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Subject: Atlas Shrugged, then and now - the Cliff Notes
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:42:48 -0400
From: M. Johnson <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
*Atlas Shrugged, then and now - the Cliff Notes
*By: Scott S. Powell
OpEd Contributor
August 22, 2010
According to a Library of Congress survey, Atlas Shrugged, published in
1957, may be second to the Bible as the most influential book read in
America. It is required reading in management training at BB&T, the
12th largest bank in the U.S. and one that resisted taking TARP bailout
funds.
Since President Obama took office, Atlas Shrugged has been making a
renaissance with rising sales and library waiting lists, partly because
it explains our current economic woes more straightforwardly than most
of what we hear from today’s experts.
What happened in Rand’s narrative is coming to pass today, with the
public sector growing in scope and power over the private sector. Then,
just as now, an anti-business administration reviled private industry,
capitalizing on crisis to expand and redirect investment within and
between sectors of the economysetting quotas, prices and compensation.
Businesses responded by retrenchingceasing to invest, innovate and
expand. Whole industries contracted, closed down, or moved offshore;
much like the U.S. gas and oil drilling industry is doing today. Then,
just as now, management became frustrated and discouraged, reluctant to
create jobs in an environment of excessive government meddling.
A record $2 trillion now sits on corporate balance sheets waiting to be
invested amidst reasonably cheap assets prices. What holds back
investment is uncertainty and lack of confidence stemming from an
overbearing and free-spending government.
Businessmen and investors would never attempt spending and borrowing
their way back to prosperity. In terms of job creation, the Obama
stimulus plan has been worse than a failure. Its attendant debt has
ratcheted up systemic risk inviting a currency crisis and bond market
collapsefrom which recovery might be impossible.
Recently, Obama took credit for a .2% drop in the nation’s unemployment
rate to 9.5% and the creation of 71,000 private sector jobs, claiming
his policies were working. In fact, much of that meager job creation
was in the socialized automotive sector.
The supposed decrease in unemployment resulted from 611,000 Americans
giving up on finding work, dropping off the official rolls of the
unemployed. Official unemployment statistics mask the underlying truth
of a private sector economy that is failing to create jobs.
In fact, when all those who have given up looking for work are accounted
for since the recession began, the real unemployment rate may be closer
to 18 percent, almost double the official numbers.
While the private sector shed nearly 8 million jobs in the last
two-and-a-half years, the federal government increased its payroll by
240,000 jobs. So, the private sector that is the primary source of
national wealth has been shrinking, while supporting a growing public
sector that generally produces nothing.
That burden is made greater by the fact that government workers have
incomes 30% higher and benefits 50% more costly on average than those
received by equivalent private-sector workers.
This shift of wealth from the productive private to the unproductive
public sector is more sticky today than it was in Atlas Shrugged because
government has now become a union shop, with pay having little to do
with performance.
Unionized government cannot be downsized easily and its employees have
effectively become the country’s most powerful entitlement
special-interest group. Thus, government-run schools controlled by the
teachers unions can fail decade after decade without consequence or
substantive reform.
The government takeover of the healthcare industryaka “Obamacare”was a
high priority not because it was good for the majority of Americans, but
because the ruling elite want to expand unionization, entitlement and
dependency.
The media is enamored with scandal and the latest class war nuance, such
as raising taxes on the richnow those making over $200,000 annually.
But they ignore one of the biggest stories of our time: Obama’s drive
to shift wealth and power from the productive private sector to the
non-productive public sector.
Rand calls this appropriation of wealth by the government nothing less
than /looting/. For her, the primary source of social good is in
ingenuity and hard work that produces wealth in the form of invention
and technological breakthrough. Crony capitalism and forced
redistribution of wealth by faceless government bureaucrats is anything
but virtuous.
Rand warns us that government policies that engender entitlement and
cause business owners to shrug and withhold their capital are
detrimental to the economy. What compounds this problem today is that
by enlarging dependence on an out-of-control profligate government we
are setting ourselves up for a greater crisis than the last one.
Fortunately, the catalyst for course correction is around the corner.
Ironically, Obama can be thanked for making this mid-term election an
overdue referendum on liberalism. Average Americans are now more
informed and engaged than they have been in generations, and they are
highly motivated to vote.
The most credible and successful candidates, whether incumbents or new
entries, are likely to be those resolutely committed to deficit and debt
reduction and getting government out of the way of private sector job
creation, the essence of Ayn Rand.
/Scott S. Powell is a director at RemingtonRand and Alpha Quest LLC and
a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
/Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Scott-S-Power-Atlas-Shrugged-then-and-now---the-Cliff-Notes-101258174.html#ixzz0xXvnFMsy
http://bit.ly/cBSF6P
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