Everyone owes it to themselves to read Atlas Shrugged at least once, preferably while they’re young.   Yes, it’s probably 300 pages too long, but even the abridged version will leave the reader with a crystal clear understanding of the dichotomy of people we encounter in life.  There are makers, and there are takers. 

Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and the people working hard toward their goals are the makers.  They overcome failure everyday to provide the rest of us with the products and services we want.  They make our capitalist system of voluntary exchange run.  Without their risk-taking, without their drive, we have no innovation and therefore no improvement to our quality of life. 

The gifts of the makers are taken for granted daily.  How many of us would survive a month in the year 1900?   No car to get you around, no air conditioning, no refrigeration, no penicillin, and no magic rectangle in your pocket that has become how you control your entire existence.  It has taken many great men and women to get us the life we have now, and many more have died penniless trying to bring their ideas to life.

There is great risk to entrepreneurship, and businesses can fail for a variety of reasons. But for those who succeed in building a business, the reward is being your own boss and having no ceiling to your income.  Makers of all shapes and sizes understand this, and admire success.  However, for the taker, success is something to be mocked, vilified, and destroyed.

The taker often comes in one of two forms.  There is the unemployable loser with no work ethic, drive, or pride, willing to live off the labor of others while blaming his providers for his own inertia.  Then there are the government leeches who make a lucrative living selling the toxic lie that life is a finite pie, zero sum game, and the only reason some people have nothing is because other people have something. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders didn’t have a job until he was 40, and then only in politics.  He is a bum and the personification of the accurate Marxist summation that you should hate the man who has a dollar more than you. His description of the criminally wealthy once included millionaires and billionaires, but now that his net worth is $3M, including his three houses, he just hates on billionaires and above.

Yesterday he tweeted that Musk’s rise to trillionaire status “should not be celebrated,” but should be “a call to action” and “we should fight back.”  But fight back against what, exactly? An estimated 4000 of Musk’s employees became millionaires with yesterday’s SpaceX IPO.  Many of these people were welders, office workers, and janitors.  How many people has Bernie Sanders turned into millionaires? That’s right, just one.  Himself.

Same with America’s nagging socialist mother-in-law, Elizabeth Warren, who used Musk’s fortune as an excuse to call for a wealth tax.  Her tantrum of envy and resentment didn’t have time to consider the unconstitutional nature of such a tax, or the devastating economic consequences of one.  Musk’s businesses employ 170k people.  How many people owe their living to Elizabeth Warren?  That’s right, none. 

Warren just knows Musk has historic wealth and her taker nature compels her to confiscate it.  She and Bernie exude a bile-inducing sense of entitlement and unspeakable arrogance.  These are the same people who support a death tax.  Of course, your hard earned wealth should not go to your kids when you die.  It should go to politicians who know how to better redistribute it.  They despise seeing Americans having wealth beyond the control of their icy fingers.  This is a character flaw of arrested development.  They never learned as a child that the only reason you ever look into another person’s bowl is to makes sure they have enough. Beyond that, how much of anything someone has is not your concern.  And judging someone because you think their net worth is too high doesn’t make you a moral arbiter of social justice, it makes you a parasite.

Neither Sanders nor Warren have ever contributed any net gain to society.  They have only enriched themselves by selling Marxism to hopeless people.  To point to just one of Musk’s accomplishments, he has improved communication and access to information for hundreds of millions of people.  He may have also single handedly saved freedom of speech in America.  The stark difference between the maker and the taker is truly light and darkness.

One last thing I notice.  I have given money to both Musk and the government.  Musk, as a willing investment, the government as legalized theft.  Musk multiplied my money and let me have it back.  Warren and Sanders made it vanish without a trace of any benefit to anyone, except themselves.