Personal Money and World Governments: Manage Money Wisely; How Much You Keep Is Affected by Many Governments of the World

By Gilbert Graham

Individuals and nations should be like the tortoise in the fable and provide for the long term. Health, both financial and physical, is affected by personal decisions and external influences. About 100 graphs and tables complement the text in depicting the results of extensive analyses. Topics include career choices, reduced spending and early investing for retirement along with practices of the governments of sample countries. Finances, health, education and employment are compared.

Internationally accepted data are analyzed to depict annual deaths from various energy sources and the financial costs of solar and wind power, as well as for electric vehicles.

Example of California electricity generating capacity availability and costs in US$ per 1,000 kilowatt-hours: Wind 25.5% - $306; Utility Solar 27.5% - $447; Residential Solar 17.5% - $1,342. Market Value—only the $40–$100 cost of natural gas power plant fuel due to natural energy source unreliability on annual system capacity demand peak as well as winter and summer months' energy demand.

Examples of annual deaths per 100 million people relevant to electric vehicles:

USA, cumulative due to smoking, inactivity and poor diet: 380,000
USA, due to all sources of energy for electricity generation: 6,800
China, due to electricity generation from coal alone: 27,000
US, net lives saved by replacing all gasoline vehicles with electric vehicles: 2,300

Annual deaths per 100 million people from violence:

Mexico: 18,970; USA: 5,530; Canada: 1,770; Germany: 690; China: 820; Japan: 260.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228870067

Gilbert Graham

Gilbert Graham is a retired Canadian professional engineer who chose a diverse career. He has been an employee or consultant in several industries, including an electric utility, a government department of industry and several large companies in the Western Canadian petroleum industry. His interests include the interfaces of business, economics and technical principles.

Book preview

Personal Money and World Governments

Manage Money Wisely; How Much You Keep Is Affected by Many Governments of the World

Gilbert Graham

Personal Money and World Governments

Copyright © 2022 by Gilbert Graham

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-7005-0 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-7004-3 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-7006-7 (eBook)

In Memory of My Inadequately Thanked Mentors

Gilbert Graham is a retired Canadian professional engineer who chose a diverse career. He has been an employee or consultant in several industries, including an electric utility, a government department of industry and several large companies in the western Canadian petroleum industry.

His interests include the interfaces of business, economics and technical principles.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FORWARD

Part 1 - TRY RUNNING YOUR OWN LIFE

Chapter 1 - WISDOM

Chapter 2 - SO YOU THINK YOU’RE AN ORIGINAL THINKER

Chapter 3 - MOMMAS - LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE SOLDIERS

