It's also worth noting, that many (arrogant) doctor's want mothers to skip breast feeding in the first couple of days - despite the fact that mother's breast milk has certain properties that diminish after the first 5-10 days of giving birth, that are specifically evolved to boost baby's immune system.
I say leave what evolved alone, and check all the medical arrogance at the door.
I really really wanted to mod parent up. Good show.
These corporate apologists need to give it up already. If I or Geohot, or anyone else wants to open the hood of our cars and start messing with things, it's our business. The same should apply to computer equipment. Sony's delusional control issues be damned. And yeah, they are delusional - piracy has never been proven to have any negative impact on sales, in games, music or movies, in fact the opposite is often show to be the case.
Now game reselling. That has a negative impact. Crappy content has the most negative impact - just look at the record movie going sales numbers for last year (and it's not the damned 3D, it's because the movies didn't suck - stupid corporate wankers).
Stop screwing people for messing with the things they bought, and spend more effort on making stuff people actually want to buy.
When I read this, it seems to say that "one atom in a particular known state can give off two different readings when measured". But they keep saying it means that the object is in two places at once.
In your case it is. I can tell because you are hiding behind "the law" instead of making a more reasonable and nuanced case. Did you even look at one bit of the actual law? Read one story about the reality of emigration in the U.S. today? Did you research the ways in which your ancestors got into the country - what they faced, and compare that to today's experience? There is nothing in your statement except a weak shield statement that you obviously believe is all you need to get a pass.
Seriously. It's time for Americans to grow up a little, and stop making silly non-arguments. As an American, you are embarrassing me.
You need to do better research. Evidence matters. Your gut is wrong.
1) Social Security isn't going broke. 2) Medicare is the highest rated insurance plan in the country, and is more efficient than every private insurance program - every single one. And it isn't going broke either. Republicans won't even touch it with all their anti-government bullshit campaigns. 3) Fannie and Freddie were fine until they were privatized. Please look it up. 4) Department of education has problems, but is mostly state run. Primary problem is it's regional funding, which is retarded. 5) Stimulus Package worked so well, the Republicans are running around taking credit, even though they voted against it. 6) War on Drugs is absolutely FAIL.
1 out of 6 ain't so bad - yeah it is. Seriously, the biggest problem in the US right now is people like you.
I've been on a few decent ones - dethpod comes to mind. Also, I have no problem at all with not paying Blizzard - I bought the game, and played for a few months (only a few hours a month, and still payed $15 a month). I don't feel like I owe them anything.
Who cares about the "millionaires" - it's the "billionaires" who got it through inheritance that own most of the wealth in the U.S. I couldn't care less about the millionaires. How many of them - the multi-generationally wealthy - do you all know?
Many on this thread need to read a book on the subject or something, cause there are a lot of myths here.
Try "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell and see what really adds up to success. It isn't almost anything that the people on this thread have been shouting, that's for damn sure.
How was parent a troll? Why are all of you - people who value work I bet - so willing to work on behalf of rich trust fund babies? They have exactly one skill they need to retain the wealth most of them have inherited - how to spot someone trying to get their money. And they don't even do that well half the time.
The US system - and most of the rest of the western systems at this point for that matter - are built to benefit the already wealthy more than the rest of us (that's how they go from owning 80% of the wealth to well over 90%). Why are you all so willing to work on their behalf?
Have any of you ever met these people? They are not like us. They don't value hard work - hell they don't even respect it. You can see it in their judgment calls - wiping out jobs instead of cutting bonuses. Wealth is all that matters to these people. Parent is not a troll. Parent is accurate.
I've been saying it for a while; It's the content stupid! Newspapers seem to universally suck. It's not that it's on a paper, it's that they suck. That's why fewer people buy them. I'm glad someone within the industry has been able to figure that out - if a bit too late.
I really do wonder why so many people work for companies like this. I think American's in particular, but maybe the rest of the western world, have a fear of competing. Come on. If it's that bad, start your own agile small business, and compete against all the corporate hacks. It sounds like it should be easy.
Didn't Google claim last week that app stores were not the future, that web apps are? Then this week, they release a web app, because of Apple's decisions? Apple's not off the hook here, but this is perfectly in line with Google's stated vision for the future, and I don't know why they should get off the hook any more than Apple...
