America: No Longer the Home of the Whopper

A hamburger piled high with all the toppings

Burger King Worldwide Inc.’s deal to buy Tim Hortons and move its address to Canada will proceed, a day after the U.S. Treasury Department announced plans to crack down on corporate inversions. [Source: Bloomberg News]

Have you ever heard the expression, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you?” This is what comes to mind when you watch Barack Obama and other politicians threaten, fume, pout and demand whenever large companies — such as Burger King — reincorporate some of their functions abroad (or in Canada) in order to protect themselves from expanding taxes and regulations in the United States.

“Burger King is so visible, it puts the focus on the general behavior of corporate America and, in a sense, the contempt that they feel for the average American, and in fact, the United States of America,” huffs U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont.

No, Senator Sanders. It’s not America these companies feel contempt for; it’s the American government. And given what that government has become, they’re entirely right to feel it, if they do.

No matter how many of these politicians keep getting reelected, they will never be able to change one basic fact: Economic growth cannot happen, and will never happen, without economic growers.

Whether you like or dislike the idea of big companies making a lot of money does not matter. Nothing can change the fact that — morally and factually speaking — any money they honestly earn is theirs. Anyone who honestly earns $10 or $1000 owns those earnings. Anyone who honestly earns $1 million or $1 billion owns it. You cannot morally or factually draw an arbitrary line where you feel it’s “too much” money for someone to legally own.

Government can draw any line it wishes, so long as it has the consent of a majority along with the police and armies to back them up; but it doesn’t make them right. And those who are not right never have the absolute power they think they have.

Granted, the government may pass legislation which states, “30 percent of that money is not yours.” Or, “50 percent of that money is not yours.” And so on.

Government can use coercion, or even guilt, to attempt to sway people who have honestly earned millions or billions to hand it over to the self-appointed guardians of  “social welfare.”

But if you actually think this can change facts, you’re wrong. One way or another, companies will act in their self-interest. They will do whatever possible to keep as much of their earnings as possible. That’s what companies do, and that’s why they exist. Without that sense of self-preservation and self-reward, they never would have come into existence in the first place.

If you think this is unsavory or immoral, and therefore should be illegal, then ask yourself this question: How did these companies — Burger King, McDonald’s, Apple Computers, Google — become so wealthy in the first place? Did they do so by acting like a charity? Or a non-profit association, like United Way or Habit for Humanity? No. They became successful because they acted like for-profit companies.

When government steps in and says, “OK. Enough is enough. You’ve made your fortune and now it’s time to hand the rest over to the government,” what do you expect companies to do? Roll over and not exploit any opportunity they can to keep as much as possible?

If so, then how do you think they became successful companies in the first place? Read or watch any biography of any accomplished entrepreneur. Do wealth creating geniuses strike you as the roll over types? Then how in the world do you expect things to change once they achieve that hard earned success?

Yes, Obama won two terms in office. He and his kind will undoubtedly continue to win battle after battle. Here and there they will lose an election, but it won’t matter because — until or unless our culture changes — the same policies of high taxes, endless government growth and endless interference in private industry (what’s left of it) will continue unabated.

Ronald Reagan was president for two terms, and in the bigger scheme of things it didn’t even make a dent in the growth of government spending and control. Since his time, those things are more astronomical than ever, and there are no Reagans on the horizon who stand a chance of winning in either party. If they did, it wouldn’t be enough, not with so many dependent on government programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, corporate subsidies, corporate tax credits (i.e. special favors to companies government likes), on and on.

Government is the only thing growing, and its growth will not stop — not now.

In a sense, the battle for the establishment of the welfare and entitlement-regulatory state is over. It may have been over before Reagan; but it’s certainly over now. But the battle with reality that proponents of the morally and fiscally bankrupt entitlement/regulatory/transfer-of-wealth state must now confront is only beginning.

These tired policies will continue to carry the day, but those declaring war on profits and private property can never win that war. Government of the kind we now have is — by definition — a parasite. It feeds off the profits of the money makers they morally despise — for making profits. You cannot sustain this kind of contradiction forever. And it’s the welfare statists who will have to come to terms with this as it all comes apart, as it will.

The befuddled masses will continue to vote for politicians to seize the products of others’ labor and efforts. The uninformed will cry out that costs for products and services (even Burger King Whoppers) are higher than ever, and there aren’t enough jobs, and so forth. As economic conditions stagnate (or worse), more will demand that government provide a “social safety net,” ignoring the fact that government — by strangling the economy — is the one who made things less safe, in the first place. By the way, such a “net” is neither safe nor social; just ask anyone trying to live off those programs and they’ll tell you all about it.

Barack Obama turned out to be another false prophet in the quest for utopian socialism, American style. Some thought he could move oceans. But there’s one thing even the mythical Obama cannot do: Alter the nature of reality.

The only way for Obama and his kind to really get what they want would be to literally nationalize everything, and seize all private wealth. Call in the troops, make Burger King and all the other corporations hand it all over, yet keep producing all that they do. Not going to happen, of course. At that point, production would stop.

Without profit and incentive, the politicians have no economy to rob. Yet so long as they keep robbing, there’s less and less produced all the time.

This is the dilemma these politicians will never escape. It’s not pleasing to watch it happen. It’s infuriating and tragic to think about all that might have been, without all this government intervention. Sure, we got Apple and Microsoft despite the hampered market economy. But what about all the Apples and Microsofts that never came into existence, not just in the technology fields, but in fields such as health care and education?

The next time you eat a Whopper or a Big Mac — if that’s your thing — or the next time you do anything else that you enjoy doing in  modern society, then try to think about what made it all possible. Was it the moronic chatter or coercion of some politician who never earned an honest penny in his life, and has no idea how to do so? Or was it created by all the things we’re trained to mock or even condemn: Profit, self-interest, capitalism, material well-being and a pleasurable, comfortable life on earth?

It’s time for all of us to stop biting the hand that feeds us. Capitalism and economic freedom are the only hope we have for maintaining what we enjoy, and expanding it with each generation. It’s time to start defending them.

Be sure to “friend” Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael  Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1