I'd say their best defense would be to call it a documentary about fake LV bags. It clearly wasn't a comedy, so it works out.

Agreed on all but the dogs who bark at squirrels. Anyone who has spent time interviewing such dogs about their political ideologies will have discovered the truth of that.

This is probably the most important thing you miss if you don't read the article. GoDaddy lost only about 1k domains.

I don't think you understood me, but your conclusion is so crazy it's hard to know exactly where you went off track.

Some things have pretty straightforward costs.

Calling Santa Clara SV is stretching it a bit. Almost none of that is real SV territory, and the part that is, is the most expensive part.

I favor taxing of tobacco and alcohol exactly to the extent that their use costs the rest of us money (paying medical bills for cancer caused to self or others, and the victims of drunk driving for example). I'd be perfectly happy to switch that to an insurance model where you were legally obligated to buy alcohol/tobacco insurance before use, though. Either way, it's all about society having some way to recoup the costs being created by those habits, costs which unfortunately aren't accounted for in the base price of producing those items.

Likewise, I favor a progressive tax system, going up to about 100% for billionaires, because it more accurately reflects the cost of those individuals to our society. Fundamentally, every person with that kind of wealth is getting it because they are leveraging an existing inequity in negotiating power, where people with less assets cannot negotiate a fair price for their labor, because they cannot afford to walk away from the negotiation, while the richer person can, resulting in the richer person getting richer via the exploitation of the poorer person.

I would be on board with a pure progressive tax, however. No exemptions, just higher and higher percentages paid on all income (must include all kinds of investment income and capital gains).

Sadly, all they wound up with was a new form of tyranny of the minority.

By what law?

Your statement seems to be an affirmation rather than a contradiction of the original claim. SF/PA are considered SV. The home prices are highest in the nation. They have remained that way thanks to holding their value.

Ummm ... I, like a lot of people in tech, have no inclination to be doing what I'm doing. I'm doing it to make money, same as I would have in any other time period. I looked around, saw here was a thing I could learn to do to make money, and did it. At the time I made that choice it seemed like basically doctor, lawyer, finance and computers were the way to go. Doctor required too much memorization, a difficult area for me. Lawyer/finance were too evil. So computers was my choice, and I worked to get good at it. Talent works that way. Inclination doesn't.

Looking back as far as 15th century or further is pointless: people had very little choice about what field they went into, it was mostly determined by your birth. Today people can actually make something of themselves.

Homes over a million? That's almost all of them around here.
Offshoring? So oughts. All the modern tech companies in the valley have realized that to build competitive apps you do it with manpower here.
Young people making money? Well, you do have to be lucky or smart in your startup choice, but facebook is about to mint another batch of over a thousand young millionaires to help keep those house prices propped up.
   

I would say the occupy movements end goal is most easily stated as 'put an end to big money'.
No one needs or deserves to be a billionaire. We should tax that life path out of existence.

Lobbying political representatives is pointless. They get their money from the very people doing these things. No, I put my energy into educational advocacy, trying to get voters to care about the issue (posting to influential we boards and such). Realistically, though, I don't expect anything to change until after the catastrophe, because most people are too stupid to care, and you need most to make a change.

Ah, I would have said 'intuitively obvious to me', but I understand you now.