03/13/09 Tampa Bay, Florida “Going Galt: America’s Wealth Producers vs. Wealth Redistributors” is an interesting essay by Michelle Malkin posted at townhall.com.
It starts off with “Enough” which is so perfectly pithy because “In a word, that is the message of disgusted taxpayers fed up with the confiscatory policies of both parties in Washington. George Bush pre-socialized the economy with billion-dollar bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Barack Obama is pouring billions more down those sinkholes. It isn’t just the camel’s back that’s broken. His neck and four legs have all snapped, too.” Hahaha! Exactly!
And speaking of necks and legs snapped in an “enough” kind of way, it reminds me of a joke where the guy walked into a bar and bragged that the famous Frank Sinatra once saved his life. “Four guys were beating the hell out of me, see, and Frank walks in and said, ‘That’s enough, boys.’” Hahaha!
Well, apparently nobody liked my old joke and it seems that everyone is anxious to get back to this “Galt” thing, which turns out to have been originated by Dr. Helen Smith, who is a Tennessee forensic psychologist and political blogger who Ms. Malkin says “dubbed the phenomenon ‘Going Galt’ last fall” which is “a reference to the famed Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged, in which protagonist John Galt leads the entrepreneurial class to cease productive activities in order to starve the government of revenue.”
Ms. Malkin notes, “Not coincidentally, Rand’s novel sales are up and John Galt references punctuated many of the Tea Party demonstrations”, which is pretty significant, but not as significant as the fact that guns and ammo sales are reportedly going through the roof, and in Florida there is such a crush that there is a 6-month backlog of Concealed Weapon Permits waiting to be processed!
She apparently is not interested in guns, and sums up the situation of “Going Galt” as being that “There’s only one monkey wrench that can stop the redistributionist thieves’ engine. It’s engraved with the word: Enough.”
Well, that “enough” thing reminds me that I am sure that one day, probably pretty soon, somebody in my family is going to say to me, for some stupid reason or another, “We need more money! You have got to get a job!”
My first instinct, of course, will be to panic and scram, ducking and weaving, jumping into the Mogambo-mobile and squealing the tires down the driveway, out into the street to disappear into the night, whose destiny is to become the fabled Mogambo-Man, superhero whose power is to incessantly whine and bitch about the absolute stupidity of the Federal Reserve, the Congress and the Supreme Court, especially as regards monetary and fiscal policy, and predict absolute mayhem as a result.
Obviously, a part of my Terrific Mogambo Plan (TMP) is the knowledge that I am going to need somebody new to put up with my Selfish Mogambo Crap (SMC) and do all that cooking and cleaning stuff, too.
And since Ms. Malkin is young, very cute and probably makes a lot of money, she would not only be perfect for the job, but I wouldn’t have to work! Wonderful!
So, I don’t want to offend her, so don’t tell her I said so, but I think that this is all pretty funny and ridiculous, and now that I think of it, I will just come out and say that Ayn Rand came up with this “don’t work and starve the government of revenue” idea for the fictional John Galt in her novel Atlas Shrugged, which was written in 1957 when the dollar was still more-or-less linked to gold and thus the money supply was constant.
Back then, the only place that the government could get money was to borrow it from those who had saved their money, whereas today the poor old dollar is just a piece of fiat currency or computer-embedded digital crap that the Federal Reserve can create more of anytime it wants, whether or not anybody ever saves any! Hahaha!
So, if you think that the federal government needs your stupid tax money or that you can hurt them by working less, then I laugh – Hahahaha! – at the very concept! The Fed can, literally, create unlimited amounts of credit in the banks, which becomes unlimited amounts of money, with which to buy unlimited amounts of Treasury debt so that the government can spend unlimited more amounts of money than it collects in taxes!
And the only thing you can do about it, because the amount of corruption is always at its maximum at the end of long monetary booms, is to save yourself and get rich by buying gold, which is a bet against government and their stupidity, and which is the only sure-fire, can’t miss bet you will ever have in this cold, cruel world.
The Mogambo Guru
Richard Daughty (Mogambo Guru) is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the writer/publisher of the Mogambo Guru economic newsletter, an avocational exercise to better heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it. The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The Daily Reckoning , and other fine publications. For podcasts featuring the Mogambo, click here.
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Darnit Mogambu, I was really getting into this going Galt thing, you are ruining it for me….I still think not working and not shopping must hurt these scum-sucking leeches in some way, and I’m going to keep doing it, as voting doesn’t seem to matter anymore, and you haven’t offered any other means of protest, other than buying gold, which doesn’t seem to stop any of the increasing socialism, which I’m getting sick and tired of and anyway what’s the point of working if they’re going to take almost half my pay?
Mogambo,
Great post. Be sure to bring some of that gold over to my farm when you get hungry. If I didn’t have the feds breathing down my back, I’d also offer you some great spirits while your’e here.
I hate seeing my typos after I post a comment. At any rate.. while you’re here.
