There is no more annoying phrase around these days than “giving back.” Lefties continually say that businesses should “give back,” that rich people should “give back,” that the moderately well-off should “give back.”
This detestable phrase assumes that successful people haven’t already “given” by creating jobs, or that affluent people, by spending money at businesses that employ people, help to create even more jobs. Nothing, in my view, “gives” like a job and a paycheck. “Giving,” though, whether by providing jobs or donating to charity, is not good enough for the left. You have to “give back” as a penance for your ill-gotten gains.
Today I learned that “giving back” has taken a new twist. It is now used to guilt-trip citizens into “giving back” money to businesses whose left-wing credentials are unquestioned. One business that definitely qualifies in this regard is the Ninth Street Bakery in Durham.
Full disclosure here: I frequented the Ninth Street Bakery for years at its original and funky mid-Ninth Street location. It had a true counterculture feel in the early ’80s, so much so that my 3-year-old daughter once remarked, “Everybody who works here has the haircut of the opposite sex.” Still, I was a faithful customer because of its great pastries and wonderful coffee. Even after it moved down Ninth Street to a new location with a more upscale interior design, I continued to make it a daily stop to read my newspapers.
Sadly, the bakery left Ninth Street and moved into the old Herald-Sun mailroom downtown and went mostly wholesale. It apparently has decided to expand its meager retail output, and some outfit called Slow Money NC is urging people to invest in the bakery’s expansion plans, not with a motive to make ugly profits, but to “give back” to the Ninth Street Bakery to reward it for its many years of service to the community:
Ninth Street Bakery is expanding! They want to add a deck to hold events, serve beer, hard cider and ‘Bull City Booch,’ their delicious NEW locally made Kombucha! We are looking for several people to make affordable, short-term loans that total $30,000 to make this happen. Owner, Frank Ferrell has worked for decades to make Durham a better place. This is our chance to give back, investing locally where it really matters.
I thought it was supposed to be the other way around, that long-standing businesses were supposed to “give back” to the communities in which they reside to help replay that community for extracting all those profits for all those years.
You just can’t keep up with these people.
