>>14
Hey, I live in Australia. I am no stranger to welfare and high taxes. This is fine with me. It is necessary to tax and provide basic needs.
What I truly dislike are the completely unnecessary government interventions. When a company does too well, the government tries to cut them down in the spirit of "competition". This is what Rand is discussing for the most part in Atlas Shrugged. Things like laws against monopoly.
I just don't see what is so wrong with being the giant company in your industry that most people turn to. Why is it such a crime to be successful?
I will pay the Australian government's sometime 50% tax. But I won't buy into further attempts to cut down to size successful people. Why is it so important that everyone be even? Atlas Shrugged has a situation where, after struggling to invent a new lightweight strong metal, the government requires a tycoon to share this technology with the rest of the industry. A group of ungrateful morons who never believed in him in the first place. I know this is an extreme example, but this kind of thinking truly scares me.
I am a pretty generous person and I often give up things to people who I think deserve it. I just have a serious problem with forced altruism. And it's not just about tax. It's about measures put into place to limit how high people can achieve. It's the wrong kind of government intervention that disturbs me.