Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!
Posted on 06/22/2011 10:18:02 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The U.S. economy is crumbling. Businesses are collapsing in record numbers. Jobs have disappeared. Tax revenues are down dramatically. Coincidence?
Everything happening today under Obama resembles the storyline of Ayn Rand’s famous book, Atlas Shrugged, one of the most popular books of all time, selling over 7 million copies. Now, under President Obama, Atlas Shrugged has come to life. Rand prophesized a country dominated by socialists, Marxists and statists, where looters, free loaders and poverty promoters live off the productive class. To rationalize the fleecing of innovative business owners and job creators, the looter class demonized the wealthy, just as Obama and his socialist cabal are doing in real life today.
The central plot of Atlas Shrugged is that in response to being demonized, over-taxed, over-regulated, and punished for success, America’s business owners were disappearing — dropping off the grid, and refusing to work 16-hour days to support those unwilling to put in the same blood, sweat and tears. They were going on strike. Because of that the original proposed title of “Atlas Shrugged” was “The Strike.”
They were going on strike to teach that civilization cannot survive when people are slaves to government. That without a productive class of innovative business owners willing to risk their own money and work 16-hour days, weekends and holidays, there are no jobs and no taxes to pay for government. If you punish the wealthy, the risk-takers, the innovators, you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. In Obama’s America, fiction is becoming fact.
The lesson of Atlas Shrugged is that without the $100,000+ earners paying into Social Security, there are no pensions for the poor and lower middle class. Without the wealthy owners of million-dollar mansions paying $25,000 and $50,000 annual property tax bills, there is no funding for public schools. Without the wealthy paying into Medicare, there is no “free” healthcare for the elderly. Without capitalists motivated by profit, there are no discoveries to eradicate polio or create miraculous cancer and AIDS drugs. Without capitalists motivated by profit, there are no jobs, period! That is what happens when the producers of society go on strike to protect themselves from the looters.
Ayn Rand was warning the looters that there are consequences to their overzealous actions. She was warning that if the productive classes felt used, demonized, ripped off, and taken for granted, they would go on strike — stop working, retire early, go underground, or move to places where achievement is celebrated and they feel appreciated.
The latest U.S. Census proves Ayn Rand right. Under Obama the wealthy are striking, voting with their feet. They are moving to low-tax red states in droves, escaping from high-tax blue states where they are being demonized and punished by the millions.
The Census proves that Obama’s tax and spend philosophy is a dismal failure, an economic disaster killing jobs. It is no coincidence that 1.9 million FEWER Americans are working than before Obama’s stimulus. It is no coincidence that jobs are not returning to the private sector. It is no coincidence that tax revenues have dropped dramatically and cannot support Obama’s bloated Big Brother government. The innovators, risk-takers, and wealthy he demonized and punished are on strike.
The high tech revolution has killed the progressive-liberal tax-and-spend dream. Because of the Internet, email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Satellite TV, I-phones, I-pads, and cell phones, business owners are no longer prisoners of Big Brother. Take a look at states where the latest Census shows Americans moved during the past decade: Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, Virginia — all low- or no-tax red states, states that lead the USA in economic freedom.
Now look at states they escaped from: New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan. Taxpayers, business owners, jobs creators, retirees with assets are fleeing the high tax, big spending, Big Brother states — the states being run like Obama is running the nation.
Progressives be afraid, be very afraid. If Obama is re-elected, these valuable producers will pick up and leave America altogether. There is a big world out there begging them to come. Places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Monte Carlo, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Bahamas, and Cayman Islands are low-tax havens that appreciate business owners and their sacrifices. They welcome wealthy ex-patriots. They celebrate individual achievement. They reward instead of punish business owners and financial risk-takers. They are wonderful places to live and are aggressively pursuing Americans.
I am just one small businessman, a third-party Libertarian political leader. Yet I personally have heard from thousands of fans, friends and supporters who have left America, are thinking of leaving America, are visiting other countries right now to decide where to go, or making preparations to leave in case Obama is re-elected. Just as Ayn Rand predicted, business owners are going on strike. Permanently.
The high tech revolution has freed them to run their businesses from anywhere in the world. The same high tech tools and toys that toppled a powerful and invincible 30-year dictator in Egypt and now threaten to topple powerful leaders throughout the Arab world, also offer mobility and freedom to U.S. taxpayers. Obama better learn the lesson of Mubarek before millions more business people decide they do not need to put up with looters, free loaders, and politicians who despise them.
Atlas is shrugging. Ayn Rand is saying “I told you so.”
I lost my copy of Atlas Shrugged years ago, but as it turns out, I don’t need it anymore. The story is happening in real life. All we need is for the enterpreneurs to start disappearing from the face of the earth.
We had a ton of people on the Texas board go away in mid sentence during the Rapture...