Where I live, an 18 year old kid flipped his parents SUV while driving around a well known dangerous turn a bit too fast, with no drugs or alcohol involved. His passenger friends died from that accident, and he got a few years in jail over it. A bar owner shot his waitress in the face - dead - while "cleaning his gun" at the bar, during business hours. That guy served no time. Where they both accidents? Both negligence? It doesn't matter.
The law doesn't actually have any affect on reality in the US court system. The law is just the excuse judges and district attorneys use to lock people up when they feel like it, for whatever reason they feel like doing it for (usually political, since they both have to win elections). The same goes for civil court, where high profile lawyers also get to play that game.
I personally think that in a lot of places (office, home) I'd love to be able to hit a checkbox and turn that feature off. In other places (Starbucks, college campus), I'd rather have it on.
I don't see why it has to be so binary. I want it both ways.
I understand the desire for Theora support, but calling fowl on Google in this case is downright underhanded. They obviously used h264, because that's what they have laying around! They've been encoding into that format for a while now. This format is nothing new for Youtube.
I think they come up with this stuff based on their narrow one sided public school education - English class, which teaches them the prescriptive rules of "Standardized English". That really was invented, and now it's taught to all students (in the US at least), and our culture dutifully squeezes every gaff into that narrowly prescribed rule set.
IMO, all public schools should be running linguistics programs in parallel with there English classes. It's important, because the way language works linguistically, is more accurate and useful when you want to really understand something. The culture here could really benefit from more basic understandings of many things - including the way language really works and evolves.
It would be nice to get into a nice pleasant debate on some of this stuff. I think your posts are just too long, and I haven't the time (that's not a dig, I'm just trying to be honest, I don't have the time to be as thorough as I'd like here and now).:-)
I think I can boil my problem with market purists down though, so here goes. Most market purists seem to want a system that starts everyone at the starting line, that gives them equal opportunity to prove their merit - a true meritocracy. I have no problem with that. The problem is, market purists never deal with, is that not everyone starts out at the same starting line, with the same advantages, and circumstances. In fact, some start in a position that is downright hostile to their own success - very little or even negative sums of money, in a culture that does not teach them how to take advantage of the dominant market system, etc. It's unfair to tell someone to pull themselves up by their boot straps when they have no boot straps.
All I advocate is that we make some effort to level that playing field for the next generation (education, give kid the skills they need to take advantage of our economic system, even when their parents can't - what's the point of education if not that), and to provide some kind of fair access to the benefits of society, a society built on the backs of their parents.
It's simply morally reprehensible to let someone who could turn into the next Einstein, or the next little league coach die in an ER waiting room, because they didn't have the cash that would pay for whatever surgery they needed to pull through. It's morally reprehensible to make U.S. citizens pay double what other nations citizens pay for the same benefits (better in terms of infant mortality, longevity, cancer rates, etc.- you seem to have some bad assumptions about those numbers in the post you linked me - the U.S. does not rank well in any of those metrics) - benefits that their insurers will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying, because they see the insurance premiums as their money.
To be clear, mine is a moderate position. In recent years I seem to have come across as some kind of flaming liberal communist - when in reality I'm advocating a mixed market that errs on the side of capitalism (nothing generates wealth like capitalism). I just want there to be some focus on sustainability, and on fairness, when it comes time to share in the benefits of all that wealth. FDR himself advocated a similar system when faced with a rising tide of socialism, and chose to try and save capitalism by making exactly that kind of social contract (in his day, the population was angry - the market system had failed, and they all felt it, they were ready for something else - anyone who think FDR was a socialist, is way off base).
Watching these Wallstreet pricks grab all that bonus money for having failed - that boils my nerve like nothing else, and it is far from uncommon amongst that "class" of citizen. That's not any form of meritocracy - that's robbery, pure and simple. And I seriously have no sympathy for any of their ridiculous imaginary problems (their phantom money turned into less phantom money) - I don't care, people are dying, people are missing vital education, society is suffering, and community with it - we don't have enough doctors, scientists, the kind of people that are going to create a better society - a better community. That I care about. Markets frankly failed to provide these things, because hat's not what they do! Markets generate wealth, when they are checked and kept from running off the rails. It takes governance (to your point about Microsoft following "the rules"), to make sure that doesn't happen. That's all I advocate.
Markets don't (always) self correct. That should be clear by now. Even Greenspan gets that. It should also be clear that once any company gets to a certain size, they are going to start to lobby the government (playing the refs) to get the rules changed in their favor - another one of thos
I like many here can't stand the "isms" - capitalism, communism, any ism in a pure form is a problem. It's the endless pursuit of a Utopian vision that isn't going to work.