Graph 3-1

Actual Causes of Preventable Deaths

Graph 3-2

Risk of Death Rates per 100,000 People

Graph 3-3

Risks of Dying in a Lifetime

Graph 3-4

Risks of Dying by Occupation

Graph 3-5

US Military Deaths By Cause

Chapter 4 - THE FAMILY BUDGET

Graph 4-1

Canadian Household Spending

Chapter 5 - THE FAMILY RESIDENCE

Graph 5-1

Primer on Mortgages

Graph 5-2

Primer on Canadian Income Taxes

Graph 5-3

Discretionary After Income Taxes

Graph 5-4

Effects of Mortgage Interest Rates

Graph 5-5

Incomes vs. Number of Couples

Chapter 6 - THE FAMILY CARS

Graph 6-1

History of Real Income

Graph 6-2

History of Car Affordability

Graph 6-3

Depreciation of Vehicles

Graph 6-4

Car Owning Costs

Graph 6-5

Vehicle Fuel Costs

Chapter 7 - PARENTS and TEENS: PICK A CAREER THEN PLAN FOR RETIREMENT

Graph 7-1

Earnings & Education

Graph 7-2

Saving for Retirement on $40,000 a Year

Graph 7-3

Saving for Retirement on $60,000 a Year

Graph 7-4

Canada’s Guaranteed (Low) Income Supplement

Chapter 8 - THE VOLATILE WORLD OF THE INVESTOR

Table 8-1

Underfunded Corporate Pensions

Graph 8-2

Dow Jones Index Current $

Graph 8-3

NASDAQ Index Current $

Graph 8-4

Dow Jones Index Constant 2010 $

Graph 8-5

NASDAQ Index Constant 2010 $

Graph 8-6

Dow Jones 30 vs. S&P 500 Constant 2010 $

Graph 8-7

NASDAQ vs. S&P 500 Constant 2010 $

Graph 8-8

Dow Jones Current $ Prices & Price/Earnings Ratios

Graph 8-9

Dow Jones Current $ Prices & Price/Book Ratios

Graph 8-10

Inflation & USA Fed Interest Rates

Table 8-10A

Benjamin Graham Formula

Graph 8-11

Berkshire Hathaway vs. S&P 500 Price Indexes Since 1980

Graph 8-12

Berkshire Hathaway vs. S&P 500 Price Indexes Since 1995

Graph 8-13

Berkshire Hathaway vs. S&P 500 Price Indexes Since 2005

Graph 8-14

Berkshire Hathaway vs. S&P 500 E/P Indexes Since 2006

Chapter 9 - GET READY TO DIE

Chapter 10 - THE PROFESSIONS

Part 2 - YOU CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT HOW THE WORLD WORKS

Chapter 11 - PUBLIC BELIEFS THAT CONTRADICT EVIDENCE

Table 11-1

Deaths from Electrical Generation

Graph 11-2

Deaths from Electrical Generation

Graph 11-3

Electrical Generation by Source per 100 mm People

Graph 11-4

Deaths from Electrical Generation per 100 mm People

Graph 11-5

Premature Preventable Deaths

Graph 11-6

Premature Preventable Deaths per 100 mm People

Graph 11-7

Alberta Deaths from Electrical Generation

Graph 11-8

USA Energy Sources for Electrical Generation

Graph 11-9

Ohio Energy Sources for Electrical Generation

Graph 11-10

New York State Energy Sources for Electrical Generation

Graph 11-11

Texas Energy Sources for Electrical Generation

Graph 11-12

California Energy Sources for Electrical Generation

Graph 11-13

California July Solar Electrical Capacity & System Load

Graph 11-13A

Basic Principles of Discounted Cash Flow Evaluation

Graph 11-14

California Solar Electrical Generation Capital Costs

Graph 11-15

California Electrical Generation Costs Selected Sources

Graph 11-16

Electric Vehicles Lives Saved & Lost

Table 11-17

Electric Vehicles Lives Saved & Lost Table

Graph 11-18

Japan Electrical Energy Sources Before & After Fukushima

Graph 11-19

Japan Deaths From Electrical Generation 2010 & 2014

Chapter 12 - ENERGY – PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE

Graph 12-1

Electricity Energy Sources by Canadian Province

Chapter 13 - WHAT IS A HUMAN LIFE WORTH?

