If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?
To shrug.
As the market resumes it’s descent to levels last seen pre COVID (the Nasdaq, Tesla and pre profit companies leading the way), I decided to re-read Atlas Shrugged. A little long perhaps, and a touch absolute, but in this reading, the parallels to today were striking. Money printing, inflation, talking points, and the looters in Washington simply can’t stop themselves. Climate activists, social Justice warriors, virtue signalers, calls to tax the rich and Roe v. Wade alarmists…. Everyone is angry and yelling at something or somebody but no one has stepped forward with a plan to actually address the real problems. Too much “help” from Washington and Brussels and too little acknowledgement of supply demand realities. Worse, those in positions of power look absolutely ridiculous. Check out this 2 minute clip from our new press secretary whose qualifications appear to be that she is a black woman…
I said it before, and I’ll say it again, a lockdown is coming this summer to reduce gasoline and food consumption. Some of the truly most incompetent people on the planet are in positions of power and like the looters in Atlas Shrugged, they simply can’t get out of the way. Moreover, it is simply not possible to fix the supply side of the equation fast enough and without food and energy, I estimate 195,000,000 people will die of starvation in the next 365 days (2.5% of Ethiopia’s population died in the 1983 famine). It feels extreme to say it, but in Part 3 of AS, as the world collapses around the government, they double down on the choices that got them there. When you are a hammer, everything becomes a nail.
As I read and reflected, I thought about what John Galt would think and whether Dagny would still be fighting to raise the alarm and save us from ourselves. And then I thought about the executive orders on day 1 of President Biden’s term when he canceled the Keystone pipeline, elevated public health concerns in the name of climate change and the science (TM), and protected transgender athletes right to beat biologic women for an NCAA championship, and I knew the answer. They would shrug and let it all burn. And so should we.
A few of you reached out about the press Secretary’s intent. To me - what she should have said was this “ To me the answer is “inflation and taxes aren’t related. As inflation makes the government budget increase, we need the burden to be paid by the rich entirely. It won’t help inflation but it will make sure we can keep spending whatever we want with a better balance. And oh uh, with the market falling all those billionaires we created during the pandemic are going away and we lost that talking point and revenue. Shoot!”
Of course, as a libertarian I would have added “we will cut spending, stop printing money, reduce entitlements, stop funding Ukraine and reduce regulation that distorts markets…”
But …. That wouldn’t play very well with the Dems.
“Politics allows people to vote for the impossible, which may be one reason why politicians are often more popular than economists, who keep reminding people that there is no free lunch and that there are no “solutions”, but only trade-offs”. Thomas Sowell