OT Atals Shrugged

Has anyone read the book or seen the movies yet . Part one out on DVD and netflix , part two is in theaters . Pretty wild that a book written in the 50"s is so close to true these days

oops ,,"Atlas"

I listened to it last winter on I pad in semi. It would have been 50 cd,s long As you said very scary

Reading it again now.

It's on my list to read on the upcoming long winter evenings.

1069 pages in 8 point font - it's gonna take more than a couple nights(!)

It's a nice piece of fiction. The biggest flaw is that there are no more industrialists like Dagny Taggart. There's only venture capitalists and vultures that get rich by stealing and parasitizing companies that do actually build things, then pushing them bankruptcy to drop their debt.

Look at our ultra rich. Do any of them build anything anymore?

when Aynn Rand wrote "Atlas Shrugged" she didn't know Atlas was an Arab. Think about that. I've also read "The Fountain Head". Aynn had quite a following in the '60s. ........conservative Dell

Never heard of the Robber Barons of late 19th and early 20th
Centuries.
Walt

Venture capitalists and vultures? The current situation with venture capitalists is nothing more than a market response to market force barriers WE (our government) put into to place to try to make things "fair". A strong healthy well managed business is not going to tie up with a venture capitalist, they have no need to. Now if a apparently strong healthy business ties up with a venture capitalist it might be for other reasons, like a particularly onerous labor contract has them at a disadvantage against a new upstart competitor and the venture capitalist is going to lean them to be competitive and save jobs or recapture the value of the company for the shareholders (owners)by eliminating obligations of lessor position. These market forces may also be due to governmental regulations.

The largest single taxpayer and employer here in our county was a paper mill way up in the northern part of our county. It had been sold a few times and the last owner was a much a venture capitalist as a mill operator. When they shut it down there were all kinds of cries about the greedy venture capitalist. Yes the plant was making money but the owners of the plant could take the money they had invested in the plant put it in bank CDs and get more money with less risk. In fact they shut this and several other area mills down and shifted the production from these plants to other newer and more efficient mills they owned in states with a more favorable business climate and in doing so their stockholders, many of who are retirees who invested their savings in this company, would get a fair dividend that accurately rewards them for the risk they are taking.

In many cases our tax code has forced smaller family owned businesses out of family control, they were sold to pay taxes or the next generation of the family felt there were better opportunities for them than owning a hardware store, automobile dealer, Implement companies (keeping it tractor related) home town grocery store or what ever the business was.

We want to punish the rich and our tax code is so structured and in many cases it's biased against business owners. When I worked for the county my salary was about $50,000 a year- that's middle class and not really excessive however as a department head I also new the actual cost to the taxpayers for my services after all benefits were paid was $93,000. If my wife earns the same amount and we happened to make it in our business all of a sudden we're the evil rich that must be punished.

Wealth is not created in a vacuum. Let's look at the simple transaction of buying/selling a $20,000 new car. When a new $20,000 car is sold in a state with a 5% sales tax and a .5% local option tax the salesman makes about 1/10 of his monthly sales (on average), the dealer anywhere from 1% to maybe 5% of their monthly sales goal, the state gets $1,000 in sales tax and $100 for tag & title transfer, the county $100. Let's say we pass a new mandate for fuel efficiency or safety and that results in 100 fewer people buying cars that year. The car dealers need one less sales man, the state losses $100,000 in tax revenue (say good bye to a social worker or trooper or snow plow driver) and losses another $1000 in title and tag transfer fees, the county losses $1,000. Because the automaker needs 100 fewer cars 1 1/2 $70,000 a year auto workers aren't needed and so it goes on.

What really is fair?- according to our constitution and our laws we are all supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law or government. I say FAIRNESS is when we take the cost of the government and divide it by the number of people served and that's the tax for the year. If we looked at it that way people would be less inclined to want more from the government if they new it was going to increase their taxes. Is it really "fair" that I pay a percentage of my paycheck (with my employer paying the same amount) in social security and earn the top benefit, yet some one who may of made less than me and paid substantially less into Social security than me may get a benefit of the same value?

Read it years ago.

Already being a conservative I felt the message was kind of obvious and oversimplified. And the book could have been half as long and I don't think it would have lost anything.

If I ever recommend a book for a good political message - I go with "animal farm" - a great example of how communal good intentions can't stand up to the reality of greed and corruption that exists everywhere, even in those trying to improve the system.

And it does it in about 1000 pages less than atlas shrugged.

I'll tell you what,if you want to see a movie that should be mandatory viewing,it's one made in 1957 called "A face in the crowd". It starred Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal.
I had avoided it because it's not a comedy and I didn't really want to see Andy Griffith in a drama,but a few weeks ago I was in a hotel room with nothing but cable and couldn't find anything else to watch,so I watched it start to finish.
I'm saying this as somebody who listened to Lefty Limbaugh for 15 years,if that 1957 movie didn't forshadow his life and rise,I'll kiss your backside. If you still listen to talk radio and watch that movie,you're gonna feel like the biggest idiot who ever drew a breath. I DARE some of you to watch it.
A face in the crowd

had a teacher call and ask if i thought it was appropriate reading material for my daughters book report in high school. shocked her by telling her i had given my daughter the book. damned abundant nonsense like that is why yu no longer hear about orwell, twain, rand or even emerson. emerson wrote an excellent essay on self reliance.

Atlas is a decent book as far as the writing. It's the story that scares the crap out of you. Ayn Rand came from communist Russia and knew what she wrote of. Yes, the book could have been half as long and still done everything it did. And old Ayn was kind of a twisted chick when it came to personal relationships. But, it's still a classic.

I saw the first installment of the movie on Netflix. Pretty good, but there is a lot of background that's lost. I'll surely watch #2 when it gets out int he cheap seats.