That said, you seem to have based your post on a bunch of very odd assumptions. But you really lost me when you got to where Microsoft was somehow an example of how communism is bad. I am simply baffled by that conclusion. It was capitalism - and unregulated capitalism at that, which allowed that company to grow to dominance. Yeah maybe within the company there is some superficial comparison to be made to the system of communism, but even that is flimsy at best.
I find it troubling that you are able to see Microsoft's mostly centralized planning (as it affects the lives of it's own personal - and maybe the lives of those who have to deal with it's dominant market power), but can't see how it was exactly a form of unregulated capitalism (well, lightly regulated) that lead them to the place they now find themselves.
I don't have a problem with how Microsoft grew. I think that's great - that's the promise of capitalism. At some point though, a company that large, that influential, and that dominant, becomes a problem that can't be mitigated by "market forces". That's when it's time for someone outside of the market to get in and start regulating.
There is a role for government, or for the protections to communities that the government can provide - functioning (I want them to excel) schools, roads, police, fireman, healthcare, fair wage laws (do you think your particular company really wants to pay you so much? - get real), protect public lands, and parks - and yes, even to keep markets fluid. - all of these things are necessary for a strong community. Without them, and frankly most of us can't afford those services if we were made to pay for them ourselves, we have only chaos and anarchy. And really, what is the point of society without community?
I really don't understand the anti-community feelings - even hostile to community feelings - of so many Americans. As a father of two, it makes me sad./unedited rant
You started with a false choice again. I don't want socialism, or authoritarianism, or any other ism. There is a vast middle ground, and my position falls between socialism and capitalism, where there is also a vast range (both of which are economic systems, neither of which can be "authoritarian" - that falls within the realm of the political system). Western European countries, the US, and Japan are all examples of countries who's economic systems are mixed markets - where government has some control or influence in some areas, but stays out of others. We've always been that, it's just a matter of applying that power appropriately, to achieve the outcomes you desire.
I'm suggesting that we slightly alter some of the rules, to reverse the existing redistribution of wealth from the rest of us to the wealthy, which is what has been going on for decades, to a system that simply makes sure funds are being utilized and shared more fairly. That always increases national wealth - every time, and I frankly don't care if the very wealthy have to wait twice as long to double their money - they already have plenty to start with.
Also, another bad "fact" - my generation has not seen the benefits you espouse with your 2% a year figures, or your assertion that there is a rise in standard of living - in real dollars, after a generation that flattened out, our generation is the first to make less than the previous generation. That is a direct result of the redistribution of wealth from the rest of us to the wealthy. The evidence is there - we just need to put our ideology away, and take a look at it.
Your last points border on silly, and don't seem to have any basis in data, but here goes - legal limitations aren't the only limitations, there are systemic economic limitations too - right now the markets we have favored investment, which means you must start with something to invest. Working people, and even the middle class, who earn a weekly, or bi-weekly salary, don't often start with money to play around with, to risk on investments. Those classes can't even get in the game.
I'm glad the social safety nets, and the institutions that gave you the opportunity to succeed were in place when you were younger- they have not been in most places for a while now - schools are underfunded, healthcare is out of reach, and lacking in quality anyway, and on and on. The evidence is clear - fewer people are making it, more are falling through the cracks. The data simply doesn't support your assertions that we the working and middle classes in America (or Europe for that matter) are any better because of the system that has been in place - the system where wealth has been re-distributed upward, toward those who already have more than their fair share.
If you think it's the money guys, the investment guys, the derivative guys that are going to innovate us out of this economic mess we are in, please re-evaluate. We need doctors, teachers, inventors and scientists, and they can't be concerned primarily with how to keep a roof over their heads. They must be focused on doing their jobs the best they can. These problems are easy to solve. We just need to pay people more fairly for their work - and stop pretending everyone can be an investment banker. That kind of thinking doesn't lead to a more prosperous, better society - even if a few (an increasingly few) people can become very rich.
Finally - most of that wealth you mentioned turned out to be derivative and default swapped vapor. That's not even wealth - that's fantasy.
Slashdot Mirror
It's also worth noting, that many (arrogant) doctor's want mothers to skip breast feeding in the first couple of days - despite the fact that mother's breast milk has certain properties that diminish after the first 5-10 days of giving birth, that are specifically evolved to boost baby's immune system.
