Those are the 20 hardest working, smartest people in the U.S. You need to try harder.

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Freedom is our Strength.

It is like having royalty, except for literally everything else but total wealth.

In any society, you are bound to have some that either by skill or luck come into pretty massive amounts of wealth. I'll choose the system that doesn't make them heads of state with military control and instead lets Bill Gates get huge wealth because everyone loves computers.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Are you really saying those 20 people don't have more influence on government and U.S. policy than the entire 50% on the bottom?

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Freedom is our Strength.

Most of them were lucky. Some were born lucky. Others had skills and good timing.

All the while we live in the most economically dominant country in the world for decades where some of us can think that people that have trouble paying their bills deserve to have baseball season tickets.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Those 20 people and the bottom 50% each get one vote in elections. How they use it is up to them.

Just like a King, who basically has the only vote on whatever he wants and no one else can do anything unless they kill him.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I know you're a really smart guy, but this is the dumbest thing you have ever posted.

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Freedom is our Strength.

In America the wealthy decide the laws, but they dont wear a Crown or sit on a throne.

They are the heads of state. Politicians come and go, but there are always a fresh batch with hats in hand to meet with the Kochs, Soros and the like. The police are largely a private security force for the influential.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Please keep context in mind here.

We are talking about literally having a King who has the only vote compared to Bill Gates having a huge bank account and Obama's personal number.

The bottom 50% could basically decide every single election in this country outside of a few counties. They could control all of politics and there is nothing that Bill Gates could do about it.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Capitalism and democracy are incompatible.

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Freedom is our Strength.

They could do this, but they do not. What's voter turn out? How many people have lost the right to vote due to laws written to give the wealthy more power?

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Exactly.

Now, if we had a King, would that be true?

Besides felons, pretty much no one?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Yes.
Is that it?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Money, Power, and passing that wealth and power down through generations is a pretty significant part of a Monarchy.

But it's okay for them to use their massive wealth to influence elections?

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/201 ... integrity/

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Freedom is our Strength.

Crony capitalism is much worse in Russia and China.

Since we allow free speech, rich people are free to spend their money as they see fit on political campaigns.


Our system, while flawed, produces about 25% of world GDP with 4% of the world's population. I challenge you to find a better system to dominate economic output in such a way.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Look at you suddenly judging someone for how they spend their money.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I disagree. If you actively want to prevent people from voting, it is essentially saying that this is not a democracy. Wealth and influence makes you more of a citizen.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

I wonder if it was lost on the protesters that the 99 Cents Only "family" (that apparently is doing fairly well after selling out to private investors) generally provides subpar shopping opportunities in poorer neighborhoods & depends on a business model that demands low minimum wage standards with few employee benefits. It would seem that the pro-Bernie crowd that made it rain didn't worry about the optics (or irony)

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

There is nothing concretely objective about this statement. It's simply a rah-rah USA! remark that even accepted as wholly true still only really leaves us slightly higher up in the gutter.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

It is 100% true. Russia handed all its state assets post collapse to the now described oligarchs. China has massive state owned enterprises whereby insiders have looted money to become millionaires and billionaires. That is why President Xi has been on an anti-corruption drive.

We have plenty of ties between industry and the government with defense probably being the worst of it. But in those countries, the government and industry are near one in the same.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

"Much worse". I don't think so. Many/most of the truly wealthy in this country got that way because their predecessors looted/defrauded the hell out of this country and had the foresight to start to whitewash their methods (& have the benefit of fading history). Now the gilded beneficiaries don't want to be burdened by the fair demands of the looted/defrauded masses and have lobbyists, legislators & pr firms that put a media/family friendly spin on it. And most do.

This country is still handing over state assets to happy business. Hell, it's bad enough that the federal government charges next to nothing for business to usurp natural assets, but then a deadbeat like Cliven Bundy is viewed as a hero by some and tolerated by others that really just don't want their boats rocked (especially those types who don't want to see the federal govt send out legitimate bills to oil/pharmaceutical/tech/financial companies that take/took the whale's share of advantage of govt investments & assets).

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

What?!

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Typically the Bottom 50% have to chose between on of the 20 because no one else has the money to run or get thrown off of the ballot.

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I don't think there is any reasonable way to solve the generational wealth issue. To do it, you effectively have to have the government take all of someone's wealth when they die. That doesn't sound too appealing or very fair. We can all sit here and obsess about the insanely wealthy. In all societies that have ever existed, there are always going to be wealthy people. Having wealthy people is not the best way to measure a system. From a financial perspective, our system has been the greatest creator of wealth the world has ever seen.

It is probably best to judge our system by the median person, although some would argue we should judge it by the poorest. On balance, I think the middle class in this country do very well. They have all the modern luxuries and want for very little in the way of necessities. On the other hand, the poor in this country are much worse off than other first world societies. We score poorly in educational rankings. We do not have a true national health system, and Medicaid is terrible for both doctors and patients. Our social safety nets are not nearly as robust. In terms of inequality, we have one of the worst gini coefficients.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Someone only read a few posts in this thread!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I can understand why it wouldn't be appealing to someone who has it, but I'm wondering why it isn't fair. Surely, it's much more fair than simply having people start rich and look down their noses at the rest of us due to the simple fact of who their parents were. This is where the whole "hard work" narrative falls apart.

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Freedom is our Strength.

I don't think it's a matter of "obsessing" about the wealthy; that strikes me as attributing all this national angst about something like income inequality to petty jealously. To me this is more about the different structural ways in which certain sectors create, sustain, leverage, exploit, and hoard wealth. Your post if I'm reading correctly seems to imply that all wealth is generated fairly whereas most serious critics probably don't care about honest entrepreneurs and businesses as much as they do about the more nefarious actors.

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Denis makes good points. I am not sure why there is such angst toward generational wealth. Certainly there are very old money barons that have built empires in the early 1900's and they held great sway in every way. It is only my perception but it seems that in the last 20 years or so there are drastically more billionaires in the world and they are more of the speculator/technology variety. This is what I think is a major cause of this gap. I think generational wealth has little to do with it.

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Elections have consequences.