Michelle Obama Does It Again

I swear, this woman is going to be the death of her husband’s campaign. While speaking to some assembled women at a daycare, she told them not to “go into Corporate America”.

“Become teachers,” she counseled. “Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the moneymaking industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.”

Naturally, Investors Business Daily took exception to that remark:

No disrespect to teachers and nurses, but there are problems with those remarks.

First, when she says “move out of the moneymaking industry into the helping industry,” she speaks volumes. Apparently, well-paid people in all kinds of profitable fields are, in the Obama worldview, just idle, scheming splinter-collectors who help only themselves.

On the other hand, the social workers who make sure the cash flows from the various elements of the massive government bureaucracy are the great and noble helpers.

However, the oil CEO who invests billions of dollars of his firm’s profits in the research and development of new technologies that bring hitherto unreachable deposits of fuel to the cars and homes of millions of Americans is very much in “the helping industry.”

So is the pharmaceutical executive who uses her business skills and scientific knowledge to decide to spend billions on R&D for new drugs that lengthen the lives of millions.

The real, productive jobs in the private sector help people in ways government can’t. A president who does not understand these things will kill the geese who lay the golden eggs — kill them with high taxes and onerous regulations and ultimately adverse economic conditions.

Second, did the Obamas really make a tough choice to give up high-paying jobs to work in community service? The University of Chicago Medical Center reportedly pays Michelle more than $300,000 a year for her services as “vice president of community and external affairs.”

My question to Mrs. Obama is….What about business school teachers who teach, ya know…business? Are they really “helpers” if their students go on to be greedy, fatcat business execs in the “moneymaking industry”? Hmmmmm?

What a silly, mixed up message.

I’ll have to add it to her list of famous quotes. 

Hat tip: Lucianne

Photo: ABC news (Stan Honda, AFP/Getty Images)