Yes……I see it now Mogambo. The ultimate revenge, upon a government and Fed that creates so incredibly much money so as to turn it into mere confetti, is to take those debt notes, which are still valuable to the majority of people due to their utter constitutional and financial ignorance, turn them into the most portable, most recognized, most divisible, most incorruptable form of wealth the world has ever known…..GOLD!!! Does it not seem silly that so many of us for so long actually believed that debt notes made of paper, that promise absolutely nothing, could have any value at all? Much less retain value over time??? Oh my, my, how we have forgotten the face of our fathers!
A call to arms my brothers, BUY GOLD and SILVER NOW!!! The government wants to steal the value of your savings by inflating the supply of paper dollars. Make a bold defensive move…..get rid of those paper dollars or they will be the instrument of your destruction…change them into GOLD and SILVER. The government can not create more of it no matter how much they try to be God. Let them drown in their sea of debt. Be one of the few to escape, with real assets.
Methinks you’ve open up a can of worms bringing up Ayn Rand. Merry Friday the 13th Mogambo.
With all due respect, Exalted Mogambo Guru, you neglected to state the reasons why Libertarianism doesn’t work, can’t work, and won’t work. Indeed, a fair-minded person will notice that Objectivism isn’t at all objective. That’s the problem with all of Rand’s work: she systematically selects out certain inconvenient realities which make her philosophy unworkable, oversimplifying and otherwise distorting the rest. Rand is just another con artist, playing to a somewhat different crowd of adolescents.
Can one “go Galt” involuntarily? The fact that my recent unemployment and reduced spending is starving the State of tax funds gives me some satisfaction from an otherwise depressing set of circumstances.
I’m also going to really laugh hard if the leftist colleagues from my former employer lose their jobs, too, as they cheer on Obama’s “stimulus.”
Can one “go Galt” involuntarily?
Not while you’re collecting welfare, O unemployed one.
There are thousands of openings in India for qualified software developers like yourself. You’re welcome to try to ‘Go Galt’ over there if you like, but in point of fact it’s not actually possible for an employee to be a Libertarian. The contradiction is inherent.
I harbor a few reservations about hoisting a revolutionary flag when exhorted to do so by a woman who was one of the not-so-charming array of media sycophants who carried water and through red meat to the partisans of one of the most…if not most counter-revolutionary Executives in the history of the Republic. As soon as these reprobates are back in power, they’ll be going Bolshy all over again
I’m also going to really laugh hard if the leftist colleagues from my former employer lose their jobs, too, as they cheer on Obama’s “stimulus.”
Misery loves company, apparently.
You could take the opposite approach and hope the “stimulus” succeeds. That way you could get a job again – without having to go to India.
But it probably won’t, because the “stimulus” doesn’t address the underlying economic problems, like the fact that the engines of the real US economy have largely been exported, like any one of the thousands of jobs you would otherwise be qualified for. The “economic recovery plan” can be expected to stimulate the economies of China and India, because that’s how the money flow is organized. But stimulating the US economy, not so much.
How’s that “rugged individualism” working out for you?
walter-map:
You dope. As if socialism can protect us from the pain of globalization? If our $50 per hour workers can’t compete with $1.00 an hour workers in China, what makes you think the government can help matters by taxing the Americans who still do have jobs or who create them through small businesses that haven’t gone under yet? An adjustment needs to be made, and is underway, American workers will be paid less, our standard of living will fall for awhile, maybe Chinese workers will make a little more, and eventually it will all even out, the third-world-ization of the globe, that’s capitalism it will be hard for a while but Obanga’s high taxes and spending will make it worse and painful for longer.
lainvestorgirl:
American workers will be paid less
That’s always been the general idea, hasn’t it? Once US workers are paid as little as the Chinese, there won’t be a problem, will there?
Give it another go, dear, this time without the straw men.
I pledge to never purchase a vehicle that is manufactured by any company that runs to the government in search of a bailout. As I’ve always driven “domestic”, guess my next auto will be an import. I suggest that others do the same.
Also, you won’t find me banking at any of the “too-big-to-fail” banks.
Going “Galt” lands you in jail. No law (yet) about where you shop for goods and services…
I pledge to never purchase a vehicle that is manufactured by any company that runs to the government in search of a bailout.
Then you won’t buy a vehicle. Even the foreign nameplates have obtained subsidies in both the US and their home countries. All of them.
the third-world-ization of the globe, that’s capitalism
Hardly a selling point for capitalism, isn’t it?
Why exactly should the US middle class buy into a mercantilist system which guarantees its impoverishment?
“the third-world-ization of the globe, that’s capitalism”
Hardly a selling point for capitalism.
Mogambo that last line freakin nailed it (FNI)! If anything is a sure bet in this world is that goverment is always and forever incompetent. Odds are 100% to 0! Whee!! Investing is easy!
Refusing to work and participate in the economy gets you put in jail? That’s a new one.
Yeah, we are in for harder times due to competition from cheaper labor in the east, but those people can do the same job for less money, that’s reality, no US laws, bailouts or stimulus spending can change this fact.
However, if we keep bailing out failing businesses, our treasury will be bankrupted and our economy will be unable to adjust so that we can compete.
