Which Came First- the Chicken or the Egg?

If Mr. Obama has done nothing else, he has been able to help America discover the answer to an old children's riddle: which came first, the chicken or the egg? The problem, of course, is simple enough. The egg comes from chicken, but the chicken starts out as a hatchling from an egg.

The answer can be found in Obama's rant against business owners. You know the one; "you didn't build that."  In that speech, Obama suggests that business owners didn't build their business, because they use government roads and bridges, and had teachers as children, and used other government facilities along the way.

Obama bootstraps that argument as support for higher taxes on successful earners. Not, by the way, on the unearned income of the truly wealthy, but only on successful wage earners. Such people, he says, should be happy to give a little bit back.

To say the argument is disingenuous is charitable, to say the least. The first and obvious fallacy is that murderers, thieves, and drug users often have been to school, driven on roads, and used many of those same government facilities. While the availability of good schools and roads may promote the success of business, it hardly guarantees the success of a business, and never really causes business to occur, any more than schools and roads cause murder, robbery, or drug abuse.

The second, less obvious fallacy is rooted in the fact that governments don't actually have money; they have collected money to build the roads and schools, to pay the teachers and to operate any other facilities by levies of taxes. And those taxes aren't paid by the murderers, thieves, or drug users, but by the successful wage earners, and usually not the truly wealthy. So to say the successful wage earner needs to "give a little back" when their taxes paid for it in the first place is just absurd.

There are two other important points. It is true that in every society there are disabled and needy, but their care is not per se a government responsibility, but a societal choice between government and private charity. Also, while government may choose to finance projects by debt, that is not relevant, since debt repayment is also premised on taxes on the wage earners.

American history, which liberals ignore and Obama may not even know, clearly shows that business precedes government. People came to the New World, set up farms and businesses, and then created a government, and build schools and roads to service those farms and businesses.

Which answers the old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Without the chicken (the taxpayer) the government would never have its golden egg. In other words- government, "you didn't build that", the taxpayer did.