Friday, April 27, 2012
The U.S. economy is crumbling. Businesses are collapsing
in record numbers. The real unemployment rate approaches 15% (or higher). 45
million Americans are on food stamps. Over 10.8 million Americans are on the
Disability rolls. Tax revenues are down dramatically. All this while Obama has
added thousands of new IRS agents, added over 60,000 new mandates, rules and
regulations, turned the National Labor Relations Board over to radical union
hacks, passed rules to satisfy radical extremist environmentalists, and chooses
to target, demonize, and punish the wealthy. Coincidence? Or are these tragic
situations related?
Everything happening today under Obama resembles the
storyline of Ayn Rand’s famous book Atlas Shrugged. Rand prophesized a country
dominated by socialists, Marxists and statists, where looters, free loaders and
poverty promoters live off the productive class. To rationalize and justify the
theft of the money and assets of business owners, the looter class demonizes
the wealthy. Sound familiar?
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 go on strike-- dropping off the grid, and refusing to
risk their hard-earned capital and work long hours away from their families in
order to support those unwilling to put in the same blood, sweat and tears.
Because of that storyline, the original proposed title of the book was actually
“The Strike.”
The business class went on strike to teach us 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 to start
businesses, there are no jobs and no taxes to pay for government. Author Ayn
Rand believed if you demonized and punished the wealthy, you would kill the
goose that lays the golden eggs. Jobs would disappear forever. In Obama’s
America, fiction is becoming fact.
The lesson of Atlas Shrugged is that without the $250,000
income 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 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, 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. Over 1,000,000 citizens escaped from high-tax New York
in the past decade. Over 1.3 million escaped from high-tax California in the
past decade. California’s state tax authority recently reported that the number
of Californians earning $500K per year (or more) dropped by almost 40%.
California has lost over 440,000 high tech jobs. Over $1 trillion dollars has
transferred from New York to zero tax Texas.
The Census provides evidence that Obama’s tax and spend
philosophy is a dismal failure, an economic disaster killing jobs. It should
come as no surprise that about two million FEWER Americans are working than
before Obama’s stimulus. That over 5 million Americans have joined the
Disability rolls since Obama became President. That the Disability rolls are
growing twice as fast as the job rolls. That food stamp use is up 70% under
Obama.
The high tech revolution has killed the progressive
tax-and-spend dream. Because of the Internet, email, texting, Facebook,
Twitter, Skype, iPhones and iPads, business owners can now run their business
from anywhere. As a result, they are choosing to move to places where taxes are
lower and the atmosphere is friendly to business. The latest census shows that
the fastest growing states are all low tax or no tax states that are friendly
to business: Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado,
Alaska, Washington, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia.
Meanwhile the states they escaped from are all big tax,
big spend, big union states: California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Michigan. Taxpayers, business
owners, and retirees with assets are all fleeing the states being run like
Obama is running the nation.
Obama and his socialist cabal should be afraid, very
afraid. If Obama is re-elected, these valuable job producers and taxpayers of
society won't be changing states anymore, they'll be changing countries.
They'll 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, 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.
Even Canada is now a destination of choice for Americans
searching for economic freedom. Under Obama the U.S. has dropped to number 10
on the Economic Freedom List, while Canada is now number 6. Frightening.
I am just one small businessman, but because of my
background as a former Vice Presidential nominee and Tea Party
Libertarian-conservative media personality, I have heard from thousands of
business owners- who all have the same message. They are thinking of leaving
America, or they are visiting other countries right now to decide where to go,
or they are making preparations to leave in case Obama is re-elected. Just as
Ayn Rand predicted, business owners are going on strike. Permanently.
As my blue collar
butcher father once told me, "I'd love to hate rich people, but no poor
person has ever given me a job."
Atlas is shrugging. Ayn Rand is saying "I told you
so." The Strike is on.
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