Comments about ‘Letter: Teamwork between American people and government brings success’

Ever been to a "third world country"?. Things that we take for granted are not commonplace.

Good roads, reliable communications, electricity, sanitation, drinking water, safety, air travel, shipping ports

It is difficult to start or run a business without these things. We expect them in the US

And they are here because Government is involved.

Its not all or nothing people.

Yes, there are lots of instances where government oversteps.

There are also lots of things that Govt does that makes life better and business possible.

How about we try to improve.

The "shut down the EPA and the FDA crowd" are more interested in hard line ideology than looking at what is best for our country.

They are the screaming children that have not taken the time to think things through.

Employees are there to make money for there employers. How could we survive without businesses? I guess we could build our own houses, grow our own food if we had the land and make our own clothes. Some ancient Indians and people in Africa live off hunting and gathering too. HOwver business make it easier to provide services we need. And they provide many jobs to people that otherwise would not have them.

People can live without business? They tried that in Mother Russia for 70 years. The "people" lived in abject poverty and misery. Now they are embracing Capitalism and enjoying big macs.

This whole argument is getting ridiculous. Obviously, government is needed to enforce laws and contracts. But to say that people could function with any kind of efficiency or make any kind of meaningful progress without business is even more ridiculous. Business is commerce, an exchange of goods and services, regardless of who engages in it.

Maybe what the writer is saying is that government could assume those functions, but that's not doing without business. It's just socialism in which government takes over the role of business. To casually say that business just makes life easier is a gross understatement.

What a silly argument. Even the face of the republican ad, the New Hampshire small business man received well over a million dolllars in govt. backed low interest loans to start and expand his business. He makes steel products so his workers are governed by govt. saftey regs. so they don't cut their hands off..would a business operate in such a way to protect the safety of it's workers without society looking over it's shoulders..obviously not. Look at the industrial revoultion and the early thirties in America. Great novels were written about the horrible working conditions of those times.

Could people exist without business? Of course. As a species we lived in communal tribes for the vast majority of our 200,000 years of existence, so there is no "probably" about it. The issue isn't just that business makes life easier; it's that it makes it better—infinitely so.

It's disturbing that the president's modest tax proposal is being characterized as class welfare and anti-business. From the perspective of history, the gap between the rich and the poor is extraordinarily high, and the wealthy have become ultra-wealthy while the middle class has had to send an extra spouse into the workplace not to fall backwards from where they were a generation ago.

Everybody has benefited from the American system. The rich have benefited the most. The government gravely needs more tax dollars. The president proposed that the rich pay a little more. It would be a sign of gratitude and patriotism for the people who have benefited the most from our society to make this small sacrifice with dignity.

Drive down any street and see how many businesses are CLOSED. Is Obama willing to say that those failures were caused by the government? They had access to the same schools, the same roads, the same services, but they failed.

Who built those roads? Who paid for those services? It was BUSINESS. If you have a job, it is because someone put his money at risk to give you an opportunity. If you work for the government, than you already know that it is business that pays the taxes that pay your wages.

This is not a "chicken" or "egg" question.

Before government can raise revenue through taxes, somebody must have already made a profit. Business came first. It paid the taxes so that Obama could fly around the country and reveal his contempt for those who pay for HIS privileges.

If there is one person in America who should be grateful for business, it is Obama. He has lived off the efforts of others his entire life - and now he throws them under the bus for his political purposes.

Mike Richards, your comments are so far out absurd they mean very little.

If a business fails, it's usually because of two reasons. Either the ownership/management is incompetent or the public, for whatever reason isn't patronizing it.

But the opportunity to start a business is very often boosted by government. It's how well that opportunity is used that counts.

As for the public not patronizing the business, it may either be that the product offered is of very limited interest or the location is bad or the public just hasn't enough money to spend. That is the real problem right now. So much of the money earned by ordinary Americans is being siphoned off by corporate greed, lack of good health insurance and other factors dumped on us by people like you that it's beyond the bounds of reason.

Then, when you turn around and try to cast blame on the "liberals," it becomes simply pathetic. Why don't you and your party go to work and stop obstructing efforts to improve?

Remember that we "liberals" are simply conservatives who refuse to allow ourselves to be fooled.

Taking a sentence out of context, through selective editing, in a speech then making an issue out of it shows how little substance the opposing side has for solutions to our issues. If that is their answer then it shows to me they got nothing left to prove that unregulated trickle down economics was an unmitigated disaster.

What is truly rediculous is that many of we "liberals" could still be considered conservatives by the standards 30 years ago. I've stopped calling myself a conservative only because it's been hijacked by complete idelogical nonsense.

The liberals have become the pragmatists realists and conservatives the idealogs unwilling to see.

I've owned several businesses. There are times it feels like racket to deal with the government but insurance companies and lawyers take the cake, not the municipality I've worked in. In my experience the waste comes from government officials contracting to the buddies and we all know it.

