Ayn Rand Was Right: Wealthy Are on Strike Against Obama

Big Government ^ | June 21, 2011 | Wayne Allyn Root

[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.”

[SC DOC]

There are two classes of people in this country:

Those who work for a living.
Those who vote for a living.

[Texas resident]

That is also called going into a slow roll mode.

[sten]

nailed it.

[sten]

from posts to the original article:

“Oh well, another day in hell....... nothing to be done, as always. Talk, talk, talk, talk “ - egosumvernum

i heard this a little over a year ago. 0bama’s justice dept... civil rights division (yes, the same one).

posts like egosumvernum’s are hoping to light a fire.

they hope to goad someone into action... to do something violent while they are in power... so they can act.

best attack against them is... take your chips off the table and refuse to play. let it fail. let it fail hard. very, very hard. it has to. otherwise, the lesson will not be learned and they will continue

[PjhCPA]

You are a lot more polite than I would prefer to be.

[PjhCPA]

go back to DU

[houeto]

Thank you for the link. Very well written article.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Ask the Americans who are fleeing the USA.

[griswold3]

the rent-seekers are alive and well and taking all those government hand outs with both fists

[stompk]

Then hire me and fire whomever you have working for you. Either you're joking or you don't know what I mean.

I read BenKenobi's post to say "if you're doing the dirty work, maybe it's because your employees aren't the "do the dirty work" type, and was saying that he was willing to do the "dirty work" if given a chance".

I was impressed by his post and was hoping to see a job offer in the reply :-)

[Jane Long]

Great article...amazing how much of what you predicted is reality, three years later.

Glad to see you've found a hang out here, FRiend.

[cann]

ping

[Taxman]

Ping!

You gentlemen might enjoy this thread.

[Publius]

This is a good one.

[Billthedrill]

Thanks for the ping. As others have already pointed out, it isn't any one class that is joining the refusniks, it's that portion of all classes that is productive. Galt himself was not a capitalist, he was a junior engineer and inventor.

It has to be remembered that Atlas Shrugged was a work of fiction containing a very skeletal and simplistic economic model that held a number of compromises with the real world in order to move the narrative along. One could not possibly compress the events in the book into the time slot necessary for them to come about as described. Two major premises were that the economic surplus built up as a result of economic activity would (1) run out very quickly, and (2) as a result of the opting-out of a very small number of people. Neither of these appears to be the case in the real world, nor should one expect it.

1. The economic surplus built up over decades of successful capitalism is unimaginably enormous, so much so that socialist economic plans may subsist for a great deal of time looting it. All redistributive economies depend on this. One does eventually run out of other people's money but it takes a very long time, as the still-running automobiles of Detroit's great years attest in Cuba. And poor people who can no longer steal from the rich still can steal from one another. But eventually the noose tightens, and it tightens hard.

2. Supermen are few and far between and the productive class consists in the huge majority of us lesser beings who contribute a little and end up (often through no fault of our own but by law) looting a little as well. That's a much more difficult model to break; far more people will need to opt out, hence the level of oppression necessary must be proportionately greater. A government can certainly do it, though, as the history of the Cold War has shown us. Slaves can keep the economic engine running for a time, but they can't grow it and they can't rebuild it once broken.

But I don't believe it will take such a systemic strike in the United States. Where Rand was right, however, is that change must be systemic; that is, a change in the Presidency will not suffice even if the choice is other than Tweedledum and Tweedledee. A change in Congress is a little closer but still entirely insufficient. What is necessary is a change in government such that the centralization of control no longer offers a means for a small ruling class to enrich itself, for those who direct no longer to be able to be separate from those who produce - that is the foundation of Rand's utopia. No one has ever quite managed it, but the Founders came as close as anyone ever has. A desire to return to their principles is not merely a flight of nostalgia beloved of conservatives, but a recognition that it was a far more effective model for releasing human creativity and productivity than the stifling regulatory state that gradually displaced it. That is, after all, what "Liberty" really means.

[LucyT]

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 0bama 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 _resident 0bama, 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 0bama 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 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 0bama’s America, fiction is becoming fact.

[Art in Idaho]

Here is a bit of my own “going Galt” story, published in AT in Dec of 08 - which also predicted exactly what has come to pass: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/blame_me_for_job_losses.html

Amazing story. I know many doctors who did the same and more since Obamacare. Such a shame everyone has to 'wait it out' until 2013. We have to take charge so America can become great again. Sarah are you reading this? Run Sarah Run!

[bert]

-——change must be systemic——

My view is that we have experienced a systemic change already but not the one of going Galt. Rather than drop out and leave, a choice not available to public corporations, they have ceased the incessant market driven requirement to grow.

The present corporate strategy is static and profitable rather than dynamic and risky. Cash is for keeping rather then investing in hoped for growth.

[Bigun]

This has been going on for quite some time but the pace is now accelerating greatly.

http://www.actionamerica.org/taxecon/ticktick.shtml

[Mad Dawgg]

'There are folks on this forum, as far as I know, who are indeed "going Galt." '

Here sir...

We took the entire family off of the Family Business payroll. No more contributions to Social InSecurity and Mediscam and Workman's Aggravation.

No hiring of employees, all are now independent contractors. (and by the rules too)

We do alot of bartering and are big into coupons and other alternate forms of payment methods for goods and services we cannot provide for ourselves.