A few years ago, George Stephanopoulos (Γεώργιος Στεφανόπουλος), a descendant of Greek immigrant parents, stated that companies that go overseas as a result of high taxes in America are “unpatriotic.” Was it unpatriotic for Greeks to leave their home country to find a better life in the United States?
When they left Greece, they ended up not paying any Greek taxes. How unpatriotic! Are today’s immigrants unpatriotic when they risk life and limb fleeing political and economic oppression in their home countries? How about my grandparents? They left Italy because they believed that America was the land of opportunity. They raised 23 children here (DeMare/11 and Crocco/12). Were they unpatriotic?
We can go back to the earliest settlers to America. In almost every case, liberty issues were the reasons they risked everything to start over again in a raw and undeveloped land. The only people who believed that these fleeing immigrants were “unpatriotic” were the tyrants who were oppressing them. Nothing has changed.
Companies that are taking their business elsewhere are being oppressed economically in the United States. By going overseas, they are (1) telling our government that taxes are too high and (2) saving money so they can keep prices low for their customers and their stockholders.
As a result of this virus shutdown, we’re being to see the implications of businesses moving overseas. Maybe most elected officials will get the message that lower taxes benefit everyone.
Money is a coward. It goes where it won’t be assaulted. Our government is not making money safe for doing business in the United States.
In a 1978 speech, Zoltan Merszei, whoserved as President and CEO of Dow Chemical Co. until his retirement in 1979, said the following in a speech to the Empire Club of Canada:
A fact of life is that money is a coward. Money crosses national boundaries freely. Investment capital will not flow down a hazardous, unlit street where the risk is visibly higher than the potential reward. Money has no national loyalty. Like poker chips, money has no permanent home.
Does Stephanopoulos think that these businesses would rather move to a foreign country if they could stay here at the same or lower price? Like so many Leftists, he knows little about economics and a lot about the glories of oppressive governments.
Let’s say your grandparents, your parents, and now you lived in the same neighborhood. But things have changed. There was a time when you could leave the doors and windows unlocked because there was almost no crime. Taxes were low. The schools were good. But times have changed. Taxes have gone up, and so has crime.
The school system is now teaching things that are contrary to everything you believe. You’ve tried to get government officials to see the problem, but their only solution is to raise taxes and tell you to put bars on your doors and windows. Your answer is to move. It happens every day in America. Talk to the people living in Detroit and New York.
Stephanopoulos would argue that you should stay even if your house is being broken into every night. To leave isn’t being loyal to the neighborhood that raised you. I say, fix the neighborhood, and then I’ll continue the family tradition. Quit stealing my property and making it difficult for me to do business, and then I’ll stay. Otherwise, Mr. Stephanopoulos, go back to Greece and show some patriotism to your home country. You won’t because Greece’s economy is, at the moment, worse than ours.
Stephanopoulos is part of the problem. He wants higher taxes. He’s one of those thieves who keeps breaking into my house. Of course, he’s not personally doing it. He’s like Michael Corleone. He hires — votes for people — to do his dirty Leftist business for himself and his Leftist cronies while he makes millions of dollars every year.
He makes his money working for Leftist organizations, two years with then President Bill Clinton and now a gig with liberal ABC. Of course, he wants more people to pay more taxes otherwise he’d have to get a real job.