This whole thing is being heavily abused by the republican party as a means to attack the president and misinform people. "You didn't build that" was simply a bad choice of words. Obama was actually slipping up on his speech if you listen to it. This could have been prevented by adding the word "alone" after or by saying ""You didn't build those roads" which is what that sentance was referring to, the sentance before the one immediately before the questionable statement itself.

This concept is a basic topic in philosophy and the established one to display the importance of why we create governments and the benefits they can provide the population.

Unlike you, Obama doesn't believe that the rich built the roads by themselves, the Internet, or all the advantages American society has, on their own and for themselves.  But then again, your apparent inability to capitalize the first letter of words to your sentences may prove that some people are able to create their own language, beyond Typonese (the language of Typos, which spells "universities" as "univeristies").  Hey, maybe you are typing from a portable device, and capitalizing is a pain.  That does happen.

i think the rich built the roads by themselves?

i guess im rich now or something? i clearly said we paid for that stuff.

i also said the rich paid for most of it, as they pay the loins share of the tax burden?

yes, from my android atrix, its hard to type, especially when you are in a hurry and dont give a shit.

The only true money the government has is taxes. We all enjoy roads, police, fire dept, schools, etc. but most of us pay taxes to fund those institutions.

Taxpayer pays:

Federal: Income taxes, Medicare, Social Security. Federal indirect: part of the Medicare and Social Security. They are removed from your wages before you are paid the wage as they are paid by the employer.

State: Most have income taxes, unemployment, and sales tax.

Local: Most have at least property taxes and sales tax.

Fees, licenses, fines, and excise taxes: All three of the above utilize these taxes.

For example if you enjoy the highway system in America remember you are paying for it every time you buy gas for your car. The best info I can find from multiple sources says that you pay anywhere from 26.4cents (AK) to 67.0 (CA) per gallon in taxes when you buy gasoline. The Government (state, federal) make more money per gallon than the oil company does and then at the end of the day taxes the oil company for the profits they did make for the sale of the gasoline.

I can't really see any good that would come from raising anybody's taxes because the government will always find a way to waste the money. The government is like that relative you have that is alway broke. You all know that relative because you won't lend them anymore money and you get a leery feeling when their number pops up on your phone. You could give them your whole check and they would be still broke and/or in debt. Where does it end?

There is a debate over the role of government in maintaining a nation.  Government gets more and more power as people demand things get addressed, and no one seems to step up to do them.  So government steps in.  Maybe people don't step in because they don't feel empowered enough, or no one wants to do it.  And with tax, the question is whether or not the same stuff would get done, if there wasn't any taxes being collected to do it.

thats the whole problem and why I don't think it was calculated.  In a world in which speeches are broken down into tiny out of context blips for political attacks, I don't think Obama would have wanted to use that phrasing.  Obama fumbled, and is now getting hammered for it.  Normal people don't listen to speeches or pay attention to campaigns, they watch the news and see commercials.  I don't see how Obama would have wanted to say something that could have been torn apart like that.

I mean, look at Romney and the I like being able to fire people comment, or that he doesn't care about the poor.  Looking at the context of those statements he obviously meant something else, do you think romney wanted the news to focus on those out of context statements or on the point he was trying to make?  LIke I said, what Obama said was a gaffe.

Here's the problem with that: we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. If we raised taxes by the amount that the Democrats want to, it will cover about a week's worth of federal government expenditures. The Democrats don't even pretend that it's going to help the deficit, which is why they constantly fall back on the "fairness" bullshit.

As far as what Obama said, it's incredibly offensive whether he meant, "You didn't build that business," or, "You didn't build that road/bridge/whatever." Just because the government can build a fucking a road (paid for with taxpayer money) means that some prissy little asshole who has never done a day's work in his entire goddamn life is entitled to confiscate your wealth and use it as he sees fit? Fuck that.

There is the general argument for taxes in general that no one is successful on their own, and since we were all part of the success we should all share in the success; but this is something substantially different than what Obama was saying ... His statement was clearly that your intelligence and hardwork had nothing to do with your success; and that success comes from the collective.

While he may not have meant it that way, what he was saying was more in line with what you would hear in the USSR or China than what you would normally hear from a leader in a capitalist nation.

I actually agree with you, however, when you have two groups who have different goals and ideas, in order to come together on an agreement to solve a problem both sides need to give a little to get a little.  Like I said, republicans need to bend on taxes on the rich and democrats need to bend on spending on social programs.  

as far as Obama being offensive, I don't really see that.  He was just trying to give a speech about unity, but I just think the speech was poorly written.  He seemed to hard on individual achievment.

There isn't a revenue problem?  Care to post on here what the percentage of the GDP is taken up by federal income tax at this point?  Is it historically high or low.  If it is historically low, unless you subscribe to shrinking the government to the size of a bathtub so you can drown it, explain how it isn't a problem.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/are-taxes-in-the-u-s-high-or-low/

By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal taxes would consume just 14.8 percent of G.D.P. this year. The last year in which revenues were lower was 1950, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The postwar annual average is about 18.5 percent of G.D.P. Revenues averaged 18.2 percent of G.D.P. during Ronald Reagan’s administration; the lowest percentage during that administration was 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in 1984.

Find something more recent if you disagree with this.

And it is bull to say there isn't a revenue problem.  Your flat denial is absurd.  Now, you can argue there is a larger spending problem, but there is also a revenue problem.