Chapter 14 - HOW GOVERNMENT

FINANCES WORK

Table 14-1

Canada & USA GDP per Capita

Graph 14-2

Canada Sources of Revenue All Government Levels

Graph 14-3

Canada Expenditures All Government Levels

Graph 14-4

Canada $ Spent & Collected by Income Group

Graph 14-5

Canada Federal $ Spent per Capita

Graph 14-6

Canada Ideal $ Spent per Capita

Chapter 15 - INTERNATIONAL BENCHMARKING

Graph 15-1

GDP/Capita in Purchasing Power Parity $

Graph 15-2

Country Sources of Government Revenue % of GDP

Graph 15-3

Government Spending by Country % of GDP

Graph 15-4

Government Debt by Country Percent of GDP

Graph 15-5

Government Debt History USA & Cda Percent of GDP

Graph 15-6

Household Debt by Country % of GDP

Graph 15-7

Government Deficits by Country % of GDP

Graph 15-8

Savings Rates by Country % of GDP

Graph 15-9

GDP/Capita by Country Int’l $

Graph 15-10

Housing Space & Costs by Country PPP Int’l $

Graph 15-11

Productivity by Country PPP Int’l $

Graph 15-12

Percent Working by Country

Graph 15-13

Government Social Protection by Country % of GDP

Graph 15-14

Retirement Spending Sources by Country % of GDP

Graph 15-15

Retirement Funding by Country % of GDP

Graph 15-16

Life Expectancy after Retirement by Country Years

Graph 15-17

Road Fatalities by Country

Graph 15-18

Deaths due to Social Behavior by Country

Graph 15-19

Life Expectancies at Birth by Country

Graph 15-20

Remaining Life Expectancies at Age 65 by Country

Graph 15-21

Deaths By Selected Diseases By Age Group

Graph 15-22

Years of Life Lost Before Age 70 Selected Diseases

Graph 15-23

Deaths from Selected Diseases by Age Group

Graph 15-24

Circulatory Deaths by Country

Graph 15-25

Deaths by Country Selected Diseases 1

Graph 15-26

Deaths by Country Selected Diseases 2

Graph 15-27

Percent with Obesity by Country

Graph 15-28

Hospital Procedures Prices PPP $ by Country

Graph 15-29

Hospital Procedures Prices Months of Income by Country

Graph 15-30

Education Spending % of GDP by Country

Graph 15-31

Education Levels by Country

Graph 15-32

Youth Not Working Or Being Trained by Country

Graph 15-33

Employment Rates by Country

Chapter 16 - SCENARIOS FOR FIXING GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT

Chapter 17 - CIVIL SERVANTS, POLITICIANS AND EXPECTATIONS LESS THAN GREAT

Chapter 18 - DYSFUNCTION ARE US - THINGS GOVERNMENTS DO

Chapter 19 - SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE

Table 19-1

Water Consumption per Edible Lb. of California Foods

Chapter 20 - ABANDON THE MYTHICAL LEMMINGS

Chapter 21 - CAN WE AFFORD TO BE OUR BROTHERS’ AND SISTERS’ KEEPERS?

Graph 21-1

World’s Lowest Income Countries

Graph 21-2

Incomes & Populations of World’s Income Groups

Graph 21-3

Incomes & Populations of World’s Richest Countries

Graph 21-4

Statistics of Central America & Other Countries

Graph 21-5

Death Rates from Violence Central America & Other Countries

Graph 21-5A

Life Expectancies at Birth Selected Countries

Table 21-6 Page 1

Detailed Data About Northern Triangle & Mexico

Table 21-6 Page 2

Detailed Data About Northern Triangle & Mexico

Table 21-7

Profiles of Long Term US Residents from Countries of Origin

Chapter 22 - A SCENARIO OF WONDERLAND

Chapter 23 - THE PROBABLE FUTURE

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

FORWARD

When I was a young man, I had trouble getting answers to my questions on some of the topics about to be covered. That experience is one reason for putting this material on offer.

With luck, the earnings from this book will return to my heirs about one cent per hour that was spent on its research, analysis and writing. It has been satisfying to explore subjects without the normal commercial report-writing constraints of deadlines and restricted terms of reference.

The reader is cautioned that much of the following material is not easy reading. Many of the results are complex enough that graphical presentation has been selected. While example textual description accompanies many of the graphs, some people have a verbal grasp that is stronger than their spatial aptitude.

There is much to criticize in what follows. It indulges a layperson’s observations that gore some sacred cows on subjects on which I lack direct expertise. Should a representative of one of those vested interests deign to read some of this, it will be found wanting.

This is not a work of scholarship. It lacks footnotes and a bibliography. It would have been preferred that the wide-ranging historical remarks were based on original source documents. Since those would not be accessible within a lifetime, most of the represented facts were not verified from primary sources and fact checking may render the resulting conclusions incorrect.

Some of the themes that aroused my curiosity may appeal to you. Some readers may wish to use variations of the same methods to explore other topics of interest to them. The samples in this contribution may attract readers who will engage in unbiased evidence-based dialogue.

PART 1

TRY RUNNING YOUR OWN LIFE

CHAPTER 1

WISDOM

Many definitions can be found for the word wisdom. Most such definitions are circular or inconclusive. Examples are the state of being wise and using knowledge to make optimum decisions with common sense. More agreement exists on the view that a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, meanwhile inconveniently not accompanied by a generally accepted workable definition of wisdom.

The poet Tennyson attempted this distinction: Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. Humorist and philosopher Mark Twain quipped, Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would rather have talked.

Wisdom is not simple. Let’s try our own definition. Wisdom is the use of factual evidence and logic in balancing possible future outcomes and present and future risks against the short term present when deciding and acting in the present.

Skill has to be developed through study in applying probabilities to short and long term decision making. It may be comforting for those lacking mental curiosity to assume numerous certainties and rights. The evidence says otherwise.