This is similar, because for once going Galt is actually a pretty good ide
I notice it didn't slow down the religion forum.
Excellent article, in every sense. But what really got me were the comments. These were/are the voices of America; Not_Paying, BevGunn, Nate, Rick Johnson, John and countless others.
Thank you, for opening the door, for them to speak. For themselves, and for all of us.
Please Lord, in their names, and in the names of so many others, please give us the strength to right this ship.
Tatt
I ‘Went Galt’ nearly 10 years ago. Smartest move I’ve made to date. Read my tag line :)
My Grandmother burned all four corners with a kitchen match and mailed them back after writing on them in big letters "To Green to Burn!"
Oh, I'd agree that things would fall apart, the only real question is: how long do we have? There are certain infrastructure components that are designed for long life that might go quit awhile - say, hydroelectric generators attached to dams, such as the ones in Venezuela. In the purely hypothetical situation that a stupid and malicious socialist despot took control of such a country and nationalized industry, handing control of these components to cronies who failed to do any maintenance or repair, those still could last awhile. Say, just about a decade. Say, until just about now.
So yeah, you're right, it does all go down in the end. Venezuela isn't necessarily our future...but it isn't necessarily not our future either.
What worries me, Bill, is a complete collapse of confidence in the dollar.
With the economy strangled by regulation to the point we’re no longer an exporting nation, the US would be hard pressed to survive until industry could turn things around.
And it’s all so unnecessary. The US is blessed with an abundance of energy resources that could pretty much turn our economy around on a dime.
Things are unbelievably grim, yet government continues to whistle past the graveyard.
The average American is well aware that the US is in trouble. It’s the ivory towered intellectuals that continue to believe it’s possible to build a castle on a foundation of sand.
I've finished reading and then re-reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time (and I saw "Atlas Shrugged - Part 1" the movie, twice). I'm sorry I didn't find this book during high school. Long ago (perhaps in high school) I'd read bits of analyses of it, and in them Rand's characters seemed abstract and technical, as if they'd been sketched out on graph paper. Seeing the movie first (I say this sheepishly) helped warm me up to reading the book.
It's a very rich book. I'm going through the FR Book Club postings on it, chapter by chapter (thank you VERY much for having posted those threads) and am seeing new things each time.
In this story I am finding role models and heroes (Dagny and Francisco) and also cautionary tales (Eddie Willers, Mitchum, Hunsacker).
I one of the not so wealthy on strike.
One in every 19 Americans is collecting SSI Disability Payments that come out of the Social Security Fund. ONE IN NINETEEN...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2650736/posts?page=131#131
I ran a business of my own for nearly twenty years but now that I am 67 and drawing my “bennies” I have landed a job where I work thirty two hours weekly for ten an hour...PLUS commission. I have been doing this for nearly four months and my commission average is growing steadily. If I come in a few minutes late no one says a word. If I need a day off I just tell the boss, I don’t have to ask, I just have to let him know! I spend my time in a private, air conditioned building with a couple of other very congenial people and I use a telephone and a computer to make sales. It looks as if in another month or so I will be averaging over twenty an hour counting commission, maybe twenty five or better. I wouldn’t dream of trying to start another business of my own. Even if I thought there was a potential for much bigger money it just wouldn’t be worth it. Other than my own business this is the only job I have ever had where if it does cross my mind after hours I just smile and shake my head wondering how I got so lucky. I hope the man who was nice enough to hire me makes a ton of money from my efforts because the more he makes the more I make.
It is so wonderful to look forward to going to work every day!
Thanks for the ping!
Where did you come up with that?
For seven generations, the seventh son of a seventh son!
The actual dynamic is that there are individuals, such as myself, that follow the more capable individual.
There is a certain Virtue to be found in Selfishness....
Rand was an atheist, and her having drunk from the poisoned chalice of social Darwinism is apparent in her writing. She needs a big dab of Christian charity in her worldview, and its lack hits one in the eye -- and btw probably cost her a lot of influence with people who aren't coldly indifferent to the life journeys of others. It's a trait she unfortunately shares with Nazis. It showed up in her personal life as well, in social and sexual behavior that was frequently morally unacceptable.
No, I didn't read it that way, but as more of a call for respect for the people who do their jobs the way they're supposed to and really move the work out there, but don't have the big ideas, the high-toned educations (and that includes parental education, which is underweighted), the conceptual framework to make such a large contribution to society as inventing a new product or service that everyone can use, or founding a company, or creating a great new arbitrage play.
Been there...
Done that...
Uploaded it to youtube...
The IRS for all their 3 weeks of effort got two things...
Jack and Shit...
In fact they ended up cutting us a check for additional refund owed us for 370 bucks. Our accountant was so gleeful on beating their asses he took US to dinner and called our IRS contact three times during the meal to gloat (he was well into his cups and downright rude to the man and we enjoyed every minute of it!)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.