Ayn Rands SS checks

[asterism]

So she should just have let the government keep what they took from her without her permission for so long.

Would John Galt have given into the system in order to gain back some of the money he felt was stolen from him by the government without his permission? Before you answer, do take care to remember that Galt was essentially a outlet for Rand's Objectivist theories.

I personally have no problem with her getting the benefits she paid into the system for. However, the Ayn Rand of twenty years prior would of. Remember, in her own words, "There is no justification ever for choosing for any part of what you know to be evil."

That's her standard, not mine.

How many times did you read the book before you were presented with these talking points?

Have you ever read Ender's Game?

 

[asterism]

I'm not going to read through all the posts, just respond to the OP. There is no hypocrisy by those that use entitlements that they've been forced to pay into. The real hypocrisy comes from those that are wealthy and on the left who use those entitlements, they leave less resources for those they 'feel for.' Real liberals would pay more than they owe in taxes, refuse social security when they have enough to care for themselves, pay for supplemental health insurance in place of medicare. That would demonstrate their true dedication to the programs for the 'needy.'

Oh, you mean the millionaire union retiree who lives down the block that won the lottery, gets two pensions *and* social security?

$1.8 Million house, a $75,000 boat, two Land Rovers, a Mercedes, and a $400 per day gambling budget. And he says we need to remove the cap on FICA or else we're going to force poor people like him into starvation.

Go visit a town in Florida called "The Villages." Go see what people get to do with their Social Security checks. The richest demographic on the planet and we have to pay more to keep their money coming in....

Yeah, it's about "the poor"

 

[asterism]

John Galt is a character. Ayn Rand didn't want to go to prison for not paying taxes.

That does not answer my post at all. John Galt was Ayn Rand. Not only that, she considered John Galt the ideal man. That 70 page monologue of John Galt's was Ayn Rand's Objectivist views. Ayn Rand paid her taxes, however by her own philosophy she should of rejected the benefits that the "parasites" and "moochers" partook of.

Either I'm dealing with faux Objectivists in this thread or some of you don't understand her philosophy dealt in absolutes.

I feel bad for the woman who advocated and lived in what she considered a black-and-white world. Feel free to address the following quote of hers since nobody else has:

"There is no justification ever for choosing for any part of what you know to be evil."

Let me ask you Dave, in the eight years she lived after she began to receive the benefits, do you think she told her fellow Objectivists? I haven't seen any record of it. Do you think she stopped railing against Social Security and Medicare? I doubt it.

"John Galt was Ayn Rand."

That's funny. Please don't insult us as to pretend you conjured up that fiction all by yourself.


College is there to teach you how to think. So far you're not doing so well.

 

[asterism]

Ahhh. So collecting government benefits you paid for is just the same as murder.

Hooray! False Equivalences!

Though back in reality, that's not what I said at all. Gandhi and MLK Jr. advocated their entire lives for non-violence and civil disobedience. That umbrella doesn't involve killing those who stand in the way of gaining civil liberties. If MLK Jr. started to be like Charles Bronson in Death Wish, he would be a hypocrite for advocating non-violence while not practicing what he preaches.

Though I guess such concepts are either too complex for you to understand you wish to purposefully misconstrue my arguments because you have none of your own.

Ummm, actually, you said, "A similar example would be finding out that later in their lives, MLK Jr. and Gandhi started to mow down people who got the way of civil liberties."

So you're saying it's okay to preach non-violence, but kill those who oppose your goal?

The false equivalence is yours. You might want to spend a little more time thinking before you post something dumb. Or you could just post dumb things and then blame other people for it like you have been.

Dave, you have to understand something.

You're a retired enlisted man because you just didn't have what it took to be a Sophomore in college like Mr. Modbert. You see, some people are just better than others. Sorry you didn't make the cut. Please don't try to dissect his brilliant analysis that he came up with after reading someone else's analysis and please don't think you can parse his words to find what he's really trying to say. Sit back, collect your checks that Modbert isn't writing but remember that he has every intention of getting someone else to write those checks you cash so just thank him.

