I read Rand, and pay attention to what she says, not because it's a religion. Or because it's an idealistic society, or because I think the strong are destined to rule the weak. I read her because she does seem have a grasp on the human condition. I read her in the same way I read The Prince by Machavelli...with one thought going through my head: "that sucks, but I think it's the truth." Today on the wsj.com opinion page, in the article "We're Governed By Callous Children," by Peggy Noonan: ""I talked with an executive this week with what we still call "the insurance companies" and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura. (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful, reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress "are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area." The executive said of Washington: "They don't understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who've said to me 'I'm done.'" He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, "They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop." He felt government doesn't understand that business in America is run by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he and his friends issue. But of course they're human, and they can become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since the government seems to think they're all rats. (That would be you, Chamber of Commerce.)"" If that isn't the first rumblings that Atlas may yet Shrug, I don't know what is. You may feel the man may be a coward. You may think he may be driven only by greed. And maybe he is a selfish, greedy man, who only thinks of himself. But again, that's why I read Rand. Because you find that man in her books.

rusure:

I read Rand, and pay attention to what she says, not because it's a religion. Or because it's an idealistic society, or because I think the strong are destined to rule the weak. I read her because she does seem have a grasp on the human condition. I read her in the same way I read The Prince by Machavelli...with one thought going through my head: "that sucks, but I think it's the truth." Today on the wsj.com opinion page, in the article "We're Governed By Callous Children," by Peggy Noonan: ""I talked with an executive this week with what we still call "the insurance companies" and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura. (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful, reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress "are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area." The executive said of Washington: "They don't understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who've said to me 'I'm done.'" He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, "They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop." He felt government doesn't understand that business in America is run by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he and his friends issue. But of course they're human, and they can become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since the government seems to think they're all rats. (That would be you, Chamber of Commerce.)"" If that isn't the first rumblings that Atlas may yet Shrug, I don't know what is. You may feel the man may be a coward. You may think he may be driven only by greed. And maybe he is a selfish, greedy man, who only thinks of himself. But again, that's why I read Rand. Because you find that man in her books.

Yeah, Peggy Noonan. A real woman of the people. Here she is getting the straight poop directly from an insurance asshole.

Get a clue. During most of the second half of the 20th Century, when the US catipulted to superpower status, producing 25% or more of the world's wealth, marginal tax rates ranged from the low 70% to as high as 98%. Fucking duh. And look how the rich fled the nation. In droves.

What utter bullshit. What really happens, especially when the rich (i.e. the top 1-2%) capture the political process and thereby change all the rules so that they begin to accumulate most of the national wealth, is that they end up getting involved in absured ponzi schemes like the recent one involving mortgages. They will not use the money to generate jobs, because that kind of activity doesn't garner them the temporary but mind blowing profit returns they get from investing in complex securities and derivatives of the same. Those assholes blew 14 trillion fucking dollars of their money and the money of poor saps who thought the market was actually free and intelligent rather than just a scam set up by the wealthy to transfer even more wealth from working people to their own pockets. So if that's the type of person that's going to leave if they have to start paying taxes commensurate with their incomes (and thus the benefits they extract from our state, which, incidentally, is very expensive to run), let them go. We'll manage to get by just fine. Even if Noonan herself were to take off.

Trust me.

Like I said, I don't read Rand because she extols some moral virtue, or because Roak or Rearden are heroes of mine. I read her because I can find seemingly similar men and women in todays world, and todays America, acting the exact same way. I don't quote Noonan because she can only speak the truth. I quote her because those paragraphs could almost have been included in Atlas Shrugged, or be taken as the premise. Rand's conclusion is that these men are free and right in their actions. Your less eloquent and much more inflammatory postings are that these men are horrific. Nonetheless, you seem to agree with me, that these men that Rand wrote about exist. It sounds like you might agree with me that the situations and people in Rand's works can be found in today's world, but that we should be condemning, rather than applauding, their actions. But relevant none the less, no?

doodahman:

Get a clue. During most of the second half of the 20th Century, when the US catipulted to superpower status, producing 25% or more of the world's wealth, marginal tax rates ranged from the low 70% to as high as 98%. Fucking duh. And look how the rich fled the nation. In droves.

Um... do you think the rich actually PAID that? That was the time of the loophole. None of them would be "rich" if they acually PAID 70-98% of their incomes, now would they?

Isn't it better to tax people at a rate and expect them to pay it than to tax them at a high rate but have secret pathways to let them avoid paying?

