It inflates the bank accounts of Apple, Google, Facebook, etc, and probably your state and local government too. Wealthy people generally don't put their money in a bank account and collect interest, they generally put it into some sort of investment portfolio where the money goes into stocks and bonds. Bonds would include both corporate and municipal bonds. Municipal bonds fund a lot of state and local infrastructure, and sadly boondoggle projects.

Wealthy people may also invest in real estate. Which is probably what the $70M mansion is all about. The vast majority of that $70M probably represents the land not the blingy mansion that sits on it. The tax bill might be public record, that would define land value vs structure value.

Sometimes such a purchase is mostly an investment, albeit a comfy investment that you can live in. Its highly likely he is expecting a "greater fool" to come around and pay much more even after adjusting for inflation and the safe alternative of buying US treasury bills instead.

Sweden has some pretty hardcore taxes for the rich. Don't get me wrong, he's still a very monied guy (he made plenty before the sale as well) but it isn't like he got to keep all the cash. Sweden doubtless took their cut.

Actually it does matter because he is explaining what he meant by "corporations are people". His "record" is that corporations are made of stockholders and employees. The false myth based on an out of context excerpt is that he was saying the legal entity of the corporation itself is a "person". That's just not true and listening to the video for a minute after he says "corporations are people" proves it.

This incident is an awesome example of public speaking. Of how an opponent can take a sound bite out of context and twist a statement around to create a false meme. In politics, and other areas where the reader's/listener's attention is shallow and emotional, one can not make a general/simplified statement and then follow up with details explaining it as one might do with a more rational audience.

Romney was speaking as if he were writing an essay. Ex. Title: "Corporations are People". Body: "Corporations are people because they are made up of two groups of people, shareholders and employees.". The spin machine is quoting the title and ignoring the body.

I guess I'm old. I'd prefer a counterstrike map of the building at work. :-)

This comment was on a pallet.

But the longshoremen were on break. Union rules, sorry.

I plan on pirating the movie and having a drunken night of watching it with friends.

I'm a little drunk rihght now. Pardon the uh... typos? Fuck off, it's Solstice.

You are mistaken. The voters are in charge, the voters are in control. They just use their votes poorly.

The true currency of politics is votes, not money. And since the system is one person one vote, the 99%s are in charge. If a candidate fears that a significant number of voters will vote against him if he supports a corporation on a particular issue then he will side with the voters not the corporation. Above all things, politicians desire re-election. They will only server corporations to the extent that it does not jeopardize their re-election, in other words to the extent that the voters allow.

Irregardless of corporate donations, voters could establish control by punitive voting. The voting out of office of a politician who too often sides with corporations over voters. No passes because of party or position on some other issue, just always voted out if siding too often with corporation. That will create a Darwinian effect that caused politicians to fear and be more responsible to voters.

The biggest trap for voters in the U.S. is party loyalty. Being a member of a party is fine, but automatically voting for your party candidates makes you irrelevant. You are irrelevant to your party because they already have your vote, you are irrelevant to the other party because they can not attain your vote. The only voters who matter in the U.S. are independents and those Dem/Rep party members who are willing to break ranks and vote for candidates other than from their party.

I just read the wikipedia article about DNA methylation, and while much of it is over my head, the pedant in me seems to accept that the accept the language that the DNA is "changed". It doesn't change the sequence of the DNA, but it seems to change the composition of the individual nucleotides.

Its not just me. It all the other developers and IT folks I have worked with and all the companies they have worked at. I know no one who was denied meal breaks and other basic worker rights, with the exception of paid overtime due to a salary pay scheme. Have there been bosses who were a-holes, sure, that too. Might an a-hole somewhere have violated a labor law, sure. But that is the occasional anomaly not some sort of general rollback of worker rights to pre-union days, and such anomalies are easily handled by state labor boards.

I agree with my 40+ year union veteran grandfather. Unions once did very important work, but those battles are over and won. There are no serious efforts to roll back basic worker rights to pre union days. Unless one misrepresents the limits on collective bargaining by government employees. As even FDR admitted government employees are in a very different and special position compared to industrial workers and the same rights and methods should not apply. Are there unresolved issues that unions could help resolve, sure. But such unresolved issues do not change the fact that many big issues are resolved and resolved by a much higher authority, government.