Accept your sorry lot in life and let Modbert go on and be such the awesome-o amazing great thinker that he is. The world needs him and will treat him in the manner to which he deserves.

 

[asterism]

So even though the fucking government confiscated 15% of her income she is just supposed to let the fucking government keep it?

So tell me, in Atlas Shrugged, did John Galt (essentially Ayn Rand) give into the system in order to get some of the riches that he lost by going a different path?

Again I have to ask, did I miss that chapter?

What is hilarious about this entire thread is all I'm doing is applying Rand's Objectivist, there are only absolutes philosophy. Like I said previously in this thread, I don't personally mind if Rand got the benefits that she paid into a system for. However, I'll repost a quote of hers I just posted:

There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

By taking Social Security and Medicare, she compromised her basic principles. Up into her death, she continued to talk about the "parasites" and "moochers" while on the dole herself.

Irony.

 

[asterism]

It's a safe bet that TMN has not read any of Rand's major works.

Until she does, posting hack pieces against her just consistent with her ignorant bot style.

Having read Atlas Shrugged some years ago I believe Rand, as an eminent opponent of all things even vaguely socialist, has a moral reponsibility to express an opinion of those socialist benefits that she quietly took advantage of.

Of course it's true that having contributed to those programs via her federal income taxes entitles her to take advantage of the available benefits. But her status in relation to those programs calls for some objective commentary on their ultimate value. I would like to ask her if at this stage of her life she would have preferred to not be required to contribute to the programs but rather to be responsible for out-of-pocket payment of the cost of whatever massive medical treatments she might require.

I really would like to know her answer to that question.

Salient and valid.

Too bad nobody gets to actually answer that question and it's the standard ideological impasse - how much government is too much?

 

[Toro]

Name at birth: Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum

Born and educated in Russia, Ayn Rand moved to the United States in 1926



Read more: Rand, Ayn: Biography from Answers.com

She wrote a Novel based on her growing up Post Communist Revolution, pre WWII called "We The Living". You should read it when you grow up.

Her short stories and nonfiction compilations are much more readable than any of her dreary novels.

I loved Atlas Shrugged. I also really enjoyed her nonfiction books such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

 

[geauxtohell]

Ayn.

What a hack.

I don't know how anyone can read her drivel.

It's painful. The writing is awful. The characters are completely static caricatures of moral viewpoints.

It reads like an Aesop's fable for conservatives.

 

[code1211]

If one is self employed then that person pays the whole dime for the ride. The 7% paid by the employer and the 7% paid by the employee becomes 14% for the self employed.

Everybody pays the full amount.

The "employer contribution" scam is an accounting shell game.

Point taken.

 

[Toro]

Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them | | AlterNet


Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor).

Meh

I see no problem with it at all.

This is kind of like the "Love it or leave it" argument that you get when you criticize America (or anywhere else) and someone runs out of anything intelligent to say. We are all products of the system. We live by the rules afforded by society. If we don't like it, we try to change it from within.

I could see her argument - The government forcibly took it from her, so now she is taking back what was rightfully hers in the first place.

Look at it another way - If the government one day knocked on your door and took away your home and property by force then a decade later gave it back to you, would you not take it back? That is what SS is essentially, an expropriation of savings by the government returned to you with interest at a later date.

The difference between Rand taking SS and a homophone preacher caught with a male prostitute is that you are forced by law to contribute into SS whereas the preacher isn't forced to have gay sex.

 

[Oddball]

She wrote a Novel based on her growing up Post Communist Revolution, pre WWII called "We The Living". You should read it when you grow up.

Her short stories and nonfiction compilations are much more readable than any of her dreary novels.

