Is the left going bonkers over Howard Schultz? Like some malfunctioning clockwork still partly moving, weird Obama 'narratives' from Obama minions are rolling out, dysfunctional and yet still recognizable.
Get a load of this tweet from former Obama Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (yes, that was his title)
Schultz, see, after all of his success as the visionary chief executive officer of Starbucks, "didn't build that." Nope, he owes his success to having lived in the government-run 'projects' as a poor kid growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s. Like that gave him some kind of advantage instead of actually worked to thwart him. There's a reason the U.S. government doesn't build housing 'projects' anymore - remember this?
Meanwhile, Schultz's claims to being an American success story, which, oh yes he actually is, is somehow a nothingburger, not a big deal. The individual inititiative and vision and risk and hard work he used to build the great Starbucks business empire had nothing to do with his revolutionizing the coffee industry, it was the projects he owes the credit to, not how he reacted to having to live in the projects. By this logic, the projects are an elixir, a veritable success factory, an advantage. Hey, everyone comes out of the projects a billionaire, so let's have more of them, is that it? In Friedman's mind, the only success story out there is Big Government.
That's the Democrat talking point now, at least for the most ambitious ones, sucking up to the Obama line and wheeling out the Obama nostalgia. Guys like Friedman are citing the superiority of Big Government over individual initiative and telling Schultz he'd be nothing without Big State, so running for president as an independent is a bad idea because what he should really be doing is trusting the Democrats.
It's all so surreal. It's all so Obama, taken, like socialism, to its logical conclusion.
Like him or not, Howard Schultz is a perfect 10. On the famous Forbes billionaire's list (Full disclosure: I once helped compile it), Schultz got a ranking of '10' in terms of how he acquired his Starbucks wealth. A ranking of '1' reserved for someone who completely inherited his pile and isn't doing a thing to increase it. A '10' is reserved for someone who started at the absolute bottom with significant disadvantages, broke the shackles, and soared to the top. Schultz is in that tiny club with a '10,' and in America, that's the highest status one can get, the biggest kind of American success story. Only in America...and yes, he did revolutionize business.
As Forbes columnist John Tamny writes:
But Schultz’s bigger achievement is what Starbucks became, and what it will continue to be. It’s community all over the U.S., and around the world. It’s long been said that countries with McDonald’s in them don’t invade one another, and if true, think about what Starbucks means for world peace. There are more Starbucks in Shanghai (double) than there are in New York City. Starbucks doesn’t just bring people together, it’s a symbol and brand that brings the world together. Starbucks is where people meet to talk, and it’s also of course where people meet to do business. In short, Schultz didn’t just create a great global business, he also created a concept that will be the starting point of all manner of other businesses.
To walk by a Starbucks in an airport, or walk into one anywhere in the world, is to invariably see a big crowd. That Starbucks are invariably full and bustling is a sign that Schultz built something that continues to meet the needs of billions.
All that, plus Schultz forever redefined the nature of entry-level work. Starbucks doesn’t have employees; rather it has baristas. And those baristas provide a great customer experience precisely because Schultz realized what every wise CEO has always known: poorly paid workers are very expensive. Figure that the poorly paid aren’t invested in the job, in knowing their customers, their orders, the names of their kids, and their pets. And the customers suffer this low pay. Schultz not only pays well, but wanting his baristas to create community in his stores over the long term through fully-invested-in-the-concept employees, he offers health insurance and college education. Entry-level compensation will never be the same thanks to this visionary. Thinking about all this, Schultz is way too good for politics.
To Tamny's analysis, I can also add that Starbucks triggered a host of imitative rivals, which expands consumer choices as well as egged on older competitors, such as McDonald's, to improve their product. Schultz sure as heck is a revolutionary. To say he owes it to big government is utterly insulting and out of touch.
Fortunately, Friedman has made himself a figure of fun with that idiocy. Here's a sample of what came back at him on Twitter:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/obama_appointee_claims_howard_schultz_owes_his_success_to__government_housing_projects.html
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