The case for considering the future is encapsulated in a couple of quasi-proverbs: The definition of maturity is the acceptance of delayed gratification. A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.

Researchers conducted an experiment with children aged about four years. Each child was given a marshmallow and told that it could either be eaten immediately or, after a wait of fifteen minutes; the child could have an added marshmallow. In tracking the children into adulthood, it is said that those who had the discipline and foresight to wait the fifteen minutes were more successful in life.

It would not be good to approach the end of one’s life realizing that, aside from the inevitable mistakes, one’s priorities had been frivolous and at the expense of what was important when looking back.

Good decisions and their resulting actions require ongoing acquisition and use of knowledge. A useful database of knowledge for decision-making requires information about things in the present outside one’s career specialty and acquiring an understanding of the achievements and mistakes of history. Acquisition of knowledge requires time and energy beyond the basic amounts to just work and live.

Part of being wise is being guided by reality rather than superstition. A wise person has a healthy respect for the laws of cause and effect and the often-conflicting claims of science.

It has been said that a good head of a company is one who successfully predicts the future. At first glance, that seems like a tongue-in-cheek remark. Hockey star Wayne Gretzky stated the idea concisely in saying You have to skate towards where the puck is going to be – not where it has been.

It indeed is possible to mitigate future worst-case risks and to be prepared to improve the probabilities of future opportunities for success. It is like a game of chess, played not just tactically in an evening but strategically over a lifetime and possibly passing down values and advantages to some in the generations that follow.

There is the concept of duty and service to others; the idea that the highest use of a life may not be to maximize one’s own income, wealth and social status. Unfortunately that ideal is outmoded in practice except among some members of the military, foreign aid workers and an idealistic minority of civil servants.

Whether or not one is religious in believing that the body is the temple of God, there is merit in the idea that we have a responsibility to live healthy, useful lives.

Therefore, before even considering achievement or financial planning, a pillar of wisdom may be to maximize the number of years of quality life by living healthily, with exercise, avoidance of harmful substances and high risk behavior, sound nutrition, good personal relationships and the rest.

To realize one’s full potential in whatever a person decides to do, the most that can be summoned in physical and mental energy along with emotional tranquility has to be drawn upon. To have one’s energies drained by living unhealthily or by bad relationships is to throw away the endowment.

To use a military analogy, vigilance is needed at all times to avoid any incident that can cause a disaster affecting the rest of one’s life.

The practical application of the basics of Wisdom includes the following examples. In summary we defined Wisdom as balancing the short term and the long term, including minimizing risks. Minimize the amount and length of long term loans. Carry basic term life insurance.

Be vigilant about short term risks. A fight resulting in a death, a drunken accident, a $300,000 child from a one-night stand and a bad marriage all have long term consequences and hem in the breadth of choices for the rest of one’s life.

Personal finance is by no means the only realm requiring the exercise of wisdom. Clearly the characteristics sought in a mate and one’s moral and ethical standards are non-financial examples. But prudent personal finance, while still subjective, is relatively easy to illustrate. It is not just about dreams of getting rich; at issue is the correlation with the values that each person adopts, consciously or not.

CHAPTER 2

SO YOU THINK YOU’RE AN ORIGINAL THINKER

Whether or not we are islands in an ocean of humanity, some people who previously sailed these same seas gave thought to ideas that may not have occurred to us. It is worthwhile to be aware of their existence, summarize what they had to say and, in the fullness of time, possibly sample their writings.

It probably is not useful to review most of the philosophers and theologians. Following the old Jesuit debates about how many angels could dance on the point of a pin may be a good exercise in mental acrobatics, but there are other things worth studying first.

The writers whose works are sketched below posed interesting issues in their day. Some of them caused beneficial social change. Others explored questions that are yet to be fully answered. In the case of some writers, it is a good thing their proposals were not acted upon.

Here is our selection:

•Adam Smith, the pioneering economist of the 1700s (synopses of whose works I have appreciated from afar without reading them) wrote The Wealth of Nations. It is remembered for the thesis that individuals would accomplish the most good for society by selfishly pursuing their own personal goals. Some have interpreted Smith’s work, which essentially promoted a market economy, as an endorsement of the familiar Wall Street Greed Is Good credo. However, commentators have said that his works showed a remarkable compassion for the downtrodden of the earth.