I say leave what evolved alone, and check all the medical arrogance at the door.
I really really wanted to mod parent up. Good show.
These corporate apologists need to give it up already. If I or Geohot, or anyone else wants to open the hood of our cars and start messing with things, it's our business. The same should apply to computer equipment. Sony's delusional control issues be damned. And yeah, they are delusional - piracy has never been proven to have any negative impact on sales, in games, music or movies, in fact the opposite is often show to be the case.
Now game reselling. That has a negative impact. Crappy content has the most negative impact - just look at the record movie going sales numbers for last year (and it's not the damned 3D, it's because the movies didn't suck - stupid corporate wankers).
Stop screwing people for messing with the things they bought, and spend more effort on making stuff people actually want to buy.
When I read this, it seems to say that "one atom in a particular known state can give off two different readings when measured". But they keep saying it means that the object is in two places at once.
What am I missing?
In your case it is. I can tell because you are hiding behind "the law" instead of making a more reasonable and nuanced case. Did you even look at one bit of the actual law? Read one story about the reality of emigration in the U.S. today? Did you research the ways in which your ancestors got into the country - what they faced, and compare that to today's experience? There is nothing in your statement except a weak shield statement that you obviously believe is all you need to get a pass.
Seriously. It's time for Americans to grow up a little, and stop making silly non-arguments. As an American, you are embarrassing me.
You need to do better research. Evidence matters. Your gut is wrong.
1) Social Security isn't going broke.
2) Medicare is the highest rated insurance plan in the country, and is more efficient than every private insurance program - every single one. And it isn't going broke either. Republicans won't even touch it with all their anti-government bullshit campaigns.
3) Fannie and Freddie were fine until they were privatized. Please look it up.
4) Department of education has problems, but is mostly state run. Primary problem is it's regional funding, which is retarded.
5) Stimulus Package worked so well, the Republicans are running around taking credit, even though they voted against it.
6) War on Drugs is absolutely FAIL.
1 out of 6 ain't so bad - yeah it is. Seriously, the biggest problem in the US right now is people like you.
This sounds like power for the warp drive!
I bet WoW could be made to run on a Tegra 2 - or UT3 for that matter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYtLBh4lPMk :-)
I've been on a few decent ones - dethpod comes to mind. Also, I have no problem at all with not paying Blizzard - I bought the game, and played for a few months (only a few hours a month, and still payed $15 a month). I don't feel like I owe them anything.
What was it you didn't like about it?
Who cares about the "millionaires" - it's the "billionaires" who got it through inheritance that own most of the wealth in the U.S. I couldn't care less about the millionaires. How many of them - the multi-generationally wealthy - do you all know?
Many on this thread need to read a book on the subject or something, cause there are a lot of myths here.
Try "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell and see what really adds up to success. It isn't almost anything that the people on this thread have been shouting, that's for damn sure.
How was parent a troll? Why are all of you - people who value work I bet - so willing to work on behalf of rich trust fund babies? They have exactly one skill they need to retain the wealth most of them have inherited - how to spot someone trying to get their money. And they don't even do that well half the time.
The US system - and most of the rest of the western systems at this point for that matter - are built to benefit the already wealthy more than the rest of us (that's how they go from owning 80% of the wealth to well over 90%). Why are you all so willing to work on their behalf?
Have any of you ever met these people? They are not like us. They don't value hard work - hell they don't even respect it. You can see it in their judgment calls - wiping out jobs instead of cutting bonuses. Wealth is all that matters to these people. Parent is not a troll. Parent is accurate.
How does rich imply intelligent? ...
Well Ron Moore inserts "cause God said so" into his scripts when it's convenient, so who is he to talk! :-P
I've been saying it for a while; It's the content stupid! Newspapers seem to universally suck. It's not that it's on a paper, it's that they suck. That's why fewer people buy them. I'm glad someone within the industry has been able to figure that out - if a bit too late.
I really do wonder why so many people work for companies like this. I think American's in particular, but maybe the rest of the western world, have a fear of competing. Come on. If it's that bad, start your own agile small business, and compete against all the corporate hacks. It sounds like it should be easy.
Didn't Google claim last week that app stores were not the future, that web apps are? Then this week, they release a web app, because of Apple's decisions? Apple's not off the hook here, but this is perfectly in line with Google's stated vision for the future, and I don't know why they should get off the hook any more than Apple...
