Older workers eligible for Medicare will have one less incentive to show up at shop or office.
Likewise, their need for a slower pace will lead them away from corner-office Napoleons into self-employment via Subchapter S service corporations. I can see at least some of your scenario working out this way.
The goal is to make Atlas shrug.
They are creating, rewarding, and lauding the grifter class while violently punishing the producer class. They want the wall street guy working as a janitor while on assistance.
As we know, this cannot be sustained in the long term but they don’t care. Their goals are shortsighted and immediate. By the time society crashes, individuals will be controlled and powerless. America as it once was is over. The talented independent producers have been defeated by the loser grifter class who want to be dependent on government. It is over. We have lost.
Once everyone is “dependent” the political class has absolute control and 1984/brave new world can begin.
“that impulse is mitigated by the affects such a disruption would have on those innocents who are dependent on the creator’s work”
This is the “sanction of the victim” that when finally overcome lets the Creators fully shrug. Remember Rearden’s deadbeat mooching family?
As far as the partial shrugging goes, that is most certainly what’s going on. Before Galt went on “strike”, he took up a job as a manual laborer.
When you’re moving entire industries, you’re creating countless billions in wealth and only receiving a small percentage of it back. When you’re digging a ditch, you’re consuming almost all that you produce.
Designing a new engine adds to the wealth of all mankind, beyond its direct consumers. There is no trickle up benefit to mopping a floor.
Industry giants of growth firms will settle for accepting management jobs in mature firms, entrepreneurs will become run of the mill salesmen, privately employed professionals will continue to work for friends and neighbors but not hire, expand, or take on new clients, and the next generation of rising star executives will become middle management card punchers.
Atlas probably won’t shrug in the form of a fast, hard crash, but a slow lasting slump. And then we’ll be France, Japan, Sweden...eeking out a mediocre living with our decisions made for us.
Spread the poverty!
It will happen many ways.
Ronald Reagan explained to Michael many, many years ago how the discriminatory income tax (which reached 91% at the time) hurt the “non-rich.” After a certain point each year, Reagan was working for 9 cents out of every dollar. Therefore, each year he declined one or two movie offers. The hundreds of people who could have been employed making those movies were therefore deprived of that much employment.
The discriminatory income tax is one of the most obvious ways that envious people (Democrats) are punished in THIS life, as well as in the next.
...and “at-home upholsterer” can pay taxes but won’t likely bring in big revenues or pay big taxes. He probably even does other odd jobs. He isn’t doing the work at home for the purpose of evading big taxes. He’s doing it that way in order to avoid big crooked competition (false zoning, false environmentalism and other ploys used by bigger competition to shut small business starts down).
My point is, look who’s really able to take Galt-esque action. He can also wear old, un-stylish clothes, cook for himself, produce food from a garden and repair his own machines. In other words, he can afford to live without vain, snobbish pretenses. And he’s not “shrugging.” He has escaped from the plantation of those who have chattered so much about “shrugging.”
GOOD THREAD BTTT
I like your statement(s) on your profile page. Well stated & honorable.
Would another Civil War be considered a “shrug”?
Atlas Shrugged ping!
Yesterday I listened to the John and Ken show from Monday (KFI 640 AM, Los Angeles, available on the internet via podcast). Ken asked callers to tell him how they intended to avoid the new higher sales taxes and car tag taxes. There were some pretty creative ideas.
Here are a couple of ways to get free stuff, or without sales tax:
Yard Sales
FreeCycle
Craigslist
My yard guy has offered me a 20% discount if I pay him in cash so the government never sees a dime of it. He’s “shrugging” in his own way.
I was trying to explain this to some liberals.
It isn’t just that “shrugging” is a form of protest...it’s also the issue of how much a person is willing to sacrifice his personal/family time to devote to work.
If he/she feels there is good benefit to the extra hours they will do so.
If they feel they’d rather go home, read to their kid, and take in their son’s baseball game instead of handing 90% of their overtime pay to Obama - it’s a no-brainer.