While President Barack Obama, Intoner-in-Chief, reads his “State of the Union” Address this evening, in front of a Congress of Over-Clappers, seated next to his wife will be Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Gene Sperling, White House economic advisor, enthused about the symbolism:
Apple is a great American company, and it stands for our sense of innovation, invention, entrepreneurship, and risk taking and I think that’s quite an appropriate person to be in the First Lady’s box when the president is talking about our economic future, the importance of job creation, manufacturing, innovation and how we create strong middle-class jobs.
Apple is, indeed, a great American business — one of the few that people who typically disdain business can’t stop loving. But it might be worth remembering that Apple’s success doesn’t so much “stand for our sense of innovation, invention, entrepreneurship and risk taking” as exemplify all of those things … “our sense of” those qualities is secondhand at best.
But politicians like to soak up secondhand qualities. They eat symbolism for lunch and dinner.
I wonder if the president, in stating the union’s state, will dare compare the qualities of America’s best companies and folks like Tim Cook (corporate heir of Steve Jobs; master of the supply chain) with that of America’s government.
A huge chasm separates them. Having won the election, President Obama enjoys a captive customer base over the next four years. Mr. Cook does not. Obama seeks to raise his revenue by taking more from a tiny minority. Cook has to persuade people to willingly buy his product.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Standing By, Standing For”
Apple only prospered because its industry and innovation was developing so fast that it could not be over-regulated into oblivion.
Isn’t the real lesson from Apple that it is best to leave the innovators and entrepreneurs alone?
Apple employs 43,000 people in the U.S. More than 700,000 work on Apple products overseass, where this gives the company more “scale, flexibility, diligence and skilled workers” than they can get in the US under the regulations here. The subcontracted workers in China work for $17 a day and live in dorms.
China is the epitonme that Obama is trying to emulate here. “Those jobs are not coming back” until we get our standard of living down to match theirs. 4 more years.
“Having won the election, President Obama enjoys a captive customer base over the next four years.”
This is why mandated Obamacare coverage of sterilizations, abortions, and birth control should be so alarming for all people, not just people of traditional faith. This is compelling the American people to subsidize eugenics/population control methods, using the power of the IRS and government exchange boards in each state.
Blacks are the only demographic group in America whose numbers are actually decreasing, thanks to government policies.