Ayn Rand by DonkeyHotey
Ayn Rand by DonkeyHotey
According to the
GOP, right-wing think tanks and FOX, the U.S. is on the verge of becoming a
nation of "takers" who want to be given (as Mitt Romney put it) "free stuff." These
takers are flush with a sense of "entitlement."
As candidate Romney
explained in a leaked video of a meeting with his financial backers, typical
Obama voters (the inferior 47%) are parasites who " believe the government has a responsibility to care for
them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you
name it." If they can't afford these necessities, they expect the government to
pay for them by taxing the earnings of other people.
On Jan. 3, FOX News commentator Arthur Herman repeated his widely circulated warning of a "coming civil war
between makers and takers." This fantasy comes straight from the pages of Ayn
Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a novel that continues to be a best-seller 55 years
after it was first published. In 2009-11, it sold 1.5 million copies.
The novel's hero, John
Galt, organizes a "strike" by the business leaders of the world, to protest
against government regulation of their activities and taxation of their wealth.
The effect of this strike is that civilization goes into drastic decline. This
catastrophe teaches ordinary people (the "second-raters") how much they depend
on the striking business leaders for even basic necessities.
John Galt broadcasts a Castro-length
speech in which he pours contempt on the lower classes and their government
representatives. Instead of being offended by the great wealth of superior
people, these little people should be grateful for the opportunity to buy all
the good stuff made possible by their betters.
After all, he says, "The
man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless
ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of
all of their brains." Those at the top owe the rest nothing.
In Rand's school-girl
vision of capitalism, a tycoon isn't just someone who is good at making money. He
is Daddy Warbucks for little orphan Aynie--a super-human brimming with wisdom
and creativity.
The best antidote for readers
exposed to this silliness is Donald Trump. He is a living demonstration that
business success has no necessary connection with any other desirable human
quality. Or we can think of the Wall St. CEOs whose greed and incompetence
plunged the world into a lingering economic crisis in 2007-8.
The world-view of the
Romney-Ryan ticket was saturated with Ayn Rand. Ryan, self-styled GOP "young
gun" and current chair of the House Budget Committee, told the Atlas Society in
2005 that "I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about
who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are."
After dumping on the 47%
for benefitting from federal programs while not paying federal income tax,
Romney said he's given up on them: "I'll never convince them they should take
personal responsibility and care for their lives."
According to the Tax
Policy Center, the vast majority
of this 47% are either the elderly (22%) or the working poor (61%). (The latter
do pay federal payroll as well as state and local taxes, most of which are
regressive.) The remaining 17% include students, the disabled and the
unemployed.
The arrogance and condescension
in Romney's rant probably cost him the election. Yet most Republicans continue
to exhibit the same insulting attitude in their relentless attempts to defund
social programs. The Ryan budget recently adopted by the House in a party-line
vote pursues deficit reduction by harming the poor while protecting the
wealthy.
Conservatives ridicule
people for thinking they "deserve" the food, health care and other goods these
programs provide to people who aren't paid enough to be able to buy them. They
are making "entitlement" a dirty word.
And yet, too many rich
Americans have their own sense of entitlement--a belief that they "deserve" an
ever greater share of the nation's income and wealth. For instance, as reported
by the AFL-CIO, "The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay between CEOs of the S&P 500
Index companies and U.S. workers widened to 380 times in 2011." That is nine
times greater than 1980's ratio of 42 to 1.
Of course we're all better
off with some degree of inequality to provide incentives for those with greater
ability. But it would be absurd to claim we're nine times better off today than
in 1980. As philosopher John Rawls famously argued, the only degree of
inequality that rational voters should accept is one that makes everyone better
off.
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