The House Ways and Means Committee is now reviewing President Obama’s “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee,” a bank tax that will fall on some institutions that never asked for money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, never took TARP money, or already paid back TARP money. In promoting the measure, supporters have been invoking widespread anger over bank bailouts, brazenly ignoring the fact that this punitive tax would punish businesses that eagerly fed at the public trough in the wake of the crisis as well as those that did not.

Since the advent of capitalism, businessmen have been denounced for the corrupt actions of a few political profiteers. To help understand that there is a distinction, consider two characters in Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged.” In the book, Rand describes two opposite kinds of businessmen – those she calls the “producers” and those she calls the “looters.”

The producers, such as Hank Rearden, inventor of a new metal stronger and cheaper than steel, work tirelessly to create products that improve human life. The looters are basically pseudobusinessmen, like the incompetent steel executive Orren Boyle, who get unearned riches by getting special favors from politicians. Their business isn’t business, but political pull.

It is the producers who make life possible: who keep grocery shelves stocked; who discover new lifesaving drugs; who make computers faster, buildings taller, and airplanes safer.

The looters, on the other hand, leech off the wealth created by producers.

CSM