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Bill Gates No Longer World's Richest Man
alphadogg writes "Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World's Billionaires." I'd still let the guy buy me dinner if he's ever in my town. He's probably still good for it even though he's fallen on hard times.
California's bankrupt and the richest man in the world is Mexican?
Lovin' them apples.
It doesn't bring a lot of comfort to the Mexicans in that situation. When I lived in Guadalajara, I was a short walk from a row of luxury car dealerships: Porsche, Lexus, Audi, BMW, etc. And I was a short bus ride from people living in dirt floor houses and not eating enough (I was involved in a Christian ministry to some of them).
I'm pretty conservative in general, but that doesn't seem like a healthy economy. It's not encouraging to think that the world's wealthiest person got that way through monopoly deals with a corrupt government whose citizenry is mostly poor.
A friend of mine came back from Russia after studying there for 6 months. In that time she mostly stayed with one Russian family.
This family grew their own vegetables in an allotment. What they didn't eat, they pickled. When the pickled food was eaten, they drank the vinegar. They couldn't afford to waste it.
As a parting gift, the lady of the house made a pair of socks from the hair of the household dog and gave them to my friend. This was an extremely kind gift, as it meant that the lady was left with last year's dog hair socks.
We have it so good.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
IMHO, Reaganomics works only in a country where manufacturing is a strong industry (where the workers of the nation are actually needed); sadly, the USA no longer significantly 'makes' anything.
Except that there's no evidence it works there either. There's a lot of reason to think that the whole trickle-down theory was created to accomplish two things:
1. Tax cuts and other benefits for rich political supporters.
2. Reduction of federal tax revenues to the point where the federal government can no longer function (Grover Norquist's "drown it in a bathtub").
I've attended talks by Arthur Laffer (one of the guys who came up with trickle-down theory), and determined after a little while that it was a really superbly designed pile of BS.
I am officially gone from