Nothing good happens without a profit. And how do we maximize this goodness? By lowering taxes, that’s how. As three successive generations of Presidents (Kennedy 1961, Reagan 1981 and Bush 2001) have proved when taxes are lowered government revenue increases.
However, this basic economic concept is misunderstood by many people especially those involved in the public sector.
What do the leading liberal Democratic politicians in Illinois – Blagojevich, Madigan, Durbin, and Obama – all have in common? Amazingly, none of them has ever worked for a for-profit enterprise let alone started a business or managed a business. None of them have created one single job. They have spent their entire adult lives drawing a check from the government i.e. the taxpayer.
No wonder they do not understand the problems or concerns of the businessman, large and small. It is also no wonder that they believe more government and more taxes are the solution to all of our problems. That is all they know – they have no other experience.
But the fact is without profits there are no jobs. Without jobs there are no taxes. Without taxes there are no funds for AIDS relief in Africa, Medicare benefits or homeless shelters. There are also no salaries for policemen, teachers, governors, senators or mayors.
That is because only profit generates capital, only capital generates investment, only investment generates jobs, only jobs generate taxes. Therefore without profits, as for example in Zimbabwe, there are no schools, there are no roads, there are no public services and in fact there are no public sector jobs or pensions. Thus everyone, public and private worker alike, should focus their efforts on profits.
For those who say, “Profit is OK but it needs to be limited” I say this: limited profit means limited investment, means limited jobs, means limited taxes, and means limited i.e. lesser good. Limited profit means fewer new factories, fewer new machines, fewer new computers, trucks and life saving drugs which in turn means fewer employees and fewer tax dollars and therefore less money for the public good.
Without profits there is also limited charity. Bill Gates was only able to establish the $21 billion Gates Foundation because he made unlimited profits. Would the world be better off if the government had limited his profits i.e. taken that $21 billion for its own purpose? You could only believe that if you believe Jack Benny statues in Waukegan, bridges to nowhere in Alaska and multi-million dollar pensions for public employees would serve the world better than the Gates Foundation’s malaria and AIDS research.
Even our friends on the left benefit from profits. The leftist website moveon.org owes its existence to uber-capitalist George Soros who has donated tens of millions of his several billion dollars to support the radical leftist ideas at moveon.org. In an ironic twist it has recently been revealed that good ole George has bought millions of shares of Halliburton, the defense company savaged by moveon.org for the last 4 years as a war profiteer. Ah, ain’t America great!
You need look no further than General Motors, United Airlines or Lucent to see the negative effect of lack of profit. Did 500,000 former GM employees do more good (i.e. pay more taxes) or do the current 100,000 employees? Bankrupt United’s former 80,000 highly paid employees or their current 30,000 employees? Lucent’s 1999 employee roster of 150,000 or today’s 30,000?
For further proof of the dire results of no profits look at countries where there are no profits. How much money has Haiti, Liberia, Syria, Mynamar, North Korea or Cuba contributed to the worldwide fight against AIDS? Zero, nothing, nada. But who has committed $15 billion to that fight? The most profitable country in the world and it is only able to do so because of profits.
You can go on and on. Who provides the most financial support to the UN even though it is often inimical to its interests? The U.S. of course, supplying over 22% of the UN costs and it is only 1 of 191 countries. In fact the 3 most profitable countries in the world, the U.S., Japan and Germany provide 51% of all UN funding.
Why don’t the other countries provide more funding for an organization they continually praise? Because their political systems do not allow their economies to generate profits and therefore they cannot contribute to solving the world’s problems. Most of them are corrupt, genocidal, undemocratic – and unprofitable. Indeed, citizens of non-profit making countries live truly Hobbesian lives: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
In the end the entrepreneurial, risk taking private sector, the ultimate source of all profits and thus all taxes, provides all government jobs, all donations, all charity and thus all good.
Nothing good happens without a profit.
