Anybody else weary of all the "people before profits" squawking that falsely assumes you must make a discrete selection between the two?
One choice, we are lectured, leads up some daisy-strewn path to Xanadu. The other punches a one-way ticket down the primrose Amtrak line to Newark.
What's odd is how often people assert a religious justification for despising wealth (mainly wealth they can't help themselves to). "Money is the root of all evil!" they cry, imagining they are quoting from the Bible. And they are, except that they leave off the four words preceding that phrase. The fuller quotation is, "For the love of money is the root of all evil ... ."
Big difference.
There are, of course, myriad ways to help people without pursuing a profit. You might take a turkey potpie with a side of fondue to a shut-in, or mentor a youth whose dad couldn't be troubled with the inconveniences involved in not abandoning his son.
Blessings on you.
But you probably bought the car you use to deliver those meals with wages paid from profits earned by the company for which you work. Ditto for the tickets that let that disadvantaged child watch the Lookouts whoop up on the Montgomery Biscuits (who deserve a whooping for their name alone).
Don't tell me those are evil acts simply because money was the means used to accomplish them.
Money is morally neutral, a mere instrument - which highlights the absurdity of today's ginned-up denunciations of profits as enemies of the people.
O to have more such "enemies."
Where's the return?
Any day now, I expect the Ministry of Truth - uh, the Department of the Treasury - to begin labeling taxes a love offering.
I mean, it's under the authority of a president who thinks deficit spending is an "investment." Never mind that the primary returns so far on the $14 trillion debt are $400 billion interest payments, grinding unemployment and - more debt!
Just borrow a few trillion more, raise taxes on small businesses, hire 5,000 extra IRS employees to enforce ObamaCare, and restrict land-based and offshore energy production on grounds that it threatens unicorn and mermaid populations. One of these decades, the milk and honey are bound to start flowing.
Rat fink nation
More evidence of a link between totalitarianism and the astringent strains of anti-smoking activism: The government of Honduras has enacted a law encouraging citizens to call the authorities if they catch family members lighting up at home. A second offense yields a fine equal to a month's worth of minimum wages in Honduras. Seriously.
As with other species of zealots, the trouble with anti-smoking fanatics is that they cannot spot the point at which the tactics they use to prevent smoking create an evil greater than smoking.
Such as the specter of a 12-year-old in Tegucigalpa getting out of any punishment, however well deserved, with a threat to call the cops because his mom sneaked a Pall Mall in the pantry.
One wonders whether a nation is fit for freedom if it tolerates a government that thinks children should rat out their parents for something like that.
Make it stop
The New York Times ponders: "Many joggers don earbuds and listen to music to distract themselves from the rigors of running. But might the Black Eyed Peas or Rihanna distract them so much that they jog into traffic?"
That's all backward. I've never heard Rihanna sing a note, but after the Black Eyed Peas' Super Bowl fiasco, it seems obvious that they don't distract people into leaping in front of speeding dump trucks so much as they make them eager to do so.