Bam’s Big Bang Theory

My grandfather’s story was probably typical of many who grew up in his generation. Reared on the lower East Side of Manhattan, he was forced to quit school in the 7^th grade and, in order to help his family financially, sold driftwood he found under the Coney Island boardwalk by the pound and helped deliver ice.

One day, he found a discarded physics textbook in the trash and studied it chapter by chapter in the evenings. With an analytical mind and a genius-level gift for mathematics, he began to tinker with all things mechanical and by the age of 16 had successfully built his first car from scratch. Later, he began a small machine shop business and, during World War II, developed seven patents for the U.S. Navy for use in their battleship engines.

Sadly, a lifetime of smoking cut short his life at 55, but were he alive today I’m sure he would be less-than-overjoyed to learn that that despite his considerable hard work and achievements, somebody else made it happen.

That “somebody” was, according to the current occupant of the Oval Office, the U.S. government, which he [bizarrely] views as the largest creator of wealth. His latest colossal blunder was delivered during a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., when he told onlookers that, “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that – somebody else made it happen.”

Spoken like someone who has never made a payroll and slept through all [or most] of his economics classes at Harvard – in the event he ever enrolled in one. A true “Joe Biden” gaffe, only delivered with more eloquence and sans the perpetual confused look.

Time to wake up and face north.

The truth is, most small business owners have succeeded in SPITE of government, which as history proves cannot get out of its own way. I’ve known small business owners who sold or pawned their furniture, maxed out their credit cards, or assumed risky second mortgages in order to finance their entrepreneurial dreams. And that doesn’t take into account the thousands of hours they put in – sometime 16-20 hours a day, seven days a week. And guess what? All without a government bureaucrat in sight. Did they get help somewhere along the line? No doubt, but nobody – and I’ll say it again for emphasis – nobody “made” their successes happen.

I know one restaurateur who averaged less than 30 hours of sleep a week when he began in the early 1970s. His net worth today is somewhere north of $400 million. Truth be told, the U.S. government had levied so many restrictions and guidelines on beef purchases that he actually had to buy from a Canadian purveyor, that’s exactly how much help he got from Uncle Sam.

If my grandfather were alive today, I’m sure he’d tell the community organizer a thing or two about the natural segue between hard work and success.

Not that he would listen or, for that matter, even understand.