Did Our New Billionaires Earn Their Wealth, or Were They Merely Lucky?

Whenever income inequality increases, the “what do you think of rich people” question arises. We have been seeing rising income inequality in the US for decades now, and middle class jobs have been badly damaged by bad trade policy, overzealous environmental regulations, and the general trend toward constantly changing rules governing businesses. And while this is turning around, we have a massive cloud on the horizon. History has shown that profligate government spending almost always results in massive inflation and losses in asset values that disproportionately hurt middle class people with modest savings and those living on fixed incomes. Politicians and bankers and others who have encouraged spendthrift America have created this problem, and therefore want to initiate this conversation so they can virtue signal and convince people that (other) rich people should be blamed when things go south.
I hope and pray that PDJT can navigate us around the looming debt crisis and into sound money.

I wrote this a while ago in regard to the massive amount of data being hoovered up on each and every one of us, usually without either our knowledge or permission. Google’s treasure trove of information makes them an ideal partner/source for the deep state and the DEMONcRATs, as we’re seeing now:
Notice the deep links between Google and Hill-the-BEAST, and later, her campaign…
Google is a major player in this, if not THE major player. With their treasure-trove of information, both of data to be searched, and queries against it (which can often be MORE revealing than the data itself), they, along with Farcebørk, Amazon, Twitter, Credit Reporting Agencies and the Medical and Insurance Industries know more about each and every one of us. Vance Packard, in 1964, penned “The Naked Society”, warning us that ever-increasing computing power, coupled with total surveillance, could take us down a road of ruin: no freedom, no free will, in short, no hope. It seems Google, et. al., are doing their best to further that nightmare.
From the article “Google Is Not What It Seems” ( https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ )
[begin excerpt]
In this extract from his new book “When Google Met Wikileaks”, WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange describes the special relationship between Google, Hillary Clinton and the State Department — and what that means for the future of the internet.
The first couple of paragraphs are quite revealing, especially considering the article and book cover the period from 2011 to 2014.
Eric Schmidt is an influential figure, even among the parade of powerful characters with whom I have had to cross paths since I founded WikiLeaks. In mid-May 2011 I was under house arrest in rural Norfolk, about three hours’ drive northeast of London. The crackdown against our work was in full swing and every wasted moment seemed like an eternity. It was hard to get my attention. But when my colleague Joseph Farrell told me the executive chairman of Google wanted to make an appointment with me, I was listening.
In some ways the higher echelons of Google seemed more distant and obscure to me than the halls of Washington. We had been locking horns with senior US officials for years by that point. The mystique had worn off. But the power centers growing up in Silicon Valley were still opaque and I was suddenly conscious of an opportunity to understand and influence what was becoming the most influential company on earth. Schmidt had taken over as CEO of Google in 2001 and built it into an empire.
I was intrigued that the mountain would come to Muhammad. But it was not until well after Schmidt and his companions had been and gone that I came to understand who had really visited me.
* * *
The stated reason for the visit was a book. Schmidt was penning a treatise with Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, an outfit that describes itself as Google’s in-house “think/do tank.” I knew little else about Cohen at the time. In fact, Cohen had moved to Google from the US State Department in 2010. He had been a fast-talking “Generation Y” ideas man at State under two US administrations, a courtier from the world of policy think tanks and institutes, poached in his early twenties. He became a senior advisor for Secretaries of State Rice and Clinton. At State, on the Policy Planning Staff, Cohen was soon christened “Condi’s party-starter,” channeling buzzwords from Silicon Valley into US policy circles and producing delightful rhetorical concoctions such as “Public Diplomacy 2.0.” On his Council on Foreign Relations adjunct staff page he listed his expertise as “terrorism; radicalization; impact of connection technologies on 21st century statecraft; Iran.”
[end excerpt]
The article is stunning, even though somewhat dated. It reveals the evil relationships between the high-tech and social-media world with the swamp in Washington D.C: and elsewhere. Data demons, one might say.
Even the footnotes have a wealth of information, and are well worth the read.
“Do No Evil”.
Bah, Humbug, Eric. And that’s “not a feature”…
If you use ANY Google product (search engine, gmail, whatever their social media thing is/was), or Twitter, or Farcebørk, or (probably) What’s App, or Amazon (!), they have your data, collated and indexed whether you have a FB, Twitter, or other profile or NOT!
FB generates blank profiles, and gathers information to fill these out, eventually producing YOUR profile without your having even logged in. And Google is even worse.
THAT is how they get their information. And their money. For YOU are the product which THEY are selling. And you don’t get a plugged nickel for that!