There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, “well, it must be because I was just so smart.” There are a lot of smart people out there. “It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.” Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges; if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. — 2012

My Take – Mr. President, if you use your brain and work hard, you have a better chance of succeeding than you do if you wait for someone else to give you what you need. Yes, we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and we didn’t get where we are without other people being there for us. But those people are there because this is a high trust society, where we help each other out, not because someone was using tax money to pay for them to do it. We have roads because we all decided that the cost of putting the road together and maintaining it was offset by the money that we would all make because it was easier to move people and goods.

Government doesn’t build businesses, people do. Government can make things favorable for business. Government can buy goods and services from business. But government doesn’t build them. As a matter of fact, government doesn’t really build anything. At best, it pays other people to build things.

So remember, Mr. President, you didn’t build that. We all got together and did it, without your help and usually while overcoming the ‘assistance’ of people like you.