Stossel: Don't Give BACK

FOX BUSINESS, 4/27/2011 by John Stossel - "I’m annoyed by businesses’ discomfort with business. Too many act like there’s something wrong with making money. Billionaire Eli Broad gives billions to charities and talks about “giving back." I gave him a hard time about that, and he responded, 'Well, I'm not sure what the difference is between giving and giving back.'

I like how GMU Economics Professor Don Boudreaux explained the difference today in this letter that he wrote to a hotel chain:

Dear Ritz-Carlton:

Thanks for your e-mail celebrating your and your employees' participation in "Give Back Getaways" - activities in which you and your employees (along with some of your customers) "give back to the community."

Have you taken something that doesn't belong to you? If so, by all means give it back!...If, though, you've not taken anything that doesn't belong to you, you possess nothing that you can give BACK.

Being a profitable corporation, you certainly possess something that you can GIVE; and I applaud the generosity that prompts you, your employees and your customers to GIVE.

But, please…drop the rhetoric of "giving BACK." …It fuels the common misapprehension that corporate profits are either ill-gotten gains or, at best, wealth subtracted from that of other persons in society.

… your success at business means that you CREATE wealth. You value the $$$ you get for renting a hotel room by more than you value keeping that room vacant, and your guests value the opportunity to spend a few nights …

Your profits aren't pirate booty; they're legitimate earnings."

See article here. Read More......

Special Session: Employer gag bill update

OregonWatchdog.com - The [Oregon] House Business Committee will introduce yet another re-write of the “employer gag bill,” again at the behest of the AFL-CIO. This is the second re-write in addition to the passage of the original SB 519 last year. The new bill will expand the political content that employers are prohibited from discussing with employees to include ballot measures. However, the new bill will specify that employers are allowed to hold mandatory meetings on such things as workplace safety and other topics directly related to the job. AOI’s legal counsel has assured AOI that the new bill will not sidetrack our pending federal lawsuit challenging the validity of SB 519.

AOI’s lawsuit against SB 519 (2009) is progressing toward a hearing for Summary Judgment in early April in federal court in Portland. AOI, in conjunction with the US Chamber of Commerce, is challenging SB 519 as an illegal intrusion on federal labor law as well as an unconstitutional abridgement of an employer’s First Amendment free speech rights.

See reports on three additional business related bills at OregonBusinessReport.com. Read More......