05/31/10

From American Conservative Daily

Going Galt In The Real World

J.J. Jackson | May 31, 2010

People email me every week asking me about going Galt. They ask me how to do it because they are tired of paying this out of control government for being out of control and even if I have done it.

Going Galt, if you don’t know, refers to withholding one’s productivity in the face of looters who place demands upon it. It comes about as a reference to the character John Galt from the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and how he reacted to government as the United States stamped out private enterprise for some horrid hodgepodge of leftist, big government ideologies from corporatism to socialism and fascism. John Galt simply refused to participate in such a society and he and the productive class left the looters to wallow in their own filth.

It is very hard to go Galt as this novel portrays it in real life. You have to be quite wealthy and very adept at staying seven steps ahead of government attempts to confiscate your wealth in order to do it effectively. Most of us however cannot just simply up and withhold all of our genius from the world. We have to eat and our savings are usually quite meager, a side effect of government policies designed to keep us in such a state I might add.

But you can do what I am many others have done and that is pick a comfortable level and remain there not to increase your contributions and therefore making more money and also not feeding the liberal beast currently residing on the Potomac River. You can also simply cut back on what you buy which cuts back on local and state sales taxes. This also means you pay less embedded taxes which are the taxes companies pay to the federal government and which are passed on to you in the form of higher prices making you, the consumer, the ultimate payer of said taxes. I have also cut back on my own business making just enough keep it open and making enough profit for me to be comfortable but still much less than it could be making and thus giving less to government each year.

What many Americans are doing, my self included, is simply not giving government what it wants. What it wants is for us to go out and even in the face of their heavy handed jackbooted policies to continue to feed it as it grows and grows. But by refusing to accept this as our fates people like myself are picking that comfortable level and staying there thus denying our Washington Overlords as much of the revenues that would be collected from us as possible.

It takes patience. But you can do it if you want. And every dollar you keep out of the hands of the overlords wanting to do nothing but control you helps. Sometimes you have to be willing to starve the beast. It will wail in pain and plead for food but you must be strong and withhold.

J.J. Jackson's website: http://www.libertyreborn.com

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J.J. Jackson is one of my favorite writers, his articles are always well worth reading. For anyone not yet familiar with the concept of "Going Galt", this is the best concise explanation and rationale for it that you'll find.

It'll also help you to understand my dilemma. I've always been contrary. I grew up swimming in Walden Pond where Thoreau philosophized and marched to his "different drummer". I was a "grumpy old man" when I was a kid.

When the Going Galt movement began, I was one of the first to send in my application for membership... Then I realized that I can't withhold my productivity and reduce my income and cutoff the government. I'm an old, retired, disabled, military guy. Most of my income, such as it is, comes from the government. Most of it is fully taxable, and when my wife and I file jointly, the government gets back a big chunk of what they gave me.

So I can't go Galt, the government has got me on a leash like a pet poodle. Do I tell them to keep their pittance and nobly ride off into the sunset, or do I wait for them to cut off my medical care when I get sick?

The other choice is when they come to confiscate my guns ... I always did like the ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Beats the hell out of dying of cancer of the toe or something.