So whats the harm of these guys "stopping?" There will always be someone else ready to step up and take their spot. They don't seem irreplacable to me and on top it sounds like a empty bluff. I'm sure these guys will love pushing a broom for a slaves wage rather than making bazlillions of dollars stealing from shareholders and workers while selling out their countrymen. this whole idea that rich people will run off and live free from the constraints of taking advantage of the poor is goofy.

Eloquent, about even. Inflamatory, rusure. Pissy, Noonan by a mile. Relevant - well, those fellows do exist, though they seldom turn out to be quite as windswept, photogenic, or stuffed with integrity as the cartoon characters in an Ayn Rand book, though they're always going into a pout and threatening to take their ball and go home. Not exactly H. Roark, but they do talk big. If you believe it's their ball, be vewy fwightened. Otherwise, I sure hope the door doesn't hit 'em on the ass as they slink out.

But, but, but, without the Ary..I mean Libertarian Superpersonages to push you around, what will happen to you inconsequential little sub-persons? Didn't think of that, did you?

Well, that easy. You get persons like Mao or Stalin to push you around (of course they'll tell you too its just for the good of society). That didn't work out too well though.

The old joke in Eastern Europe before the fall of the Soviet Union was that under capitalism man exploits man while under socialism it was just the opposite. Too true. Its just the nature of the human condition. This was one of the principal failures of Rand to understand. She maintained you could be a high achiever without exploiting anyone else. The world doesn't work that way on either end of the political spectrum.

"They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop."

Oh, no! An insurance executive is going to go on strike? Society will crumble.

Rand's error, the Extremist Fallacy (yeah, I just made that up), was that the choice had to be made between absolute ideal states, as if real grown-up life involves something other than messy compromises. Was her refusal to budge idealism, or amphetamine addiction? Maybe both? I love that Joe Jackson song Nineteen Forever. I think there's a way for grownups to stay away from the extreme ends of the political spectrum.

I read a few of her books, including the utterly absurd Fountainhead and here is why I wouldn't read her ever again: 1) she writes like she's wielding a hammer, without eloquence or nuance; 2) her "morality" or ethics or whatever it is that she professes is disgusting and idealistic; it doesn't actually exist in reality, she just throws up straw men and then has her supermen knock them down; 3) anyone who ever supports Ayn Rand is insufferable, so why have a point of common dialogue?

Why did I read her books in the first place? I was house-sitting for an investment banker (I knew his nanny) who had them on his bookshelves. The irony was not lost on me. I'm sure that the banker in question thought himself a superman of sorts. When I arrived at his doorstep, he told me that my room was on the fourth floor and then watched me carry my baggage up the flights of stairs, unaided.

A gem of a human being.

The fact that this alleged insurance executive is complaining about being taxed at 55-60% tells you, right there, that he's not one of the people who are in the Ayn Rand, Superman Contributors To Society, mold. People who are taxed at 55-60% are working for a living and being taxed on their incomes, which are high, yes, but which are paltry in comparison to the people who REALLY own the major enterprises of the country -- the Gateses, the Dells, etc.

Those people are taxed at 15%, if that, and even when the top income tax rate was 91%, they were still only being taxed at 25%. That's the capital gains rate, and that's what the REAL entrepreneurs in this country pay. Andrew Carnegie didn't get rich by stuffing his salary into a mattress. He built up an enterprise and sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars. He didn't pay ANY tax on that, but do you really think he would have declined to undertake it if he'd had to pay 15%, or even 25% of it to the government?

So no, Noonan's poor insurance executive is NOT one of Rand's exemplars. He's a well-to-do but far from rich working stiff and I don't blame him for feeling that he shouldn't have to bear the burden of higher taxes, but if he decides to quit, there will be a dozen hungry young 'uns ready to take his place and do his job, and nobody will miss him. The idea that he has some sort of special knowledge that the economy cannot do without is simply nonsense.

Finally, the reason taxes on those well-to-do are going to go up is that they have enabled policies which have impoverished enough voters to demand it. Noonan's insurance executive no doubt likes the present system under which people can be denied insurance just when they need it because they failed to mention trivial and unrelated medical problems when they signed up, but it is precisely because such abuses were allowed that health care reform is being demanded, and it's quite possible, isn't it, that this insurance company executive is one of the people who got promoted for aggressively enforcing that policy (it is a fact that insurance companies paid bonuses to people who did this). I don't think insurance company executives are all rats, but as a collective entity they ACT like rats, and force us, at the legislative level, to deal with them as if they were. They had an opportunity to express their beneficence and they chose not to. They have no right to complain now.

Loved your post.

Hate that sanctimonious "Oh, I know best" Noonan voice.

"The man" you speak of is just a whiney rich twat. He's not going to "stop" a fucking thing. And we would do perfectly well without him if he did.