[joezydeco]

It sounded bad coming out of the President's mouth because he did a very bad job of paraphrasing Elizabeth Warren. Warren put it like this:

"I love small businesses. My daughter started a small business, my brother started a small business, my aunt Alice started a small business, I worked in it when I was a teenager. This is really about a basic question of fairness. And that is, when big businesses really make it big, should they get the special tax breaks so that they don't have to make the contributions to help support all of the basic infrastructure—you know, the roads and bridges and the schools and all those pieces, the basic infrastructure that lets the next kid make it big, and the next kid after that, and the next kid after that? You know, the way I see this, this is really about the basic question of how we build our future. The Republicans have given their vision of how we build our future—they've said, 'I got mine, the rest of you are on your own'. Our vision of how you build a future is that you make the investments forward, so every kid has a chance. That's what this is really about."

[Prophasi]

The Republicans have given their vision of how we build our future—they've said, 'I got mine, the rest of you are on your own'.

Which is, in turn, a poor job of paraphrasing the actual small-government view, which would be better stated as 'I was on my own, I made it, and you can do the same.'

And not all Republicans/libertarians have made it yet. For them it might be 'I haven't made it yet, but I will -- and so can you.'

Her line implies that the view is an asymmetric "benefits for me, but not for thee" philosophy, which isn't the case. It'd be great if more ideologues had enough confidence in their own views to accurately depict and dispute the opposition's, rather than relying on strawmen.

[joezydeco]

I think the GOP's voting record is enough to show that they can publicly proclaim support for public infrastructure, education, civil rights, and healthcare but then do exactly the opposite when it comes to legislation.

[Prophasi]

Sure. But now you're contrasting the philosophy with what politicians actually do in office. If your argument is that politicians engage in lying and hypocrisy, I don't think you'll find many takers.

But I sincerely hope you'd assert the same (with tweaked parameters) for Democrats.

[joezydeco]

No, I believe I was contrasting the GOP's line

'I was on my own, I made it, and you can do the same.'

With the reality:

'I was on my own, I made it with the assistance of resources that government provides, and you can do the same if we actually wanted to support that mode of government in the future, but we don't.'

[Prophasi]

Fair. What resources did the average Republican take advantage of that s/he now wants to kibosh? Axing roads and bridges is nowhere present in the public discussion.

Of Warren's cited examples, schools are the only plausible answer. To say that school is valuable isn't an insight, and to say that school can only be government-funded and -run is baseless.

An argument can be made that government does it the best, but it's disingenuous to say that because Republicans (along with everyone else, and forcibly) had public schooling, they give up their right to upgrade what they got, for the next generation.

[joezydeco]

I don't think anyone's talking about kiboshing at this point, we're at the earlier stage trying to justify future kiboshing.

Remember that the original discussion here is over whether large government institutions are beneficial to the public or not in the long run.

What tide of public opinion is changing where the editor of the Wall Street Journal feels he needs to write an editorial literally changing the history of the internet to convince people that large institutions were NOT involved in this information age and subsequent economic boom?

[twoodfin]

The Republicans have given their vision of how we build our future—they've said, 'I got mine, the rest of you are on your own'.

Now that's some thoughtful political discourse right there. Take the most draconian budget Republicans have even proposed, and you're still looking at trillions in spending for "the rest of you".

And anyone want to guess how big a % of the Federal budget "roads, bridges and schools" are? Next we'll have Federal candidates talking about firefighters. This isn't a serious argument.

[gruseom]

There actually could be a serious argument about firefighters, because they mostly don't fight fires anymore:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/fir...

Probably won't happen, though, because everybody loves them.