Over the last several years, sales of Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, have surged as Americans increasingly realize that the nation is mimicking her novel, where success depends on whom you know rather than what you produce.

An excellent companion to Atlas Shrugged would be Crony Capitalism in America, by Hunter Lewis. Focusing on the years immediately after the bursting of the housing bubble, Lewis documents the vast array of sleazy relationships between politicians (and other government officials) and many business, professional, labor, and nonprofit entities that benefit from "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" dealings. Lewis demonstrates that enormous amounts of wealth are funneled into organizations that could never pass the test of the market (earn their revenues through production and exchange) and that many special privileges are ladled out to interest groups in violation of a neutral, universal rule of law.

All of that makes the average American much worse off. It isn't that the rich exploit the poor, but that the well-connected exploit everyone else.