Going Galt

If you're not familiar with John Galt, here's an excellent introduction from Tristero at Hullabaloo:

... John Galt is the copper-haired, white-boy protagonist in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Galt leads a revolutionary movement in which all the top leaders of the banks and corporations forsake their corporate jets and perks to work in diners or as subway repair guys. No they weren't fired by Galt. Rather, Galt urged them to go on strike and withdraw their expertise from an increasingly socialist world. Deprived of the genius of their genius, the world economy collapses.

Ayn Rand is the favorite author -- they even call her "philosopher"! -- of Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman, and lonely, resentful 17-year-olds everywhere.

And "Going Galt" is the latest fad in the propeller-head crowd. They're encouraging the "productive elite" to cut back on their earnings so they won't have to pay Barack Obama's socialist, wealth-redistributing taxes.

ABC News quotes a member of this productive elite:

A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law.

"We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00," she said.

"We have to find a way out where we can make just what we need to just under the line so we can benefit from Obama's tax plan," she added. "Why kill yourself working if you're going to give it all away to people who aren't working as hard?"

With elites like that, who needs village idiots?

The ABC story goes on:

But Gary Schatsky, a financial advisor and the president of NY-based Objectiveadvice.com, said that reducing your income won't help a great deal because of the way the country's tax system is set up.

"Just going over $250,000 doesn't mean it impacts your tax liability for every dollar before that," said Schatsky, "It impacts you at the margin."

Marginal or graduated tax systems like the one in the U.S. means only the money earned over a certain amount -- $250,000 in the case of Obama's proposal -- will be taxed at an increased percentage.

For instance, for a person earning $350,00, the first $250,000 of income would be taxed at lower tax rates, while the last $100,000 would be taxed at Obama's higher rate.

"Only the incremental earnings above [a quarter of a million dollars] are taxed at a higher rate," said Schatsky.

"[T]o focus keeping your income below a quarter million dollars is not going to have any spectacular magic for individual tax payers," said Schatsky. "The difference between $249,999 and $251,000 will probably have zero tax impact."

And what is the onerous, socialist, wealth-redistributing tax rate that is causing our productive elite to fall all over themselves to become elevator operators, just so the economic world will collapse and serve us parasites right?

From John Cole, here's a chart of the top tax rates from the 1920s to the present:

You'll need to click on it to enlarge it.

I never realized that Dwight David Eisenhower was a socialist.