>Care to engage his actual point- e.g. his observation that worsening inequality historically always leads to a Police State or pitchforks?
>
>Also, since you are a Rand fan: would you consider the thoughts of this fellow as closer to Dagney or James Taggart? Seems to me that James wanted to suck everything to himself while Dagney gave more consideration to her people.

OK, I'm being too hard on the guy - he did say, "I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student". I'll second that - and I sure don't want policy on "managing capitalism" by someone who isn't that smart, or hard working, or a mediocre student. Heck, if I wanted that, I'd vote in a community organizer from Chicago as president :)

Look, it's difficult to "engage" in someone whose historical premises are all wrong. "George W. Bush had eight years to reduce the size of gov and failed"....he never once tried. GWB will go down in history as an economically irresponsible president, and that's not even counting the $$$ from the war. The conclusion that you'll reduce govt reliance by raising min. wage is almost humorous.

As for your Dagny/James question, I really hate to start using Philosophy 101 clichés, but that's a straw man fallacy. But to answer your question, Dagny would have never echoed the sentiments in this article. She would have laughed. Dagny's theme was simple - the greatest sensation of existence is to know....and to ignore the haters.

As for his "point", that worsening inequality historically leads to a police state, it's my contention that our current president undercuts the middle class to increase the kind of growing hostility you describe. He WANTS it to happen, wants to be a catalyst for it. This is what I mean months ago when I said that our president is like a political "Munchausen by proxy" machine - he intentionally harms the middle and lower middle class in a way that will build resentment towards the rich.