Michelle Obama's Career Advice

Stay out of the "money driven" private sector, she says, and instead find jobs in the public realm as teachers, nurses, and other important roles within a community. The goal of Mrs. Obama's speech was to empathize with the working poor in Ohio.

Ralph Reiland debunks Mrs. Obama's advice and suggests that she was taking a cheap political shot at two people who have worked, or are working, in the private "money grubbing" sector, Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea.

However, as Reiland demonstrates, Mrs. Obama's speech appears to be a political case of "do as I say, not as I do." Reiland exposes Mrs. Obama's "miraculous" ability to pay off college loans and saving for her children's future while working as VP of Community Affairs in a Chicago hospital in 2003-04 to be a direct consequence of the very capitalist system that Mrs. Obama despises. The curious thing about the Reiland's article is the nearly $200,000 salary boost Mrs. Obama received after her husband was elected to the US Senate.

While there is no question that every community needs teachers, nurses, and various other public officials, a common mistake is to assume that these industries can only exist when sanctioned by the State. In a completely free society, the capitalist system would ensure better services and higher quality goods to more people, and at lower prices. In a free market system, we'd have more people delivering books from more authors to more locations...and we'd laugh at a "public" servant's notion that her ability to pay for her children's future came from some "magic beans."