Ayn Rand Was Right: Wealthy Are on Strike Against Obama

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.

I'm a union "thug".

I drive 1-1/2 to 2 hrs to get to work and 1 hr home.

I work 6 days a week 10 hrs a day.
OFTEN 12 hr days and fairly often 7 days a week.
Currently 6 days at 12 hours and every other Sunday.

Occaisionally I have to put in 14, 15 or 16 hr days. And a handful of times I've put in 24+. I've worked a week at 16 hr days.

I've worked 200' up on a blast furnace in January when it was literally 1° with wind blowing 30 mph.

Last year, I worked at a steel mill, where it was 95° outside and about 110° inside. This while wearing a fire retardant jumpsuit over work clothes. After 7 hours of working, I had a weld to do about 6" off the deck. I was laying on the deck to get the weld, but couldn't get it with my one hand, so I switched the stinger into the other, and instantly got LIT UP. My gloves, after a day of working, were soaked, ALMOST as if I had put my hands in a 5 gallon bucket of water. 2 days later, when I got out of the hospital, the clothes I had on were as If they had been in the wash machine and came out of the spin cycle. Water or sweat on steel makes a great conductor.

By the way. The contractor I worked for last year, when that happened, just called me yesterday, to see if I was available to come back to them.

Though I won't make 200k this year, I very well can over the next 12 months.

So there are union "thugs" that make 200k and put in the hrs to do it. I only mention this because not all union "thugs" are thugs or slugs. Some of us have the view of doing whatever it takes to get the job done. That "job" being either the job or life.

Now on the other hand, I have relatives who think I'm rich. They complain about their jobs, but refuse to do anything to improve themselves. I have 2nd and 3rd cousins who talk about getting Drs to declare them disabled, because their backs or knees hurt...WAAAAAAH!!!. Maybe if they got off their lazy a$$e$ and do something and lost weight, they wouldn't have "the pain".

My one cousin was complaining 1 time, to anyone who'd listen, that she had 2 jobs, and that her one job called her in to work the ONE day she had off. Like it was a badge of courage. After hearing this about literally 5-6 times in about as many hours. I asked how many hours she worked in those 7 days? She said 42.

Yes...2 jobs, 7 days...42 hours.

She thought that it was HUGE that she worked 42 hrs in 1 week.

I asked about how much she worked in the last month. She didn't know, but we figured about 150 hours.

I was on vacation at the time, and had just gotten done working 86 days out of 90. And my last week was 84 hours, twice what she did, plus my 2+ hr, roundtrip commute every day, vs her 15-20 minute drive one way. I figured I had worked about 336 hours in the last 4 weeks. She then had to tell me how hard her job was. One was washing dishes in a restaurant, the other working for a landscape nursery. I asked her "you do realize what I do, don't you?" She then had to go into detail how hard her job was, and the injustices involved.

Virtually all my cousins are borderline foreclosure.

One cousin, cosigned for a car for their daughter (Who is a fat, lazy slug, who wants disability). She had worked at McDonalds for about 2-3 months at the time. Her first job...at 21. She only had a few complete weeks of work, as there were all types of reasons and excuses. So she gets a 3 or 4 year old Grand Am, nice car. Shortly after, she got "laid off" and "couldn't get" another job. (More like didn't want another job)

So after a few months of no car payments, the loan company somehow had the car turned off. Must have had Onstar on it. So this girl and her friends decided to kick and beat on the "stupid" car.

The car was repoed, at which point my cousins "assumed" that since the loan company took the car back, they no longer owe for it. No matter how you explain things, they just don't "feel" they are at fault, and shouldn't owe anything.

That same cousin, about 5 years ago, raided their 401k to prevent their house from being forclosed. They also took out enough money to buy a cheap aluminum fishing boat, and a very used camping trailer. They just wanted things like others have (except of course the "rich" cousin).

Two years later, they're complaining how they can't afford their house, and wish it would just burn down. This after the car loan fiasco, and trying to tell them they'd still have to pay for the house.

Well you'll never guess what happened to the house last year.

Of course they are just victims.
Maybe I ought to tell you, my cousin has never had a real job her entire life (she's 49), she's always taken care of somebody's kids. Usually a family member. And could have made more working at McDonalds.

(She told me one time that she'd never work at McDonalds, that was for losers, and that they don't pay enough)

It would be one thing if these were just isolated incidents, but they aren't. And it would be another if these were isolated people, but they aren't.

Around my cousins, there are MANY, MANY people with this same mentality. 300 miles away, my friends have a moving company, and it seems that most (not all) of the people they get working for them, have a similar type of outlook.

Then if you watch shows on CMT about rednecks, you find out that there are people ALL OVER this country that have outlooks similar to these.

There are people all over who work very hard. But there are people, who no matter how hard they work, make bad choices in life. Also there are people who work very hard JUST trying to make good or right choices.

Some of this is what is called common sense, the rest is called wisdom. Wisdom doesn't just happen. Wisdom requires hard work.

Its the people who not only work hard, but live with common sense and wisdom, who are successful.

“Without working class and middle class people to buy their products there is no way for heroic capitalists to make money. Without working class and middle class people to do the dirty work for them there is no way for heroic capitalists to carry out their grand schemes. In a healthy society, the rich and not so rich help each other. There is value in the contributions of all.”

Who says there isn’t value in hard work? That’s what makes hard work pay! But where your post fails is that it doesn’t recognize that in a capitalist society there are no classes—there are only earners and non-earners, notwithstanding today’s accepted political jargon. To assume that the “working class” and “middle class” are somehow leeches that can earn nothing without the “heroic capitalist” class to help them do so is further evidence of the erosion of our country and its citizens’ ability to understand basic economics. Carnegie didn’t get rich because some heroic capitalist helped him. He got rich because he worked to earn that money. Luck may have played a role, but being in the right place at the right time isn’t the only factor in getting rich, no matter how hard the left wants to pretend otherwise. And the working class and middle class move up and down based upon those factors, not based upon some “heroic capitalist’s” helpful handout.

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