Burger King and Warren Buffett, More Greed At The Nation's Expense

Unless you've been visiting either another planet or a relative who lives under a rock, you have likely heard that "Burger King" recently announced that it is buying the "Tim Hortons" coffee and doughnut chain of Canada and moving its corporate headquarters to Canada, at least partially to save on taxes, although officials of the corporation have tried some fancy language to "dance around the subject," and to claim there won't be much tax savings. The deal is being partially financed by Warren Buffett through his "Berkshire Hathaway'' holding company. If you think any tax savings will be passed on to workers, in the form of higher wages, or to the public, in the form of lower prices, you ARE visiting another planet. The benefits will end up going to stockholders, and who owns most of the stock? VERY WEALTHY investors, including majority owner 3G Capital, a company headquartered in Brazil, led by one of the world's richest men, Jorge Lemann, a banker.

This is the second such deal announced in recent times, as Walgreen's, the drug store giant, had announced it "might" move its headquarters to Switzerland to save on taxes. After a huge American public outcry, Walgreen's announced it would keep its headquarters in the U.S. What will happen with the Burger King deal? Will many Americans choose from a whole bunch of other fast food outlets to punish Burger King, thus turning the deal into a "whopper" of a fiasco? Or will we take it and let them get away with the move? The Walgreen's pullback shows that corporate executives understand and fear lots of public pressure. If we let corporations, including Burger King, get away with these deals without penalty, they're going to keep doing it. This isn't like body management, "no pain, no gain." If they don't feel pain, they'll just do what they want, at anyone's expense. We do have power folks, but we've been lax about using it. That must change, for the good of the country and its citizens. If we go after the Burger King deal, trust me, neither Lemann nor Buffett will have to worry about where they'll get their next meal; after all, there's always a Whopper and fries.

This is all just another blatant example of how sheer greed is driving the world's egomaniacs to no longer pledge allegiance to their own respective country's flag, but to the flag flying the symbol of "$$$." Guess who will have to make up lost tax revenue? For the answer, go look in the mirror. While Warren Buffett has spoken out in favor of higher tax rates on super wealthy Americans, these kinds of Burger King shenanigans just show how extreme wealth disconnects people from the rest of society. Buffett deserves criticism for the deal, as an ''enlightened" money-grubber, is still a money-grubber. He's in his mid 80s, but he can't stop the quest for "mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!" If your child helps an elderly lady across the street, then kicks the dog on the other side, the good deed doesn't offset the bad act. I live just a few hundred feet from a Burger King, a place I'll no longer enter.

WORD HISTORY:
Seven-This word for the numerical value between 6 and 8 goes back to Indo European "septm," which meant "seven" This gave its Old Germanic offspring "sebun/seban," which gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "seofan," which later became "seven," where it has remained for centuries. The other Germanic languages have: German "sieben," Low German "seven" (there are dialectal variations), Dutch "zeven," West Frisian "san" (notice the lost consonant sound), Danish and Norwegian "syv," Swedish "sju," and Icelandic "sjö." Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish are all from the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages and they have all lost the ending with "n," which has been retained by all of the languages from the West Germanic branch, which includes English.