The line between political truth and literary fiction is getting very blurry. One of the main features of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was the choice of productive people to withdraw their talents from the economy to deprive the statists of a source of loot.
Who would have guessed, more than 50 years later, that the Solicitor General of the United States would be making the same argument in a legal case about Obamacare.
Here’s the relevant segment from the Washington Examiner.
President Obama’s solicitor general, defending the national health care law on Wednesday, told a federal appeals court that Americans who didn’t like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money. Neal Kumar Katyal, the acting solicitor general, made the argument under questioning before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, which was considering an appeal by the Thomas More Law Center.
As is so often the case, Glenn Reynolds already made this connection. It’s very thoughtful of the Obama White House to promote Rand’s work.
