Curious why you made the distinction about real personal income when it is also rising. I agree wealth inequality is rising but not that it is coming at the expense of real personal incomes.

The long-term trend is that the average person’s income is rising but we’ve seen recent declines due to high inflation. Can you expand on your line of thinking? I’m not sure I follow your reasoning.

Most households living below the poverty line have at least one unemployed person, so giving people jobs is pulling them out of poverty. Whether or not they are treated fairly at work and are satisfied with their working conditions is another story.

My parents never could’ve either but $500k household net worth only puts you in the top 20% of households so it’s not like they were exceptionally wealthy and we don’t know if they borrowed to invest or what exactly their specific situation was. Miguel Bezos was a Cuban refugee and then worked as an engineer for Exxon and Jackie Bezos was a secretary so i mean this is pretty middle class IMO.

That doesn’t mean that all billionaires clawed their way to the top as i mentioned above, or that we shouldn’t make progressive changes to the tax code. It’s just important that we separate truth from fiction to make educated decisions.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz grew up in a Brooklyn Housing project, George Soros survived the holocaust and worked waiting tables, David Murdock of Dole Foods was homeless. There’s tons of examples.

Here’s a fun article that ranks the whole Fortune 400 list. 80% of them inherited their wealth or at least grew up middle class.

Jeff Bezos actually scores high on the list because his Mom had him when he was 17, he flipped burgers in high school and by and large did not grow up rich.

deleted by creator

That situation is a bit different. Oil Companies performed proprietary research internally and promoted those results as scientific. Whereas, the implication in this post here is that anyone who ever worked for an oil company in climate science can no longer do climate science for an agency.

The insulin response you’re talking about is very small and it doesn’t lead to a chain reaction.

I think it’s sort of a catch 22. The people that tend to be the most knowledgeable about a particular science often have industry experience doing the exact thing you want them to study now. The idea that people could study the effects of aspartame for decades but are now “tainted” because they used to work for a soda company doesn’t necessarily square up to economic reality.

If however, you choose to put your foot in the sand there you’re going to have a bunch of people on a committee that have no idea what they are doing (which by the way people will also criticize you for) Remember when Trump appointed senior cabinet positions to people with completely unrelated experience? Such as Ben Carson (a former medical doctor) being appointed secretary of housing.

It’s a lose/lose situation I’m not sure what you all are expecting.

The ancients actually used a 360 day calendar and a bonus week of 5-6 days at the end before the new year started.