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  • Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years - WSJ.com

    'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years From the page: ... The current economic strategy is right out of Atlas Shrugged: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of... more

    Reviewed by aliasinkhorn Jan 15 2009, 10:06am ( 38 reviews ) • wsj.com

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  • Rated by JainaSolo13 on Jun 07, 12:59pm

    I'm glad that I'm not the only one who has noticed this!

  • Rated by FatherTiresias on Mar 17 2009, 3:22pm

    The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

  • Rated by cahotek on Mar 13 2009, 11:23am

    I first read this book in 1958, it's message becomes more profound each day.

  • Rated by sheltonpounce on Jan 21 2009, 7:20am

    And yet standard of living keeps getting better and better in the West. I'm critical of the so called bailout plan as well, but using Rand as a means of criticism is like having Britney Spears write up a scathing review of Beethoven's 9th. It is funny how the CATO Institute uses Rand as a sort of litmus test for libertarianism. I do the same thing. I use her works as litmus test for literary taste and political common sense. This article fails.

  • Rated by FriarZero on Jan 19 2009, 3:17am

    Alan Greenspan, an Ayn Rand devotee (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/greenspan-shrugged-how-di_n_137465.htm l), went before congress recently and said that a lack of regulation and the inability of the markets to correct themselves caused the current recession(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html?_r=1&p artner=permalink&exprod=permalink). And yet we have people in the comments who believe it was the fault of liberals (bollocks http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_cris is ). The very last thing we need now is more of Ayn Rand's morally bankrupt, intellectually inept, and philosophically absurd ideology.

  • Rated by Shamanica on Jan 17 2009, 4:34am

    This book is a must read! It is being reflected in our current sorry state of economic affairs! What a mirror!

  • Rated by bulbdude on Jan 16 2009, 8:56pm

    Buckle Up!!

  • Rated by aliasinkhorn on Jan 15 2009, 10:06am

    'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years From the page: ... The current economic strategy is right out of Atlas Shrugged: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to calm the markets, another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as Atlas grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate windfalls. When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated -- always in the public interest -- into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to Atlas, a Wall Street Journal headline blared: Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices. In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal -- stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in the public good. The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything. The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in the public interest. Ultimately, Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer. One memorable moment in Atlas occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today: Galt: You want me to be Economic Dictator? Mr. Thompson: Yes! And you'll obey any order I give? Implicitly! Then start by abolishing all income taxes. Oh no! screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees? Fire your government employees. Oh, no! Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax for purposes of fairness as Barack Obama puts it ... .