Originally Posted by OpieTaylor

That doesn’t reflect reality though the 1% in the USA is skewed due to GDP.

The wealth of a company being attached to a single social security number doesn’t change wealth and privilege concentration in a way society can experience.


It’s also hypothetical wealth they can’t sell with destroying the price. Most company’s do good to sell the whole company for 7 years profit. So if Facebook makes 40B a year you can sell the whole company for 280B.

Facebook is advertised as worth 1.7Trillion and it makes 40B, so that is like buying a business for 1.7 million that makes 40k a year.

Like using average instead of median

Originally Posted by Sliceback

What's your knowledge of living under, or near, Communism? I grew up in W. Berlin, surrounded by 'communism', and I always shake my head when people compare the U.S., in any fashion, to communism. One teacher in particular had been a people smuggler so the Stasi were after him. He had to fly in and out of W. Berlin as the DDR had an arrest warrant out for him. Listening to his stories was fascinating. As a kid you don't realize you're in the presence of a hero. Buddy and I used to head towards the fence (mostly a fence with mine fields and fields of fire, brick wall was only in downtown Berlin, concrete wall was in urban areas) and threw stones over the fence to see if we could set off any mines. Buddy "you choose a big double trunk tree for us to hide behind in case a mine went off." We had' the discussion about the DDR guards shooting at us. Yeah, where does that happen in the U.S.?

Previous posts commented about talking about passions and not shop. But shop can be fascinating also - "tell me about your background." A couple of young guys have *****ed "I don't want to talk about that." When the guy's story starts with "I grew up in behind the Iron Curtain. When they wouldn't let me fly I decided to walk through the mines fields to find freedom." Another guy - "I was a nation/international caliber small boat sailor (I forget the type but we had sailing to talk about since I did some basic stuff). 'They' wouldn't let me compete outside of the Eastern Bloc because they didn't trust me. Finally they decided they could trust me and I went with the Polish national team to London. They were right, they shouldn't have trusted me. Within 10 minutes of passing immigration I'd escaped. I went to the Equadorain embasssy because I figured they'd be watching the U.S. embassy closely. The Equadorians took me in." Holy schmooly. Talk about fascinating, courageous and bold, people. Walking away from EVERYONE they know, risking death and/or imprisonment, to go to a foreign country for freedom.

Originally Posted by OOfff

this must mean all government is the same

Originally Posted by SonicFlyer

Yes, to varying degrees.

Originally Posted by SonicFlyer

Yes, to varying degrees.

Originally Posted by CX500T

My great grandmother died in a Gulag in 1984.

Her crime? My grandfather defected to the west and my great uncle was "Forest Brother" in Latvia who was executed in 1958 after capture and torure. Just being related was a crime

Soviet consul in Boston had the gall to come to our farm and demand money to pay for her final expenses.

I got to see my mom punch out a Soviet Bureaucrat. God I wish we had handheld video cameras then.

Originally Posted by OOfff

this must mean all government is the same

Originally Posted by jerryleber

And the same folks touting this false equivalency often subscribe to American exceptionalism. Which is it? Obvious simplistic and contradictory nonsense.

Originally Posted by SonicFlyer

Don't confuse America with the government that happens to opreate here.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

I'm very, very big on property rights.

I'm just not sure that needs to extend for decades, or centuries, after your death. Give future generations the opportunity to succeed on their own terms, and take justified pride in it. Most trust fund kids don't do too much for society.