According to a Library of Congress survey, Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, may be second to the Bible as the most influential book read in America. It is required reading in management training at BB&T, the 12th-largest bank in the U.S. and one that resisted taking TARP bailout funds. Since the Obama administration took office, Atlas Shrugged has been making a renaissance with rising sales and library waiting lists, partly because it explains our current economic woes more straightforwardly than most of what we hear from today's experts.
What happened in Ayn Rand's narrative is coming to pass today, with an anti-business administration reviling private industry, capitalizing on crisis to expand and redirect investment within and between sectors of the economy — setting quotas, prices and compensation. Businesses responded by retrenching — ceasing to invest, innovate and expand. Whole industries contracted, closed down, or moved offshore; much like the U.S. gas and oil drilling industry is doing today. Then, just as now, management became frustrated and discouraged, reluctant to create jobs in an environment of excessive government meddling.
While the private sector shed nearly 8 million jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, the federal government increased its payroll by 240,000 jobs. So the private sector that is the primary source of national wealth has been shrinking while supporting a growing public sector that generally produces nothing. That burden is made greater by the fact that government workers have incomes 30% higher and benefits 50% more costly on average than those received by equivalent private-sector workers.
Read it all here and maybe in the book too!
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