I loved Atlas Shrugged. I also really enjoyed her nonfiction books such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

I read "Atlas Shrugged" on a bet...Rand's dreary purple prose took an extremely interesting plot premise and strangled it in excessively florid and irrelevant verbosity....Ditto "The Fountainhead".

Give me the short stories and nonfiction any day of the week.

 

[American Horse]

Name at birth: Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum

Born and educated in Russia, Ayn Rand moved to the United States in 1926



Read more: Rand, Ayn: Biography from Answers.com

From your link it's fair to say that she paid into SS for 44 years (age 21 to 65) and was entitled to benefits.

 

[RadiomanATL]

I could see her argument - The government forcibly took it from her, so now she is taking back what was rightfully hers in the first place.

Look at it another way - If the government one day knocked on your door and took away your home and property by force then a decade later gave it back to you, would you not take it back? That is what SS is essentially, an expropriation of savings by the government returned to you with interest at a later date.

Pretty much the way I view it too.

Tempest in a teapot for people to get on their high-horse about and say that someone is a hypocrite. I don't view it as hypocrisy.

 

[Toro]

Ayn.

What a hack.

I don't know how anyone can read her drivel.

It's painful. The writing is awful. The characters are completely static caricatures of moral viewpoints.

It reads like an Aesop's fable for conservatives.

Speaking of static caricatures, The Fountain movie was just awful.

 

[Toro]

Her short stories and nonfiction compilations are much more readable than any of her dreary novels.

I loved Atlas Shrugged. I also really enjoyed her nonfiction books such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

I read "Atlas Shrugged" on a bet...Rand's dreary purple prose took an extremely interesting plot premise and strangled it in excessively florid and irrelevant verbosity....Ditto "The Fountainhead".

Give me the short stories and nonfiction any day of the week.

I read Atlas Shrugged in high school during the summer. After my job, I'd race home and read 100 pages. I have never done that with any book before.

 

[geauxtohell]

Ayn.

What a hack.

I don't know how anyone can read her drivel.

It's painful. The writing is awful. The characters are completely static caricatures of moral viewpoints.

It reads like an Aesop's fable for conservatives.

Speaking of static caricatures, The Fountain movie was just awful.

Oh. I avoided that one. I really don't like novels that moralize. I want to watch my characters go through some sort of transformative/transitional state.

My criticisms of Rand are basically that I find her style of writing to be terrible. The larger implications can be debated elsewhere, I suppose. I recognize that she speaks to some people. I just find her writing to be absurdly preachy (i.e. the dinner party in "Atlas Shrugged" where Hank Rearden is questioned on what he feels his moral responsibility to society is by the doctor and his wife, etc. - It's been a long time since I've read it, so If I've butchered the details, that is the reason).

 

[Oddball]

Ayn.

What a hack.

I don't know how anyone can read her drivel.

It's painful. The writing is awful. The characters are completely static caricatures of moral viewpoints.

It reads like an Aesop's fable for conservatives.

One thing she had absolutely nailed were her antagonists.

But seeing as the authoritarian, moocher and their sycophants are already static caricatures of themselves in the first place, that task is pretty easy.

 

[Intense]

Great Movie.

 

[Oddball]

I loved Atlas Shrugged. I also really enjoyed her nonfiction books such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

I read "Atlas Shrugged" on a bet...Rand's dreary purple prose took an extremely interesting plot premise and strangled it in excessively florid and irrelevant verbosity....Ditto "The Fountainhead".

Give me the short stories and nonfiction any day of the week.

I read Atlas Shrugged in high school during the summer. After my job, I'd race home and read 100 pages. I have never done that with any book before.

You have to read 100 pages just to get to any kind of a point to anything.

She could've easily lopped 300-500 pages off of that doorstop in excessive setting descriptions alone.

 

[Oddball]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc7oZ9yWqO4

Great Movie.

That's about the meat of the movie...Likewise, Galt's rant is about the only thing really worth reading in "Atlas".