Successful people are NOT lottery winners, Mr. President

President Obama insulted everybody who has worked hard and sacrificed to succeed

Successful people are NOT lottery winners, Mr. President

You know me, friends. I get kind of animated sometimes, but I’m not mad. I’m just passionate.

But President Obama said something this past week that really got my blood boiling, partly because I know from experience how ignorant and wrong it is and partly because I can’t help but take it a bit personally – on my own behalf but even more so on behalf of my dad.

As he and other liberals have done in the past, he referred to successful people as “society’s lottery winners.” This was in the context of a discussion about some tax increase he wants, accompanied as usual with the suggestion that people with lots of money can surely afford it and there can’t possibly be anything better they could do with their money than to hand it over to him.

But let’s talk about this lottery crap.

Liberals often use this term when they want to frame a discussion about economics in terms of “fairness.” You’ve had success? Well the only reason for that is that you’ve been luckier than someone else. Whether it’s because of where (or by whom) you were born, or because of what you inherited, or because of who you knew, or because you were in the right place at the right time, you just happened upon a bunch of wealth that some poor unfortunate person somewhere else had just as much right to as you, but didn’t get.

And that’s why we need what Obama has called “redistributive justice” – where the government takes from you what you never deserved in the first place and gives it to someone else who was just unlucky. Liberals really believe that this is how it works.

I can’t help but think back to my dad when I hear Obama talk like this. I think about the risks he took when he left his farm – fighting to succeed just to get to the point where I could have a fighting chance to go to college. What lottery did he win? What good fortune just fell into his lap?

President Obama insulted everybody who has worked hard and sacrificed to succeed
And if I may say so, what Powerball number does he think I drew during 40 years of fighting my way up the ladder of corporate America so I could realize my own American dream? For that matter, does he have even the slightest idea how hard a small business owner works to make his dream a reality? For that matter, does Obama have any notion of how much harder the government makes that challenge with all the taxes and regulations it imposes on small business owners?

Your typical small business owner works far more than 40 hours a week to put his or her enterprise in a position to succeed. That’s not luck. That’s dedication and drive. And if that small business makes it and becomes a big business, then liberals like Obama treat them like some enemy who just got lucky and are robbing others.

This is one of the reasons you should never elect a president who has never had a real job in the private sector. He will view successful people merely as the beneficiaries of luck because he has no concept of what it took for that person to be successful. That’s why Obama and his political allies see wealthy people as robber barons, and they see it as their job to take what they have. And that’s why they get so upset when you suggest that those who don’t have much might improve their situation by doing things differently. They really don’t believe success is the result of hard work, determination and good decisions. They think it’s just a matter of luck.

And that’s why we have so little of it whenever they’re in charge.

President Obama insulted everybody who has worked hard and sacrificed to succeed. And on second thought, I am passionate and mad!



By Herman Cain