Our country's economics and why 'Atlas Shrugged'

Excuse me for a while as I climb up on this soapbox. I imagine that the ones of people who read me will not be surprised but I am not happy with our current government. That is also not saying that I was happy with the past one either, but I digress. Currently we have a very liberal man running the country and doing good and bad things every day. He is most likely doing the very best he can in a very hard job and I applaud him for this. The problem I have is this, our current Democratic party seems to have some very serious socialist leanings. With the tax and law changes designed, on the surface, to even the playing field for the 'have nots'we are sending a message that it is wrong to be better, brighter, richer, or more ,motivated. In effect, they will punish over-achievers (higher taxes) and/or try to limit how far ahead they can get (laws). This path will just lead to enforced mediocrity, you want an example, look north. Canada is a very socialist country and I have yet to hear how Canada is a world leader in anything. There is no motivation to excel or succeed if the fruits of your labors are going to only make the lazy or less ambitious just as much money or success as it does yourself. In effect we are walking down the road described in Ayn Rand's book 'Atlas Shrugged'. The problem with this is that the system depends on those over-achievers to continue working just as hard and successfully so that the benefits can be stripped and shared with the less motivated. At some point these folks will stop contributing, much like the title of Ayn's book. In the book a question was asked, "what would happen if Atlas became tired of carrying the world on his shoulders, what would you have him do?" The answer was simple, "I would have Atlas shrug." When Atlas quits carrying the world who is going to catch it? I hope we do not get a chance to see all the people who were trying to chain Atlas as they scurry out of the way. Let me leave you with an example of socialism in process(i have not verified that this is true, but i like the story.)


Teaching socialism...

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that....

and we all KNOW it would happen exactly this way in any class you were ever in.

NOTE:: I have found that the events depicted in this story did not happen, most likely. I wanted to add this for the sake of honesty and such. I still feel a real class would end up exactly like depicted but there does not seem to be a true test case.