15 Nov 2012 CEI Rebuts President Obama with New Video Showing “Who Really Built That”

How does our economy really work?

As we all know from his famous “you don’t build that” speech, President Obama apparently thinks businesses are built because of things funded with tax dollars: teachers, roads, bridges and technological research.

…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. 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…

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has released a new video that rebuts President Obama as well as it can be done, yet it doesn’t even mention him. It explains how the free market really works. The video examines the pencil’s “family tree” to show there literally are millions of people who work together in a free market to create and bring to consumers even goods that seem simple, like a pencil. People who may not even care about those goods, or even realize they are making them.

This video is excellent. I recommend it to everyone, but I especially hope parents and teachers will show it to young people. This is definitely worth a six-minute investment of time.

If we want to save the free market we have to make certain people, especially young people, understand the miracle of how it works.