The other article is Sara Robinson's, "The Self-Made Myth: Debunking Conservatives' Favorite--And Most Dangerous--Fiction," ( http://www.alternet.org/story/155149/ ; April 25, 2012).
It is a review of Brian Miller and Michael Lapham's book, The Self-Made Myth: The Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed . Mr. Miller and Lapham are members of United for a Fair Economy, and questioned successful Americans including Warren Buffet, Ben Cohen, and Abigail Disney (Walt's niece), about how the government laid the groundwork for their own or their family's success.
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An excellent education received in public schools and universities.
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The support of the Small Business Administration and other government agencies.
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A strong regulatory environment that protected their businesses from being undercut by competitors willing to cut corners.
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Enforceable copyright and intellectual property laws that enabled them to protect good ideas.
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A robust system of roads, ports, airports, and mass transit that enabled them to reliably move their goods both within the US, and around the world.
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The government's role in creating the Internet, without which almost no modern company can function.
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The ability to issue public stock in a fair, reliable, regulated marketplace --a benefit that raised the value of several interviewees' companies by about 30 percent overnight.
These stories all stand in sharp contrast to those of the Donald Trumps, Ross Perots, and the Koch Brothers of the world. These are men, who claim the mantle of self-made men, but all of them started with large inheritances. The Horatio Alger myth, which is the founding myth for Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy, where everyone is capable of pulling themselves up by their boot straps, is far more encompassing in American life today than anything found in Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, or the Bible.
The American system of governance is currently suffering from a profound case of myopic nostalgia. Our citizens have been continuously spoon-fed the gospel of Reaganomics by our corporate dominated Main Stream Media for more than thirty years. They have been denied any adequate refutation or balance to these odious pieces of propaganda since the demise of the FCC's Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Most Americans are too often times ignorant of America's history with regards to economics, because the pro-Chicago School of Economics spokespeople on radio and television, as well as a carefully controlled pool of school textbooks coming from a single reactionary state (Texas), have left them ignorant of any alternative. This has led them to view today's economic reality through rose-colored glasses so dark they could double as welder's goggles.
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