Inequalities in America...

[max_tranmere]

I've just seen the American documentary maker Michael Moore say, live on Newsnight, that the richest four hundred Americans have more money between them than the least well-off one hundred and fifty million Americans combined. Shocking, isn't it? I hope these demo's in Wall Street get bigger and bigger and something changes.

[Dave Wells]

Staggering and probably the same here. These people need bringing back to reality !

[one eyed jack]

Now us poor folks just sound jealous and begrudging of those who have managed to make their riches

We could always do what the russians did in 1917. Then look what happened to them?

They traded one shit life for a life a lot worse for decades.

Inside every communist is a capitalist trying to get out! !laugh!

History it seems, repeats itself in cycles.

[bernard72]

Yes but isn't one of them Bill Gates and to be fair to him he gives billions of dollars (not millions) to charity.
And he built up his company from scratch.
Employs thousands worldwide, probably pays lots of tax.

[Arginald Valleywater]

Is the BGAFD forum now property of the RCP? Without Gates and other rich and amazingly inventive people I would not be typing this comment on a home PC. What precisely is wrong with being rich and successful?

[beutelwolf]

one eyed jack wrote:

> Now us poor folks just sound jealous and begrudging of those
> who have managed to make their riches

Poor Max, now he gets being accused for being left-wing. Makes a change, doesn't it?

> We could always do what the russians did in 1917. Then look
> what happened to them?
>
> They traded one shit life for a life a lot worse for decades.

I think the Russians did get a better deal then than what they had before, because in Czarist Russia, the majority of the population were effectively slaves and treated accordingly. Whether they would have been better off without the Bolshevik part of the revolution is another matter...

What triggers such revolutions is a mix of discontent and the feeling (or insight) that the revolutionaries have nothing to lose. This situation is not created by differences in wealth per se, but if people at the lower end of the spectrum lose the little bit of wealth or status they (used to) possess...

> Inside every communist is a capitalist trying to get out!

Only in China...

> History it seems, repeats itself in cycles.

In this context that's pretty close to Marx: history is the history of class struggle. A claim I happen to disagree with, actually.

[Dave Wells]

Because that wasn't proper Communism Terry, it was just one dictator after another (and still is too, Putin rules). And Stalin was everything Hitler ever wanted to be and more.

[max_tranmere]

I support entrepreneurialism, my view though is that people shouldn't be left behind. I remember seeing a programme about Bill Gates called something like "The geeks from Seattle" and it was about how he and his pals turned their ideas into a multi-billion dollar company. Also I watched something very recently about Mark Zuckerman, the man behind Facebook, who had an idea at college and then started developing it. My the age of 22 he was offered one billion dollars to sell Facebook and turned it down. That really is incredible. The company is now worth many times more than that and Zuckerman is now something like 27 years old. I fully support enterprise as I've said, I just think something is going wrong when there are people who have money to burn - Gates or Zuckerman could literally empty dumpertrucks full of cash onto bonfires and they wouldn't notice the loss - yet there are millions of people in America without basic healthcare and who live in poverty. I don't know what the answer is.