Destroying US capitalism will not make our workers more competitive with the lower paid third world or second world workers, but will cripple our economy.
Buying gold is nice, Mogambo, but how much do you really think you can insulate yourself from a decaying and increasingly less free country, even if you do have a bunker, gold, guns, food, etc.
walter-map, I don’t like seeing Americans suffer by being forced to compete with lower paid workers abroad, but if the price of good they buy at the store falls due to falling labor costs, maybe it will benefit them as well. We need to let the free market sort this out, any phony interventions by Obama will not make things better.
A quick note to commend Mogambo on many years of exceptional analysis. Occasionally it would be nice to see one of the sprawling missives that takes 30 minutes to read like back in the day, where you crawl deep into the sordid details of what led us to this inevitable “doom” if only for the newbies that haven’t been reading every article for many years such as myself.
SMR (Senior Mogambo Ranger)
“the third-world-ization of the globe, that’s capitalism it will be hard”
That’s what the socialists keep telling us, isn’t it?
And you’re making the socialists case for them. Pray tell, why should people buy into a system which guarantees their impoverishment?
“I don’t like seeing Americans suffer by being forced to compete with lower paid workers abroad, but if the price of good they buy at the store falls due to falling labor costs, maybe it will benefit them as well.”
If you think poverty is so great maybe you should try it yourself. The riots in China suggest that people don’t really care to be destitute.
Your turn.
More than 6 billion people on this planet are competing for the same resources. The 3% of the Earth’s population who reside in the US have been led to believe they are entitled to 25% of all the Earth’s wealth simply because their religious and political leaders placate them with warm lies.
sham wow!!!
Well if the Galt thing isn’t going to work to stop the guvment’ from slow-raping me thru taxes – then what is left? I know Mogambo’s writings are to be taken slightly tongue in cheek – but please don’t say “voting” is the answer. That seems an even more futile fad than the going Galt thing. As Mogambo points out – Ms. Malkin was not interested in guns. A large part of of the American population however – is interested. Very interested.
Well if the Galt thing isn’t going to work to stop the guvment’ from slow-raping me thru taxes – then what is left?
Quite right.
Hard-working producers like yourself should only be concerned with profiting from the US economic system, without having to support that economic system in any way. Further, you’re perfectly entitled to externalize all your costs and have the government pick them up so you can maximize your profits.
It’s a truism that the government should pay for everything, and not taxpayers. That’s what the government is for.
At what point to the producers emmigrate to a more honest country? Does one exist? You do not seem to worry about the evil government stealing your pot of gold either directly or through a 99% tax of gold sales.
walter-map
You are a stupid socialist dirtbag. Taxes of 10% or so equate to supporting our system. Marginal tax rates of 39.6% plus 9.5% state taxes (California) plus 9.75% sales tax (Los Angeles starting next month) is highway robbery.
carlsdad,
Interesting comment. Hard to know where this is going, but a large percentage of the population, many of whom are the most productive and honest, are really angry right now. There are “tea parties” now attracting thousands of people.
Going Galt is just another part of the human tendency to believe that we can have an effect on what is happening to us. Whether you are pro government pro Keynes or Libertarian there is nothing either side can do now to stop what is going to happen. We are headed toward more socialism and more of a southern european style economic system and there’s nothing wwe can do,except maybe get a 9 to 5 government job with good benefits, vacation, and early retirement and just hunker down.
Guru’s don’t WEAR mustaches!!!!
Dude…
I think your view is too optimistic. We seem to be going more toward Cuba/ Venezuela/Zimbabwe.
By the way, I wonder where we’d be if George Washington and others thought like you, you cowardly socialistic wussy (CSW).
actually buying gold… and even better, buying other stuff with silver, gold and no paper trail really cuts off their funding and undermines them… plus the positive effects for yourself (no tax) are felt immediately….
start with a group of friends… the get local businessmen with you… it’s a win-win
lainvestorgirl:
You should be grateful, not resentful, of my exposure of the fallacies in your statements, which even you would have to admit have a certain blind ideological unreality to them. Hopefully you’ll avail yourself of this rare opportunity for self-improvement.
Who knows? Someday you might even be able to laugh at your old mistakes.
” . . . a large percentage of the population, many of whom are the most productive and honest, are really angry right now.”
Yes, but like you say, that’s capitalism, and it will be hard.
They’ll go bankrupt competing with Asian slave labor, but hey, at least they’ll have lower prices.
This “Wild American Indian in Action” out here in open spaces of Arizona, is enjoying all of your comments regarding the state of the economy.
Mogambo, perhaps you might elaborate on Thomas Jefferson in he quote, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of the currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent they conquered”. With porkulus the Government, what ever that means, now dictates your lives.
This “Wild American Indian in Action” out here in open spaces of Arizona, is enjoying all of your comments regarding the state of the economy.
Mogambo, perhaps you might elaborate on Thomas Jefferson in his quote, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of the currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent they conquered”. With porkulus the Government, what ever that means, now dictates your lives.