Going Galt

Michelle Malkin has lately been running a series on "Going Galt"; a reference to the popular novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand in which the producers simply stop producing when the socialist looter's government becomes too big. It is a reflection in fiction of the real world effect of socialist "economics" that always results in people creating less under command and control economies because there is no incentive to work hard when the fruits of one's labor are stolen and "redistributed" to the undeserving parasites who clamor for handouts. For those are the policies that this administration is putting into place. In case after case we see the big government left acting to take wealth from the producers and give it to the unproductive. And it should be noted that The Obama-Fuhrer was quite clear during the campaign that we would do this even though he understood that it would actually hurt the economy as a whole. His rationalization for this was the eternal trope of the left: "fairness." For in the mind of the envy driven leftist it is indeed unfair that people who are able to create and produce should be allowed to keep the success that they earn through their work and sacrifice. What is "fair" is that parasites should not have to work at all, and still be rewarded by the government for their poor decisions and their sloth.

But there is a solution to the problem that the individual can put into action we well. People have been writing to Michelle telling her of the various ways in which they are downsizing their own productive effort in order to keep it out of the hands of the our thieving government. The idea is simple. "Progressive" taxation takes more money away from those earning higher salaries, and the rates "progressively" get higher as one's income increases. But of course, one does not have to earn a high income if one chooses not to. Instead, you can decide to earn less, and therefore be subject to less of a tax bite and also make less for the government to take. The Obama-Fuhrer cannot, after all, force you to earn a fortune if you don't want to. And so as people become less productive, by choice or by circumstance, the government is starved of the loot that it would otherwise have taken. And make no mistake; this will become more and more widespread until the Obama-Fuhrer's policies are reversed. People respond to incentives both positive and negative. And the Obama-Fuhrer's entire policy is to make war on the productive. But the productive don't have to play along with the socialists if they don't want to.

This phenomenon isn't large yet, but the current trends indicate that it will be. One of the many things that leftists do not understand is that the laws of economics are every bit as real and unchanging as the laws of physics or chemistry. Thus, people will eventually stop producing when their extra efforts are taxed away by looting do-gooders. It has been demonstrated in history over and over again that collectivism results in falling productivity and lower living standards. And the size of the collapse is directly proportional to the amount of redistribution that the left tries to put into practice.