After Bill Clinton took office in the early 90s, my sister, the Reagan conservative, gave me a book to read, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. She assured me that I would no longer be a liberal after reading this book, although she had never read the book herself. I read the book, liked it, agreed with some of it but retained my liberal views. At the time I read the book in the 90s, it did not have a great influence on me. I appreciated Ayn Rand’s intellectual reasoning.
Late in the 90s, actually the year 2000 to be exact, a coworker inquired about my political views. “I’m a Democrat,” I replied unashamedly. “Oh,” she said, “you like to pay lazy people not to work.” “Not really. I’ve always believed in hard work. I’ve always earned my income,” I explained and ran away as quickly as possible. I did not want to get into a political discussion.
Let’s fast forward to 2008, which has been an eventful and historical year in our lives. After being laid off for the third time in my 35-year career, I re-read Atlas Shrugged. What would I think of the novel after eight years of Bushonomics? What would I think of the novel after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars which continue without end? Both wars have been failures as we have not captured Osama Bin Laden nor found Weapons of Mass Destruction poised to destroy us. And what about the financial meltdown? The auto industry meltdown? Two million Americans being laid off work?
What are my views after reading Atlas Shrugged in 2008?
Is our economic crisis the culmination of socialism, fascism and communism? What about the pillaging of our budget reserves by the Bush administration? What about science taking a back seat to the religious fundamentalism of Jerry Falwell and Sarah Palin? I would love to have a conversation with Ms. Rand about when deregulation in capitalism went bad. I know what she would feel about religious fundamentalism overtaking science.
Do not misinterpret me. I believe that our capitalism is a good system. But capitalism is not repackaging and reselling bad mortgages. Capitalism is not giving bailouts to ill-run financial or automobile corporations. As Rand would agree, we are rewarding the looters of the system. Does welfare save corporations? Or just individuals? Or neither?
Rand did not like Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal. I believe that my healthcare should not depend on whether or not I have a job, but I was born into a system where it does. Since my husband and I are both unemployed, health insurance is out of the budget for him. I was lucky enough to keep my insurance until June 30, 2009. Both my husband and I take care of our health: we do not smoke or eat processed foods; we exercise regularly. I have a problem paying for healthcare for someone who does not take care of himself (as in smoking and eating fast food everyday).
I do not like paying large amounts of money into the Social Security system knowing that I probably will not get it when I need it. Again, this is a system that was adopted before I was born. My employers and I have paid almost $250,000 to the federal government for my social security. I want it when I need it. I do not want it abolished.
Reading the book was frightening the past six weeks. Disasters such as a main water pipe bursting in Maryland the coal ash spill in Tennessee made me unsure at times of what was reality and what was in Rand’s book. Am I living the novel?
Over the years, I worked for both Dagny Taggert and Jim Taggert types in my career. I have been a part of companies surviving and companies not surviving economic challenges. I have witnessed Jim Taggerts receiving golden parachutes.
After being on 24/7 call for nine years and seven months, I have found it hard not having the phone to ring with an urgent problem to solve. In that sense, I identify with Dagny in the book. And I identify with Dagny in that I always stayed with the company until I was laid off. I had an opportunity to leave in the past year, but I stayed with the company I knew, although I saw some unsettling signs. Like Taggert Transportation, the company I was with is a survivor like its founder.
The ending of Eddie Willers in the book bothers me. I identify the most with that character in the novel. I was upset that he winds up on the floor on a broken down train in the middle of the Arizona desert with no hope of survival. Would Eddie not fit into the new world order? Although I identify with Eddie in the book, I will not take my unemployment lying down. I may not be an innovator or an inventor, but I am not a quitter.
