"PROFIT": THE NEW DIRTY WORD

“Profit” and the “profit motive” have successfully been reclassified by the American political Left as a dirty word.

The word "profit" was formerly a measure of success, achievement, hard work, and efficiency. It stood for accomplishment and reward for prudent risk-taking. Now, there is the insinuation that somehow certain profits, usually determined by a politician, and often the mainstream media, are unnecessary, illegitimate, unearned, and evil.

At a time when oil prices had temporarily spiked, last year’s easy target was “Big Oil":

“ExxonMobil made $11 billion last quarter. They are not going to give up those profits easily.” -- (Presidential Candidate) Barack Obama

“The other day the oil companies recorded the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits.” -- (Presidential Candidate) Hillary Clinton

Let me repeat: "They are not going to give up those profits easily," and "I want to take those profits."

Questions:

• In America, if your neighbor earns more money than you do, are you able to take it from them because you feel they make "too much"? Wouldn't this be considered theft?

• Same scenario as above, except your motives are "pure". Suppose you promise to give the money to another neighbor you define as needing it more than the neighbor you stole it from (after taking your cut like the government does). Does that make it anymore legal? Try explaining that to the cops!

• Who earned these profits? Who do they belong to? Who took the risk in order to reap the rewards (profits)? Who worked for them?

• Who produced the product (oil, drugs, health insurance, etc.) that the public voluntarily purchases because it benefits them?

Hint: It's not the government. Only "Big Government," at the ultimate point of a gun, can take money, property, and/or "profits" from someone else and call it moral and legal. Anyone who talked about taking money that wasn't theirs would be considered as planning a crime.

Last year’s target was “Big Oil,” this year it’s the full-scale assault on the private health care industry profits. What is the evil profit margin of the greedy health insurance industry? A paltry 2%, barely over break even.

"The outright greed of the health care industry in the United States generates huge corporate profits on the one hand, and at the same time increasingly excludes access to quality health care for millions of working families across the nation."

-- Communist Party USA

That's right, the Communists! Not the president, not the Democrat Party, although it could have easily come from them, word-for-word.

ExxonMobil’s “obscene” net profit margin is a rather mediocre 9%, ranking them #185 out of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies. Microsoft’s is nearly triple, at 25%, yet nobody complains about "Big Tech". Their profits seem to be safe from confiscation since the government isn’t currently focusing on taking over the software industry.

It's convenient for the government to demonize the word, "profit", since they don't have to produce profit in order to stay in business. They have the unique ability to produce a near perfect track record of failed, bankrupt, or insolvent institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Medicare, Medicaid, Amtrak, Social Security...I could continue, just insert your favorite government bureaucracy. The government can always depend on a coercive bailout from taxpayers.

The notion that the government can arbitrarily decide “how much is too much” is an obliteration of individual freedom. Business earnings are the property of the owners, i.e. people, the individuals, who made the investment and took the risk.

Protecting citizens’ rights, not championing the violation of them, is one of the core reasons that the government exists. Forcefully seizing profits earned by one individual, or group of individuals, for the distribution to another, with the intention of securing their vote, is the ultimate of greed and deceit. It commits precisely the same kind of injustice and tyranny our Founding Fathers rebelled against two centuries ago.

“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.” -- James Madison