I was in college (1978) and was being fed a constant intellectual meal of Socialism. Of coarse I never thought in a million years much of what was in the book would actually take place in reality…boy was I wrong.

I noticed so many things looking more and more like the world in the book I went back and reread it two years ago. Now it almost seems like a book of prophecies. The financial market bailout was the first major event to see capitalism undermined by the government that rewarded failed business practices “for the sake of the people”. The now endless stream of bailouts to prop up failed business models is expanding.

The auto bailout is just the beginning. If they are not forced into reorganization that is competitive then we can expect the government to expand its subsidizing of failed businesses just as was the case in Atlas Shrugged. Much of the language and positions of our politicians are identical to the players in the book.

Keep businesses open, even if they are running in the red and will continue to run in the red “for the people”. Businesses that have leaders that actually know how to make a profit are, and will continue to leave America.

Among my personal friends, they are all in a “protect their assets mode”. They last thing they are doing is investing (most started divesting over a year ago in anticipation of a Democrat assault on income and capital gains) or thinking of starting a small business.

Understand, just 4 years ago most of my fiends were retiring (all have been very successful in big business) with plans to open a small business to keep them busy. They each had a retirement dream of opening a small business that would employee a few folks with the goal of paying expenses and having some fun running a business in area they always liked…florist, pizza shop, dog grooming…

All that is thinking is over. America’s politicians are now in full Atlas Shrugged mode of save all the businesses with taxpayer money even if they are failing, At the same time they are planning to raise taxes, implement business killing strategies of making it easy for unions to expand to kill more businesses and carbon taxes.

I expect a steady stream of business out of America and laws being passed to prevent it. Individualism consider the ultimate sin and praise of the Socialist mentality.

I never believed anything like Atlas Shrugged could happen in America, but now I see I was wrong.

Good summary, Pej,

Since this was discussed behind the curtain earlier, this is a good place to drop in some even more frightening thoughts - dropped from a front-line participant.

Even before the last election, I was banging on regularly about the nearly complete lack of realization of how increasingly uncompetitive the U.S. is as a place to do business.

Between the corporate income tax, the personal income tax, the absurd rules that double-tax repatriated outside-the-country profits, the absurd rules that make it nearly impossible to avoid double-taxation of personal income earned outside the country (those last two are almost unique to U.S. rules), Sarbanes-Oxley’s crushing of the IPO window, and of course the abuse of the old Williams Act…. what part of “Why do business in the U.S.?” is anyone missing?

Other jurisdictions have been moving aggressively to improve their overall competitiveness as places to do business. The clueless standing-still that’s gone on here has been bad enough - now we seem to be poised to make things even worse.

The key thing to understand here is that this could be poised to go beyond what has to date mostly been enterprise-flight. The way this has worked is that, e.g., Ford closes a plant in Michigan, builds a new plant in Mexico, and produces cars there; local people get Ford jobs in Mexico, and the displaced Ford workers in Michigan collect unemployment, get jobs at WalMart, etc.

But we’ve never really had a talent-flight situation. There are Americans who expat, but there’s tended to be an over-representation of disaffected artists and writers (who go to say Paris) and of course the gays and the potheads (who go to say Amsterdam). These aren’t exactly the sorts of people who build your economic base and keep the real economy going.

But I fear that the new regime in Washington may manage to cause something that we’ve never had before - a forced flight of enterprising people with real skills and real energy that matter to a real economy. This would be on a scale of Paul’s metaphors of the sky being green or the sun rising in the west - it’s been unthinkable for so many centuries that it’s off in the realm of supposed impossibility.

I’m not a political pundit, so as I’ve said before, this isn’t a spectator sport for me of writing things up. I deal with about two dozen non-US jurisdictions on an almost-daily basis - and the ugly truth is that a lot of them are starting to look pretty darned good.

I may have to deal with making decisions of that sort in the not-too-distant future. This is pretty hard to digest, because the talent flow has always been INTO here. For the first time EVER, the “system” could encourage talent outflow. And, trust me, this looks very different when you have to make life decisions of that sort, not just comment about them.

BTW, one thing I *can* say. I’ll be d*mned if I’m going to be expected to spend my most productive years working my tail off, innovating new innovation, and producing…. so that I can pay exorbitant taxes to prop up the UAW, the NEA, and that whole lot of screw-ups who think they’re entitled.

And if these thoughts are crossing my mind, I can’t be the only member of the “innovative class” who is having them….

…..2005, shortly after the Fed made its first upward move in interest rates, the Toll Brothers insiders began dumping their company’s stock in large blocs, large enough for the commentators on CNBC to notice and remark about it.
It was a very prescient move on their part since the stock was trading well north of where it is today, quite close to one hundred dollars a share.
Two and a half years from now will we be saying the same thing about these companies? Probably.
How’s a seventy per cent personal income tax rate sound?
The financial crisis has provided the perfect segue for the Obama Administration to introduce its wealth redistribution programs. Their argument will be that (1) your house would not be worth what it currently is without government intervention (2) your 401K or other retirement savings would not be worth nearly what it still is without the government’s intervention (3) your job probably would not be there without the government’s intervention (4) your cash savings would probably be gone without the government’s intervention.
Therefore, what you think you have is not, and would not be yours if not for the government with its infinite wisdom, therefore it is not really yours. Hand it over!
With a little slight of hand in the back rooms from Jess Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright, and their disciples, all of the downtown ladies and gentlemen will be driving Cadillacs, Mercedes, and BMW’s on the way to their digs, complete with swimming pools, saunas and 50 inch flat screen televisions.
I don’t think I’ll ever count either a swimming pool or flat screen TV among my possessions.

This is a piecemeal response; I apologize I don’t have the time to craft a narrative linking all my points together. I thought I’d bring some debate and dialogue to this post, amid the self-congratulating and—to be vulgar—intellectual masturbation.

[Bored now. - Moe Lane]

[It has been demanded that I revisit this comment in order to put in an appropriate video. Fine. Here's the intro to the anime Robin Hood. In German. - ML]

n/t :<(