•The Ontario-born Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith wrote at least twenty-nine books, which could be construed as egotistic verbosity well exceeding all that can be said about his field of economics (often labeled the dismal science).

Galbraith coined the phrase received wisdom, synonymous with conventional wisdom as since used by others. It means beliefs one is supposed to embrace because they have been handed down by experts, authorities and traditions of the past. His implication, of course, was that such beliefs should be challenged and re-examined.

An early book, perhaps his most famous, was The Affluent Society. Among his topics was one in which he criticized American society in that the most desired goal was for everyone to buy a new car every three years while roads, bridges and schools crumbled for lack of funding. For such views, he was lionized by left wingers (US Democrats) and detested by right wingers (US Republicans).

President John F. Kennedy appointed him to a term as US ambassador to India, after which his influence on governments and social policy largely disappeared.

Since the 1970s the right wing economic theories of Friederich von Hayek (1944 – The Road to Serfdom) along with Milton Friedman and his University of Chicago supply siders have heavily influenced US economic policy. Some arguments of this school of thought also have merit.

Many professional economists dismissed Galbraith as a media economist, complaining that he had proselytized the simple-minded public without first submitting his work for peer review.

Right wing economists and politicians inflexibly embrace a form of received wisdom called the Trickle-Down Theory. The idea is that the rich should enjoy lower tax rates than the rest of us because supposedly they will invest the saved taxes in ways that will benefit society.

Galbraith infuriated his right wing critics by this characterization: Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. Pomposity hates to be ridiculed and it is amusing to imagine any attempt to pass that comment through peer review for publication in a conventional journal of professional economics.

•Harriett Beecher Stowe. In the 1850s, when women seldom had a public voice, this sister of the prominent preacher Henry Ward Beecher wrote a novel called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book dramatized the dreadfulness of slavery in the southern US and contributed to motivating its formal and brief end after the American Civil War. The real end of social discrimination against the country’s black citizens did not start until the 1960s and is yet to be fully realized.

•Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian engineer, appointed himself as the Jeremiah who detailed the evils of the Soviet Union and its gulags of political prisoners in voluminous historical novels throughout the second half of the twentieth century, contributing to the ultimate downfall of the Soviet regime.

•The philosopher Plato, who lived 2,500 years ago in the city-state of Athens, now in modern day Greece, wrote a proposal for governing that has come to be known as Plato’s Republic. Favorable references are made to the work from time to time by people who want to seem learned and may never have read it.

The Greek word for people is demos, the root of the word democracy in present-day usage. Athens had a form of democracy wherein several hundred men of property had a say in public affairs instead of the more common kings or dictators of the day. Excluded were all women, men of modest means and the large population of slaves captured in their perennial wars.

Plato’s proposal was for an elite cadre of men who would be trained from childhood for public service, effectively as secular priests. As children, they would be thoroughly educated. Their teen years would be devoted to sports, to encourage competitiveness and teamwork. In their twenties, they would be warriors. In their thirties and for those who survived into their later years, they would be administrators, politicians, leaders and statesmen.

Those chosen to spend their lives in elite service were never to marry or become permanently involved emotionally. As opposed to the purported celibacy of the clerics of some modern religious traditions, the state would rent sexual services for them according to their preferences. It could be women, men or children.

We know the architecture and sculpture of ancient Greece still is unsurpassed today, compared with what has come since. But those who officiously tout that time and place as the Cradle of Civilization should read more. The revolting perversion of pedophilia was a fashionable feature of their society.

Aside from the significantly deviant sexual component, some would say that the proposals had merit. Before idealizing ancient Greek society, recall the biblical text that says something like By their fruits ye shall know them. Prominent modern day admirers of Plato’s Republic were Russia’s Stalin, Germany’s Hitler and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.

•Dante Ghiberti published a series of epic poems known as The Divine Comedy in 1321. The portion most often mentioned today, while not widely read, is commonly known as Dante’s Inferno. The poem details a long and very imaginative tour through Hell. The tour starts at the entry gate at which is posted the slogan: Abandon all hope all ye who enter here.

