumell closes with two simple facts.
The countries that spend the least on government as a percentage of their economy (gross domestic product) are countries with little business success. Haiti, Bangladesh and Afghanistan spend 16, 13 and 9 percent of their GDP, respectively. Our federal government has spent around 20 percent of GDP since World War II. Europe typically spends slightly over 50 percent, so we’re a long way off even after factoring in an additional 15 percent for state and local government spending.
Yep.
And to those people who still can't understand President Obama's comment?
I did work harder, and perhaps more imaginatively, than many colleagues. But does that mean I built it myself? Does it diminish my success to be grateful for the public investments that so clearly contributed to my success? Every successful person knows, and will admit if he is honest, that luck played a role in his good fortune.
Why is it so difficult for the right to admit this?
4 comments:
Here is some excellent reading on what is, and isn't a free market.
What we have—and have had for a long time—is corporatism, an interventionist system shot through with government-granted privileges mostly for the well-connected–who tend to be rich businesspeople. This system is maintained in a variety of ways: through taxes, subsidies, cartelizing regulations, intellectual “property” protections, trade restrictions, government-bank collusion, the military-industrial complex, land close-offs, zoning, building codes, restrictions on workers, and more. As a result, people can get rich at the expense of the government’s victims. Even some who have prospered apparently by market means have actually done so through government intervention, such as transportation subsidies and eminent domain. Wealth can be transferred in many ways besides welfare and Medicaid, some of them quite subtle. Most transfers are upward.
And that is the system that you not only defend, but want to see expanded. That is why I say you are insane - because you want to do more of the same while expecting different results.
And still more on GM. It would be really funny if there weren't a few billion in taxpayer funds on the line.
Still more news from inside the bubble, juris? So, if I put up links from TPM and the Daily Kos saying GM is doing just fine, that's alright?
You do know that Kaus is a liberal, right M?
Not that anything is going to penetrate your bubble.
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