Where I live, an 18 year old kid flipped his parents SUV while driving around a well known dangerous turn a bit too fast, with no drugs or alcohol involved. His passenger friends died from that accident, and he got a few years in jail over it. A bar owner shot his waitress in the face - dead - while "cleaning his gun" at the bar, during business hours. That guy served no time. Where they both accidents? Both negligence? It doesn't matter.
The law doesn't actually have any affect on reality in the US court system. The law is just the excuse judges and district attorneys use to lock people up when they feel like it, for whatever reason they feel like doing it for (usually political, since they both have to win elections). The same goes for civil court, where high profile lawyers also get to play that game.
I personally think that in a lot of places (office, home) I'd love to be able to hit a checkbox and turn that feature off. In other places (Starbucks, college campus), I'd rather have it on.
I don't see why it has to be so binary. I want it both ways.
I understand the desire for Theora support, but calling fowl on Google in this case is downright underhanded. They obviously used h264, because that's what they have laying around! They've been encoding into that format for a while now. This format is nothing new for Youtube.
You know I looked it up, and apparently I had some basic facts wrong about the origin of "Standard English", but my point still stands I think. ;-P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_English
I think they come up with this stuff based on their narrow one sided public school education - English class, which teaches them the prescriptive rules of "Standardized English". That really was invented, and now it's taught to all students (in the US at least), and our culture dutifully squeezes every gaff into that narrowly prescribed rule set.
IMO, all public schools should be running linguistics programs in parallel with there English classes. It's important, because the way language works linguistically, is more accurate and useful when you want to really understand something. The culture here could really benefit from more basic understandings of many things - including the way language really works and evolves.
It would be nice to get into a nice pleasant debate on some of this stuff. I think your posts are just too long, and I haven't the time (that's not a dig, I'm just trying to be honest, I don't have the time to be as thorough as I'd like here and now). :-)
I think I can boil my problem with market purists down though, so here goes. Most market purists seem to want a system that starts everyone at the starting line, that gives them equal opportunity to prove their merit - a true meritocracy. I have no problem with that. The problem is, market purists never deal with, is that not everyone starts out at the same starting line, with the same advantages, and circumstances. In fact, some start in a position that is downright hostile to their own success - very little or even negative sums of money, in a culture that does not teach them how to take advantage of the dominant market system, etc. It's unfair to tell someone to pull themselves up by their boot straps when they have no boot straps.
All I advocate is that we make some effort to level that playing field for the next generation (education, give kid the skills they need to take advantage of our economic system, even when their parents can't - what's the point of education if not that), and to provide some kind of fair access to the benefits of society, a society built on the backs of their parents.
It's simply morally reprehensible to let someone who could turn into the next Einstein, or the next little league coach die in an ER waiting room, because they didn't have the cash that would pay for whatever surgery they needed to pull through. It's morally reprehensible to make U.S. citizens pay double what other nations citizens pay for the same benefits (better in terms of infant mortality, longevity, cancer rates, etc.- you seem to have some bad assumptions about those numbers in the post you linked me - the U.S. does not rank well in any of those metrics) - benefits that their insurers will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying, because they see the insurance premiums as their money.
To be clear, mine is a moderate position. In recent years I seem to have come across as some kind of flaming liberal communist - when in reality I'm advocating a mixed market that errs on the side of capitalism (nothing generates wealth like capitalism). I just want there to be some focus on sustainability, and on fairness, when it comes time to share in the benefits of all that wealth. FDR himself advocated a similar system when faced with a rising tide of socialism, and chose to try and save capitalism by making exactly that kind of social contract (in his day, the population was angry - the market system had failed, and they all felt it, they were ready for something else - anyone who think FDR was a socialist, is way off base).
Watching these Wallstreet pricks grab all that bonus money for having failed - that boils my nerve like nothing else, and it is far from uncommon amongst that "class" of citizen. That's not any form of meritocracy - that's robbery, pure and simple. And I seriously have no sympathy for any of their ridiculous imaginary problems (their phantom money turned into less phantom money) - I don't care, people are dying, people are missing vital education, society is suffering, and community with it - we don't have enough doctors, scientists, the kind of people that are going to create a better society - a better community. That I care about. Markets frankly failed to provide these things, because hat's not what they do! Markets generate wealth, when they are checked and kept from running off the rails. It takes governance (to your point about Microsoft following "the rules"), to make sure that doesn't happen. That's all I advocate.
