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.”
More power to them.
PING!
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.
I join you in saying ‘more power to them’.
They are not just fleeing the high tax states but the country itself!
Obama’s forced insurance for over four employees will vastly increase unemployment and closed businesses.
It seems that when the going gets tough the tough get going. With all our ills, this is still the greatest nation on earth-even for business owners.
What good would it do to leave the country? As I understand it, you still have to pay US income tax for 10 yrs after you renounce your US citizenship.
bookmark
Best post I have read all day and maybe all week.
I think you miss the point: the heroic capitalist will go where capital is not abused. Typically, those places also have working and middle class people. It just won’t be American working and middle class.
It’s just common sense business. You don’t increase your risk by expanding when the economy is rocky and the gov is acting so flaky you have no idea what restrictions they will employ tomorrow. The latter all lies at 0bama’s and the Dem’s feet and is the biggest factor.
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Of course there is. The rich have capital to invest and the others have labor to contribute. It is a co-dependent system. However, investment capital is the starting point and it flows where returns can be maximized. There is plenty of labor elsewhere in the world to work for the capital.
They can stop buying products if they want to.
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.
If you think the employees do the dirty work you must not have ever been an employer. If you consider building a business and employing people a "grand scheme" I think you must read more Marx than Ayn Rand.
A quibble: The headline doesn’t reflect the article or Rand’s predictions. Rather than “Wealthy” (which includes Kennedys, Clintons, and now 0bamas), it should really read “Productive” or more accurately yet, “Wealth-Builders” (since many productive workers don’t build wealth).
ping
I suggest that you carefully consider your use of the word “class” in this post.
Why do you believe that lower and middle income people are somehow less capitalistic than wealthier people?
The illegal Mexican fruit vendor on the street corner is a capitalist.
The “green energy” scam artist and high-dollar donor to politicians is not so much.
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