I didn't want to use the death of Steve Jobs to score political points. But you have to admit, Steve Jobs knew how to do something that President Obama doesn't: create jobs.
As John Podhoretz notes in the New York Post, the president pays lip service to the creativity of "rugged individuals" such as Jobs, but he doesn't really understand what is is that they do to create jobs:
As we consider life in America without Steve Jobs, we might also consider just how his staggering career represents a refutation of the economic philosophy of Barack Obama.
The president believes, as he said in his speech to a joint session of Congress last month, that American greatness can best be found in collective action.
While acknowledging the roles played by "rugged individualists" and "entrepreneurs," he reserved his enthusiasm for grand projects under the aegis of government — roads, bridges, dams, airports and taxpayer dollars assigned by the Defense Department to a project that grew unexpectedly into the Internet.
No single individual built America on their own," he said. "We built it together."
Of course, no single individual built America on his own, Mr. President; whoever said one did? But the life and career of Steve Jobs demonstrates what a single individual can do in America, and only in America.
It is interersting that Jobs, though a billionaire, was a popular one. That is probably because we love his products and know that they transformed our lives. Paul Kengor of Grove City College sees a message here for the Occupy Wall Street crowd and their celebrity associates such as Roseanne Barr, who has jokingly (?) called for guillotining rich bankers:
What the Wall Street horde and Roseanne do not understand is that in America, people generally get rich by providing a product or service that people want. Sure, there are exceptions. Some get wealthy by promulgating vice instead of virtue — witness the porn industry's parasitical attachment to Jobs' technology industry. Some are rich because they inherited the money — witness the Kennedy family. By and large, however, "the rich" earn their riches through the consent of millions of citizens who voluntarily purchase products and services through their own free will. That is called the free market; it is the opposite of the command economy.
Roseanne and the mob do not understand this country and its market system. Neither is perfect, nor are the wealthy people they produce. You are, however, free here — and free to keep the wealth you earn.
Steve Jobs understood. May he rest in peace.
Another important thing to say is that Jobs never got a government loan. Ethel Fenig makes this point in a brief item on the American Thinker.
If Jobs had failed, the taxpayer would not have been left holding the bag, as we are in the case of the failed solar panel company Solyndra.
Jobs had a vision, took the risk, and he prospered and in so doing created other millionaires and millions of jobs.