‘Going Galt’ is a Futile Fad

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 Mogambo Guru makes an excellent point. When Atlas Shrugged was written, we valued production. The U.S. economy was based on manufacturing - automobiles, textiles, appliances, televisions, radios, you name it and we built it. Not anymore. Many plants have packed up and moved to countries with less onerous taxes, less burdensome regulations and cheaper labor. Most of the remaining ones are merely assembly plants which package imported products. The threat to remove producers to stop the wheels of government tyranny does not carry much weight anymore - they're already gone.