The Dirty Word "Profit"

John Stossel is spot on as usual. He asks:

When did profit become a dirty word?"

I wish the oil executives would face the media. They could say something like:

"What are you complaining about? What do you think we do with our profits? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do, actually, but nearly all the money goes to looking for more oil and following environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, we make less profit per gallon than your beloved government takes in taxes."

Envy, which happens to be one of the seven deadlies, is what drives American populism. I have a question for all of you economic populists that often complain about the gap between the rich and poor. If you make a rich man less rich, what does it gain the poor man? The answer is nothing. Milton Friedman once said, "Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another."

Left wing populism my friend, is the very definition of an economic fallacy. It doesn't make sense, but then again it doesn't have to. All it has to do is make people angry and envious, so that when they vote, they will vote Democrat.