Friday, March 06, 2009


Roy Edroso points us to this video by puffed-up, self-righteous righty-blogger and medical device company executive TigerHawk, who (in Roy's words) "complains with frightening, quiet intensity that he and his rich friends 'have worked harder and longer in their entire careers than most Americans understand and can even conceive.'" -- which is the reason they're rich, because, presumably, wealth follows hard work as night follows day -- and who insists, not at all credibly, that he'd deign to pay the extra taxes President Obama wants him to pay if only the president would salaam before him, kiss his ring, and compose sonnets of praise to his moral superiority and industry. (That's only a slight exaggeration.)

Mr. Hawk says the well-to-do "work harder than everyone else" and "are both more productive with their time and more energetic than average people." I imagine he's never struck up a conversation with the people who clean the toilets at the company where he's a top executive. Some of those stories might sound something like this:

Some families celebrate Christmas a little late.

This family is celebrating today because mom finally has a day off from all three of her jobs.

"You do what you have to do to make ends meet," says Stacie Emery, who's husband is currently serving in Iraq....

For the last year and a half, Stacie has had the job of breadwinner. She has three jobs, one of which she is losing at the end of this month. And being mom and dad to her four daughters.

..."I love it, I do love it but there are days I wish I could just sit down and breathe." ...

Or, more likely, if he did hear such stories, he'd just have a reaction similar to that of the previous president of the United States:


While talking with audience participants, the president met Mary Mornin, a woman in her late fifties who told the president she was a divorced mother of three, including 'mentally challenged' son.

... without prompting Mornin began to elaborate on her life circumstances in the course of their discussion.

Begin transcript:


THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.


Mr. Hawk believes President Obama is trying to force his neck into the yoke of tax slavery because Obama has the audacity to ask Mr. Hawk to submit himself to a top marginal tax rate more than 10 percent lower than the rate that prevailed through most of Ronald Reagan's term. I wonder if he howled in protest then.


Meanwhile, his friend, ex-Quayle speechwriter Lisa Schiffren, links the video to the increasingly popular notion on the right of "going Galt" -- curtailing work in order to starve the government beast:

So, what happens when the heart surgeons, dentists, litigators, and people who employ 10 or 20 other people in their mid-size businesses decide that they don't want to pay for the excessive, pointless spending that the president finds so compelling? Instapundit speculates on people "going John Galt." I think golf — a time-intensive sport that the hard-working have eschewed for the past decade or two because it took too long — will make a comeback.

I've been thinking about this idea recently and I realize it's absurd based on capitalism lovers' own notions of how the world works.

Capitalism lovers have no problems with business failures and mass layoffs of ordinary schmoes, because that's "creative destruction" -- clearing away the deadwood in a Darwinian way so newer, more robust enterprises can thrive.

But, see, the Galt-goers are offering to engage in creative self-destruction -- they say they're going to play more golf, take on less work, and so on, because the tax rates make them cranky.

You know what? There'll be plenty of people who'll do the work these Galt-goers won't do, and they'll live with the tax consequences, thank you very much. They'll step into the breach. The Galt-goers will be the ones creatively destroyed -- by their own Rand hands.

And I say good riddance to bad rubbish.

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