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.”
The wife and I have discussed moving to the Cayman Islands many times.
The reality is this has been happening for decades...
instead of Galt’s Gulch...you have China, India, and cheaper places for labor and business...
Business has been going Galt for a long time. Slowly, piecemeal in most cases, but finally it is time for the owners of private enterprise to choose.
We’ve had decades to stop this, but have chosen not too.
We are all like the passengers headed into the the Winston Tunnel. It will take 7 generations to fix this mess, do we even have the heart to give to 7 generations....
Where did you come up with that?
When these folks leave the country, they expect the rest of us suckers to keep defending them too. Little do they know what the rest of the world will be like without a viable American military. These people have far more to destroy America than any thousand couch potatoes on food stamps.
The technical term for his policy is "repression" q.v. -- identical to the policy followed in the 1970's by FedHead Arthur Burns at the behest of Jimmuh Carter, who conceived of a moral imperative to "save" the economies of the Third World by throwing America's savings into the maw of inflation. Interest rates paid the public were held down by regulation ("Regulation Q"), while the currency was inflated 50% in just a few years. It was a massive theft of private savings for Mr. Carter's altruistic purposes.
Mind you, Carter's administration was full of the same sort of beady-eyed little McGovernite Progressive/neo-Stalinist c**********s that infested Clinton's and are now running wild under Obama. Funny that we should get similar results.
The present corporate strategy is static and profitable rather than dynamic and risky because the feds have taken all the reward out of the risk/reward equation. It’s all risk and punishment. So why participate?
I don't disparage the rich but sometimes it seems that followers of Ayn Rand do disparage the rest of us who don't happen fit the ideal of an Atlas. There have to be Indians to follow the chiefs, and a healthy economy requires broad based prosperity.
excellent - bttt.
my version of “going Galt” is changing my spending habits.
I also let charitable organizations know exactly why we don’t give as much money as we used to.
Thanks. You explained it much better than I could.
“Without working class and middle class people to buy their products there is no way for heroic capitalists to make money.”
Hate to tell you but the hardest working class of people is the wealthy. To suggest they are not the “working class” is nothing but ignorant Marxism and an underhanded attempt to label them as not being workers.
Where do the middle class get their money? From the wealthy that pays their salaries.
Where do the wealthy get their money? From being middle class people that have the entrepreneurial spirit and formed their own companies and made money. 95% of all people that are wealthy did not start that way, and 9% of people that start as young adults with money lose it quickly.
There is no thing such as a “middle class” as to suggest they are stuck in the middle. To label people as such is ignorant of the fact that people make and lose fortunes throughout their life.
“and 9% of people that start as young adults with money lose it quickly.
“
Meant to say...and 95% of people that start as young adults with money lose it quickly.
No, the dollar was no longer backed by gold after Roosevelt was through with it. Previously, Americans who had paper currency, called "Gold Notes" could trade in the currency for a fixed amount of gold. Roosevelt, by legislation, forbade Americans from owning gold at all.
He wanted the value of the dollar to decrease, to help debtors - especially farmers - and hurt creditors. But there wasn't much inflation in the general economy because it was very soft.
I disagree, Bill. There just isn’t that much excess inventory or capacity to keep things going for any length of time if things fall apart.
I think the barbarians would appear at the gate a lot sooner than anyone cares to imagine.
However, I much prefer barbarians at the gate over serfdom imposed by government trying to stave off the inevitable.
I wasn’t talking so much about building personal wealth (though that’s the motivation in most cases, of course) but about creation, innovation, economic growth and making new opportunities for themselves and others — the wealth of nations, so to speak.
I wish one of these countries ran a zero tax/zero house percentage lotto, where anyone in the world could buy a $1 lotto ticket every week, via internet cryto-currency if necessary. If someone won they'd get the equivalent of $40 million, an airline ticket there, and a promise not to extradite. This would give people suffering under socialism a lot of real hope. And it would give the host country free advertising for tourists and business and a weekly influx of rich citizens moving in.
I don't see what point you are making. Hunton Peck essentially made the same distinction. Wealth builders aren't defined by how much their total assets are but by what they do with their assets. He may not have spelled it out but it was clear enough in context.
Most of the time, they are at the warehouse before any of the workers.
Most of the time they are there after any of the workers.
Almost always, after they leave the warehouse, there is still talk about work, and planning for the next day, and scheduling and phone calls.
Along with all this work they do above and beyond their employees, they have the pleasure of paying 7.45% FICA taxes for all the employees.
They also get to pay unemployment insurance.
They also get to pay workmans comp insurance.
They also have to carry bonding, so that if their employees damage anything (accidentally or on purpose) it will be covered.
They also get to repair all the equipment that gets broke. How do heater and AC knobs and buttons get broke? Or radio knobs, buttons or face plates? In virtually all the trucks.
I'm just a lowly construction worker, but I realize that if my employer didn't put HIS ass on the line for HIS business, I WOULDN'T have a job. If his business goes under, he can lose millions. Me, I just find a new job, I have nothing invested, so I have nothing to lose. When I leave the job site, I general don't think about the job until I'm parking my car in the lot the next day.
The left lies. The top income earners are taxed at a higher rate already and account for the lion's share of total revenues. But I preach to the choir. We all know this and aren't putting our heads in the sand about it.
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