But all the businesses left America during Eisenhower's time and all the rich people escaped to their secret rich megabase in Death Valley to withold All The Jobs and we had an unemployment rate of elebentybillion!
"The sort of person who is very rich does not become so by flouncing when the rules of the game change, to sulk in a gully. The sort of person who is very rich becomes so by understanding the rules of the game and leveraging them to their maximum benefit. This is why there have always been the ridiculously rich, even in times when the top marginal tax rate in the United States was 92%. They very rich don’t flounce, they fiddle. They always have. They always will. The fantasy of the enraged rich packing up and going is just that, a fantasy." ~John Scalzi The Only Time the Conservative Politicians Ignore Warren Buffett
The already established "rich" certainly likely has less mobility, because moving an established fortune, especially if it's comprised of physical capital, is much harder than picking a place to start your fortune
That may have been true during the 19th century, but since the late 1980s, the wealthiest Americans tend to make their fortunes in finance, stock markets, commodities, services, software applications or Internet services, or reselling other products, etc. In fact, when you browse Forbes list of richest 100 Americans, you have to get down to no 25 before anyone actually makes a physical product (Mars Bars) and I'm pretty sure they could move their plant. While we can quibble about the others-- if indeed they aren't making something (maybe the Koch Bros could be an exception due to some of their chemical manufacturing plants), but pretty much I'm spot on in my assessment. I'm not interested in debating the value of moving from an industrial based society to a more service/technological base, that's another subject.
I think it is too soon to say. We haven't had another major attack, Al Qaeda and its affiliates seem more and more enfeebled due to our aggressive actions to marginalize and eliminate them. That is good. Whether we can capitalize on this opportunity and integrate more of the Muslim world into the broader global market is an open question. You might as well have asked what return on investment we were getting in 1955 from the Cold War. Time will tell.
The crisis would seem to be in our justice system -- insofar as no one from Moody's or S&P is doing hard time -- and in our political system, which is just spooking the hell out of the market.
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That may have been true during the 19th century, but since the late 1980s, the wealthiest Americans tend to make their fortunes in finance, stock markets, commodities, services, software applications or Internet services, or reselling other products, etc. In fact, when you browse Forbes list of richest 100 Americans, you have to get down to no 25 before anyone actually makes a physical product (Mars Bars) and I'm pretty sure they could move their plant. While we can quibble about the others-- if indeed they aren't making something (maybe the Koch Bros could be an exception due to some of their chemical manufacturing plants), but pretty much I'm spot on in my assessment. I'm not interested in debating the value of moving from an industrial based society to a more service/technological base, that's another subject.
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~M~
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Oh wait...
Now I need a US citizenship. :-/
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~M~
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*looks at countries where their debt is 400% of GDP and they're doing fine*
...BANKRUPT!
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