All that road construction is now contracted out - I see five guys standing around and one guy working. That used to be the joke about government workers. Now we just pay the company 4 times as much and the guy with the shovel half as much.

By taxing the rich more what they will do is pass the cost on to you the customer and you will be poorer. Sacrifice? Why should achievement be punished. sacrifice is done willingly. Not the more you have the more I take. That takes incentive away.

Businessmen do not pay taxes. All taxes, all costs and all profits come from the money paid by the consumer for products or services. The price we pay covers every wage, every cost, every tax and every profit made. And that includes almost every body, rich poor, legal or illegal.

Business failure in not the only reason a business might cease to exist. There are a thousand or more strategies for making a profit. Some of them might include actions to manipulate the market or even punish consumers or political opponents.

Like in the big boys game, nations put sanctions on other nations they wish to hurt. But mostly it’s the people of the nation that get hurt rather than the leaders. Seems like the object of the sanctions is the get the people mad at their leader.

Here's a reality check folks..people who make over a million dollars a year "in general" do not pass their taxes on to us..becuase they don't make their money from providing goods and services. Their money comes from trusts and "investments"..I use the last phrase liberally. As a matter of fact, they don't pass their taxes on the middle class because many of them don't pay any taxes at all. "Spoiler alert"..that's why Mitt won't release more tax returns.

None of this is based on speculation it's based on seeing the tax returns of the super wealthy over the course of decades.

A business is someones business. The company does not pay an employee the business owner pays him. He can only pay him if the business has enough profit for him to suceed. Thing is business owners will pay there employees before paying themselves. It is sacrifice to own a business in a hope to offer enough products to the community to be succesful.

When Obama is presiding over the largest deficit increase in history and is presiding over the greatest number of jobs ever lost in three years, how can he lecture us on how to run a business?

That man is clueless. Has he taken the time to consult with the kids running lemonade stands in Washington? Has he talked to the kid that delivers the newspaper to his staff?

He does not know the meaning of the word "business". He has shown us that he is either unwilling or unable to work - unless playing golf is his idea of work.

Why wouldn't he condemn those who work and work hard to make their business a success? The very fact that they can do it and he can't is something that he just cannot stand. So, what does he do? He throws everyone under the bus who makes this country work. Does he think that the average worker doesn't have to WORK? Does he think that those who apply themselves in school should be stripped of their grades because it wasn't their EFFORT that earned them an "A"?

He has justifiably earned the name, "The clueless President".

Mike, "greatest deficit increase in history?" Nonsense. And you should know it.

Try looking up some FACTS. Google Policy Differences Between Two Presidents.

Or try the Wall Street Journal's article The Obama Spending Spree That Never Happened.

You claim to be a conservative. You call me a liberal.

But do you know what a liberal really is?

We are conservatives who refuse to allow anyone to fool us.

It's important in this election to avoid any factual information and to just go with the primal urge to eliminate anything that is new and different. It doesn't matter what the record. The only thing that matters is what people believe. If it is necessary to close one's eyes, cover one's ears, then so be it. As long as they believe it, it doesn't matter how they came to believe it.

Because of the extreme partisanship that some are going to to achieve their goals to create a more conservative-defined world, information has become more propaganda than truth. Demonizing the opponent is central to this thesis. Hence, one might argue that Obama never had a chance once the Republican power apparatus recognized that they were going to lose in 2008.

They only had to bring out the Big Guns (funded with an almost limitless amount of money from disgruntled, wealthy conservatives) and institute a program to get people to place no emphasis on reality and focus only a on propaganda campaign unrivaled in recent history.

It's truly amazing what fear does to people's minds. And Republicans are so good at spreading it.

The left need to realize that ALL the money government has came from the people (or was taken from the people).

And any project the government undertakes a PRIVATE business is hired to actually do the work.

The is no magical government employee who is figuring it all out and doing all engineering and all work and so forth,

No, it is individual working for a PRIVATE business.

All ingenuity, creativity, problem solving, finding of solutions, is being done by, not the government and some government bureaucrat, but the people, private citizens and private business.

When Obama is responsible for $5 trillion of the $15 trillion deficit, how can anyone say that he is not responsible for the largest deficit increase in history?

If the liberals would spend as much time reading the facts about Obama instead of listening to Obama rewrite history, they might start to understand why Rasmussen has Romney at 47% and Obama at 45% with 4% wanting to vote for someone else.

People learned, years ago, that Obama knew nothing about leading, that Obama knew nothing about business, that Obama knew nothing about what makes America the greatest country on earth. But die-hard democrats listen only to Obama. They don't care what he says and they seem to agree with Obama that the truth is no longer important in America.

"And any project the government undertakes a PRIVATE business is hired to actually do the work."

Yes, something to keep in mind.

Those Govt projects

- put lots of dollars in business pocket.
- creates lots of profit for those businesses
- which allows business to hire lots of people
- and those employees pay taxes
- and support many other businesses along the way.

So, all govt expenditures are not just wasted as many would have you believe.

the truth pointed this out. Govt projects help private business