When did "profit" become a dirty word?

When did profits become a bad thing? If you listen to all the universal healthcare crybabies, environmental ninnies, and John Edwards, there is nothing more evil in the world than profits...and even worse..."corporate profits". When asked how any big new social program or societal tax is to be funded the answer is always tax the rich and take unjustified corporate profits. What are unjustified profits? I understand illegal profits...those achieved breaking the rules or breaking laws, but unjustified profits? In a world of free choice, who defines what profits are justifiable?

If you spend any time listening to these Utopian tower dwellers there is a limitless well of taxable or "takeable" profits that really belong to "the people". I don't think that these folks realize that without profits, nothing happens...nothing gets produced, no service is delivered, everything stops. Maybe for the few who dream up ways to spend other people's money and usurp value created by the corporate world, they would work for free or produce good just for societal benefit, however for those of us who live in the real world, profits are the motivator to work, create, invent, innovate. If the fruits of my labor are not mine, guess what, I am not going to produce anything. Why should I? Why would any rational person work hard if the benefits of their efforts were not theirs...the profits from their time not in their pockets at the end of the day? Beats me.

Maybe before the do-gooders who are so eager to fund pet programs on the backs of those who actually produce something and generate profits, maybe before they decry the profits people and corporations earn, they should stop and consider a world without profits. Oh wait, we had that already, it was the Soviet Union...and we saw how well that turned out, but they did have universal healthcare. They also had new construction that was so shoddy that the buildings fell down before they were completed. Why? No one was going to make any money (aka profit) if the building stood or fell, so guess what? It fell. So will everything we cherish if we take the profits out of our daily motivation.

Oh, have a happy and profitable new year! We are going to need it!