In the hierarchy of sinners, worse than the committers of crimes that we would consider heinous, are those who commit suicide. Dante’s logic in positioning the suicides so unfavourably in the ranks of Hell was the premise that there are few sins worse than wasting a gift that God created. It is not much of an extrapolation to suggest that wasting a life while staying alive is not a good thing either.

•Shakespeare, Dante and Goethe are considered by some to be the greatest writers of all time in European civilization. The biography of William Shakespeare that is embraced by centuries of scholarship is that he was a grain merchant who moonlighted by writing superb poetry, some of it dramatizing authentic historical events centuries into the past.

This acrobatic feat of academic illogic seems akin to the scientific view, enforced by the medieval Catholic Church before Copernicus and Galileo that the sun rotated around the earth. Possibly an example of Galbraith’s Received Wisdom. Most merchants probably would have spent their spare time doing up the bookkeeping before falling asleep exhausted when the sun went down.

A persuasive and well-documented alternative scenario in a book called Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom by Charles Beauclerk argues that Shakespeare was the Earl of Oxford, illegitimate son of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. He would have grown up surrounded by art, drama and opportunities to learn history and politics.

Shakespeare wrote and staged his plays, among other places, in his own Globe Theatre in London for the common people as well as the upper classes. The original Globe Theatre burned around 1620 and a replica has been built on its site on the south side of the Thames River. The balconies seated the upper classes, while the common folk stood on the ground in front of the stage. The upper classes, of course, were classy with impeccable manners and, after downing their drinks of mead, urinated over the balcony rails on the heads of those below.

Contrast the original artistic bonding with the common folks compared to a Shakespeare play staged today. Actors bellow in their attempts to convey emotion, using the English of 1600, which to modern ears is gibberish. Aside from a few earnest spinsters and university arts students, it would be hard to find anyone in the audience except self-categorized representatives of the upper classes.

•Machiavelli’s thin book entitled The Prince might well be subtitled How to Lie, Cheat and Steal for Fun, Profit and Power. This author lived in the city-state of Florence (now in Italy) in the Middle Ages. The book reads like an authoritative manual for politicians, leaders and statesmen. Some say that the book was intended as a satire and social criticism, not as a manual for dishonesty and cynicism.

•Jonathan Swift wrote the 1700s satire known as Gulliver’s Travels. Among the fictional societies lampooned in the book were the Houhinyms, horse-like creatures who, as was expected of Plato’s elite, had no emotions and displayed behavior driven solely by reason.

•In the 1930s, Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World. In context, remember that this was twenty years after Henry Ford had implemented large-scale mass production. Remember as well that the 1930s were the years of the Great Depression, when some in academia and governments of western civilization blamed capitalism and democracy and advocated strong leadership modeled after Stalin and Hitler.

In the novel, there was no God. The name of the prevailing god was Ford. Natural conception, birth and family had become obsolete. Test tube embryos went down the production conveyor belt. The most efficient process was to start off with all embryos programmed to be extra intelligent. But only a few smart people were needed in society, so the rest of the embryos were injected with stupidity juice so they would be happy spending their lives as assembly line workers and the like.

With shades of Plato’s Republic, the embryos were programmed to be slavishly obedient and also to avoid the wastefulness of ever falling in love. Of course, in the novel a couple of tubes got contaminated and the ultimate adults fell in love.

•Ayn Rand was the pen name of Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, born in 1905 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She obtained a travel visa and left Bolshevik Communist Russia in 1925, in the early years of Josef Stalin’s vicious excesses, for the United States where she lived for the rest of her life. She wrote outlandish and riveting fiction, in part as a way to evangelize her strongly held views to ordinary readers who would have bogged down in the underlying intellectual arguments.

Rand’s most famous novels were Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

In a few words, she was against collectivism and formed a group of followers of her philosophy, which she called Objectivism. Technically, collectivism is the philosophy of putting the group or society ahead of the individual. Collectivism often leads to totalitarianism, blindly following a dictatorial leadership without any form of democracy or thinking for oneself.

Rand described the choices in stark terms: Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group, and "Throughout history, no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing the common good."

Right Wing collectivism was Fascism, exemplified by Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy. Left Wing collectivism was Communism, as practiced by Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union. The Japanese of the era embraced another form of collectivism, ostensibly in the name of its sacred living Emperor – with both of the bird’s wings already