Posted by SteveCurtis on 04/04/11
Last updated 04/04/11

I wrote this in response to a sig discussion of a recent article in Vanity Fair magazi
ne 
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent
-201105  and a comment that the message boards had been quiet recently about politics and ecomomics.

Not quiet at all on the Freed-M sig and www.campaignforliberty.com.  This article seems to be typical socialist/marxist soak-the-rich whining with no realistic solutions proposed.  

Posted by SteveCurtis on 03/21/11

I wrote this recently in response to a special interest group thread in which someone suggested we should register for a permit which would allow us to commit suicide if we chose to do so:

Posted 03/21/11 Deb Wells Peoria, AZ

It does sound ridiculous. I wouldn't think that someone so depressed that they wanted to commit suicide would care to stop and ask for government permission.

Posted 03/22/11 ProIndividual Rutland, OH

Permission to kill myself? I always have the right to kill myself, as it it does not directly harm another person. I own myself (if anyone does), and the idea I need permission from the state is ridiculous, as you said. Besides, how the hell do you enforce this permit system? LOL! I mean it's not like we PREVENT suicides today anyway...if you want to do it, they can only respond to the attmpt...and if it is an honest attempt, it will probably succeed...making penalties a bit, umm, redundant...lol. Like most laws, this one is just enforcable currently, let alone if it were in a "permission slip" manifestation. Man, you real had me laughing through this whole post...great article.

Posted 03/22/11 ProIndividual Rutland, OH

just unenforcable*

Posted 03/23/11 MichaelBarry Sebring, FL

I am not so sure. There may be something here. If we could require criminals to buy permits to allow them to rob banks, they would be identifying themselves to us. We then could arrange preemptive counseling.....well, maybe it wouldn't work after all.

Posted by SteveCurtis on 12/02/09

I was hoping Michael Moore would start sounding more like Ron Paul eventually.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/open-letter-president-obama-micha
el-moore

Posted 12/03/09 CrystalEveritt melbourne, FL

He is interesting to listen to when he is talking off the cuff. It could very well be an act, but he almost seems like he is just a little confused. He sees some of the problems, he just doesn't always have the correct solutions. At least as you pointed out though, he is against endless war. Thanks for the post!

Posted by SteveCurtis on 08/12/09

I firmly believe that insurance companies and government are the CAUSE or the healthcare crisis, not its solution.  The only solution that I see is for patients to PAY for their healthcare, and have insurance only for catastrophic illnesses like cancer.  That way, people would be incentivized have healthier lifestyles and would stay healthier much longer. 

A good book related to this last point is "Change or DIe," the main point of which, if I remember it correctly, is that 80% of all health care expense is due to 5 factors: Smoking, Overeating, Too Much Alcohol Consumption, Not Enough Exercise, and Poor Stress Management.

As long as Big Government steals money from productive, healthy individuals in the form of excessive taxation in order to provide excessive amounts of care to people who have become unhealthy due to their poor lifestyle choices, healthcare will become an ever-increasing burden on this Nation, until it is bankrupt.

We all need to drop our expensive insurance policies in favor of catastrophic illness coverage, such as the one offered by the NRA, and then take care of Ourselves, with the help of our doctors, who are paid in Cash (or better yet Gold).

Posted 08/12/09 BillNM , NM

Steve, you left out lawyers. The only role for government is to pass laws that encourage and foster competition; like capping the amounts that doctors and hospitals can be sued and changing the law so you sue and lose; you pay your lawyer.

Posted 11/27/09 SteveCurtis Cocoa, FL

I completely agree. Tort reform is a crucial piece in controlling health care costs.

Posted 11/30/09 CrystalEveritt melbourne, FL

I am not sure that I believe in tort reform. Wouldn't that further harm the free market(if we had one)? It seems to me that it would encourage less quality products and services, if a business could know what their possible loss would be. It could end up just a cost of doing business, with no fear of real financial damage to the company. What do you think?

Posted by SteveCurtis on 01/18/09
Last updated 01/25/09

'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years

By STEPHEN MOORE

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement.

If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster. Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit. Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity.

The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible. For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism. In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws."

Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office.

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. David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas, explains that "the older the book gets, the more timely its message." He tells me that there are plans to make "Atlas Shrugged" into a major motion picture -- it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. "We don't need to make a movie out of the book," Mr. Kelley jokes. "We are living it right now."

Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W11 Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com

Posted 01/18/09 Felegund Jonesville, KY

No fair, you haven't given an option for "no, I haven't been able to find a copy." Honstly, I've looked a time or two. It's always either sold out or not stocked at all. Though I do admit that I didn't check my campus library yet. I gotta go do that.

Posted 10/21/09 CrystalEveritt melbourne, FL

I keep a copy on my iPhone at all times.