“But you know what, I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them. So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way. We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more. (Applause.) And, by the way, we’ve tried that before — a guy named Bill Clinton did it. We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine. We created a lot of millionaires.
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. (Applause.)
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. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
First of all, this line of arguing is nothing new. What Obama did was a classic Red Herring fallacy when challenged over wanting to raise taxes. One commits this fallacy when the attempt to distract one opponent from the actual argument A by bringing up an unrelated argument B. The term comes from an old English myth of training hunting dogs. The trainer would drag smelly red herrings in attempt to throw the dogs off track. Note the pause and change between They know they didn’t [and] look, if you’ve been successful. This change up was a very overt red herring
I had the same argument used against me while opposing measures 66 and 67 that would raise taxes on the rich and corporations in Oregon. My point was raising taxes would impede economic growth in Oregon and drive business and the right out of state. The dear but liberal lady retorted I used pubic schools and roads, why am I complaining. Like Obama the lady had tried to detract from the main argument of raising taxes is bad. In addition Obama’s argument is pure liberal parentalism, we are just babies needing a nanny state to take care of us, and I see this view as very contemptuous.