Markets don't (always) self correct. That should be clear by now. Even Greenspan gets that. It should also be clear that once any company gets to a certain size, they are going to start to lobby the government (playing the refs) to get the rules changed in their favor - another one of thos
I like many here can't stand the "isms" - capitalism, communism, any ism in a pure form is a problem. It's the endless pursuit of a Utopian vision that isn't going to work.
That said, you seem to have based your post on a bunch of very odd assumptions. But you really lost me when you got to where Microsoft was somehow an example of how communism is bad. I am simply baffled by that conclusion. It was capitalism - and unregulated capitalism at that, which allowed that company to grow to dominance. Yeah maybe within the company there is some superficial comparison to be made to the system of communism, but even that is flimsy at best.
I find it troubling that you are able to see Microsoft's mostly centralized planning (as it affects the lives of it's own personal - and maybe the lives of those who have to deal with it's dominant market power), but can't see how it was exactly a form of unregulated capitalism (well, lightly regulated) that lead them to the place they now find themselves.
I don't have a problem with how Microsoft grew. I think that's great - that's the promise of capitalism. At some point though, a company that large, that influential, and that dominant, becomes a problem that can't be mitigated by "market forces". That's when it's time for someone outside of the market to get in and start regulating.
There is a role for government, or for the protections to communities that the government can provide - functioning (I want them to excel) schools, roads, police, fireman, healthcare, fair wage laws (do you think your particular company really wants to pay you so much? - get real), protect public lands, and parks - and yes, even to keep markets fluid. - all of these things are necessary for a strong community. Without them, and frankly most of us can't afford those services if we were made to pay for them ourselves, we have only chaos and anarchy. And really, what is the point of society without community?
I really don't understand the anti-community feelings - even hostile to community feelings - of so many Americans. As a father of two, it makes me sad. /unedited rant
I've heard it called a CPU more than a hard drive. Maybe that's just me. :-)
You started with a false choice again. I don't want socialism, or authoritarianism, or any other ism. There is a vast middle ground, and my position falls between socialism and capitalism, where there is also a vast range (both of which are economic systems, neither of which can be "authoritarian" - that falls within the realm of the political system). Western European countries, the US, and Japan are all examples of countries who's economic systems are mixed markets - where government has some control or influence in some areas, but stays out of others. We've always been that, it's just a matter of applying that power appropriately, to achieve the outcomes you desire.
I'm suggesting that we slightly alter some of the rules, to reverse the existing redistribution of wealth from the rest of us to the wealthy, which is what has been going on for decades, to a system that simply makes sure funds are being utilized and shared more fairly. That always increases national wealth - every time, and I frankly don't care if the very wealthy have to wait twice as long to double their money - they already have plenty to start with.
Also, another bad "fact" - my generation has not seen the benefits you espouse with your 2% a year figures, or your assertion that there is a rise in standard of living - in real dollars, after a generation that flattened out, our generation is the first to make less than the previous generation. That is a direct result of the redistribution of wealth from the rest of us to the wealthy. The evidence is there - we just need to put our ideology away, and take a look at it.
Your last points border on silly, and don't seem to have any basis in data, but here goes - legal limitations aren't the only limitations, there are systemic economic limitations too - right now the markets we have favored investment, which means you must start with something to invest. Working people, and even the middle class, who earn a weekly, or bi-weekly salary, don't often start with money to play around with, to risk on investments. Those classes can't even get in the game.
I'm glad the social safety nets, and the institutions that gave you the opportunity to succeed were in place when you were younger- they have not been in most places for a while now - schools are underfunded, healthcare is out of reach, and lacking in quality anyway, and on and on. The evidence is clear - fewer people are making it, more are falling through the cracks. The data simply doesn't support your assertions that we the working and middle classes in America (or Europe for that matter) are any better because of the system that has been in place - the system where wealth has been re-distributed upward, toward those who already have more than their fair share.
If you think it's the money guys, the investment guys, the derivative guys that are going to innovate us out of this economic mess we are in, please re-evaluate. We need doctors, teachers, inventors and scientists, and they can't be concerned primarily with how to keep a roof over their heads. They must be focused on doing their jobs the best they can. These problems are easy to solve. We just need to pay people more fairly for their work - and stop pretending everyone can be an investment banker. That kind of thinking doesn't lead to a more prosperous, better society - even if a few (an increasingly few) people can become very rich.
Finally - most of that wealth you mentioned turned out to be derivative and default swapped vapor. That's not even wealth - that's fantasy.