The Patriot Post® · Burger King's Move Is Not 'Unpatriotic'

Michael Barone: “‘The tax system should be simplified and work for all Americans with lower individual and corporate tax rates and fewer brackets.’ That’s from the Obama administration’s 2009 proposals for tax reform, straight from whitehouse.gov. … The first step in establishing good public policy is identifying problems with and weaknesses in current policy. On the corporate tax, President Obama and his administration started off on the right foot. Unfortunately, they haven’t moved any further. Not while Democrats held supermajorities in both houses of Congress in 2009 and 2010. Not in the so-called grand bargain negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner in 2011. And not in Obama’s second term. … At the beginning of his presidency, when he was hailed as a politician uniquely amenable to compromise and reconciliation, Obama recognized the strength of this case. But it turns out that he lacks either the inclination or the skills to negotiate, or both. So we get denunciations of ‘unpatriotic’ corporations rather than a policy that solves a readily solvable problem.

Charles Krauthammer: "Democrats used to wax indignant about having one’s patriotism questioned. Now they throw around the charge with abandon, tossing it at corporations that refuse to do the economically patriotic thing of paying the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. Odder still because Democrats routinely ridicule the very notion of corporations as persons. When Mitt Romney suggested this in 2011, Democrats mocked him right through Election Day. In the Hobby Lobby case, they challenged the very idea that corporations can have religious convictions. Now, however, Democrats are demanding that corporations exercise a patriotic conscience. Which is it?”

David Harsanyi: “[T]he majority of fast-food customers are probably less inclined than the petitioners of MoveOn.org to mistake high tax rates for patriotism. This kind of distorted understanding of national loyalty may work in populist politics, but not so much in markets. Few reasonable humans will meditate on Burger King’s corporate tax ‘inversion’ – or even its Brazilian owners – as they wait for the frozen french fries to be dropped into the deep-fryer. The four best-selling cars in America so far in 2014 are the Toyota Camry, Nissan Altima, Honda Accord and Toyota Corolla. One of the best-selling cellphone brands is South Korean. And so on. Does a Whopper taste like a Whopper? That’s all that matters. And it’s all that should. Nothing really changes for the consumer. Even among those who do pay attention, there will very likely be many who don’t believe that the purpose of a business is to placate the Obama administration or generate more revenue for government. The executive’s charge is to grow and sustain a healthy business, which this deal almost unquestionably does.”