Its quite legitimate for people to fear a decline in the quality of living in the future but that is not due to lower union participation. It is due to governmental policies that foster the outsourcing of jobs overseas. Its not that workers are in general losing protections that were union issues a century ago. Its that workers are losing good factory and industrial jobs.

Or to put things simply. Given that unions won the big "battles" its natural that their "army" scale down in size and only find itself fighting small skirmishes. Again I reference my grandfather who was a 40+ year worker enrolled (1930s-70s) in a rather large and well known union. In his opinion the union was once important but "today" (1970s) its just a racket to collect dues and perpetuate itself, to serve itself, not to serve its member workers, not to maintain levels of worker tradecraft and skill. I had friend who worked at a small and very profitable corrugated paper container manufacturer in the 2000s. She said the owner and floor manager were pretty flexible, reasonable and fair with the workers. But a union organizer came by and convinced them to organize, they unionized, came under the umbrella of one of the large and well known organizations. And the flexible environment they previously enjoyed was replaced with a bureaucratic and micromanaged environment. The bonuses and other extra benefits they once received were replaced with a boilerplate contract negotiated far away and long ago. The workers on the floor quickly came to the opinion that they were lied to and screwed and regretted unionizing. Many who voted to unionize were saying they would vote to de-unionize as soon as the law allowed them to do so. Unionizing is no panacea. Its a myth to think it always improves things. In an anomalous abusive situation it might help workers to organize. Should they join a big well known union in such a situation, possibly not. They might be better served by a small and regional organization, a more local effort. Assuming of course that their grievances can't be resolved by the state labor board.

As do members of unions and members of activist groups. Using your logic these groups of individuals should also be silenced.

As the court has said, a group of people have the same speech rights as individual persons. There are no additional rights, just the same right.

Using your logic employees may have even more rights than shareholders. In your logic shareholders may have two voices, individual and corporate; while employees may have three voices, individual, corporate and union. Again I am referring to a situation such as "a steel corporation wanting the government to maintain a tariff on steel imports". The steel workers union would probably want the government to maintain the tariff too.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Perhaps you missed my example where a corporation speaks on behalf of both its stockholders and its employees:
"a steel corporation wanting the government to maintain a tariff on steel imports."

When has communism as seen in the real world ever been anything other than a vehicle to make the people's needs subservient to the state's needs. Right now that state needs jobs to urbanize the population and foreign currency to fund modernization. Things seem to be working quite normally for a communist state, the government is getting what it wants regardless of the cost to the people.

You probably do. Its one of those things that moved from union contracts to state law. Read your employee handbook, it probably says something about mandatory breaks and mealtimes after fixed numbers of hours. Or read the mandatory state labor rules poster in the break room at work.

My grandfather's working days began a little later than yours, late 1920s. Blue collar union jobs from the late 1930s until retirement in the 70s. The way he explained it to me is that unions were less important today because the things the unions fought for back in the day are generally in the law now. So we're protect by law not union contract now. That the things his union fought for in the 60s and 70s, and that he went on strike over (reluctantly), were largely BS and they lost money by striking. The additional benefits, relative to the offer on the table before going on strike, never making up for the lost wages. That it was just politics and posturing of the union, and the union looking out for the union organization not the workers they represented. Every union is different but his was a very large well known union so I think his story may be more of the norm not the exception.

After 30 years working in software development I've not seen a return to the bad old days as you suggest. Never had an employer that didn't recognize breaks and meals. About all you could say is that it was left to you, no manager was clocking you in and out. Certainly no manager was upset when you disappeared for half an hour and reappeared with a soft drink cup from a local fast food joint in your hand. The only time my managers ever cared was after a bogus complaint to the state by a disgruntled former employee, yes myself and coworkers thought the complaint bogus. Then managers were all annoying asking if you've been working four hours yet and haven't taken a meal break. They didn't care if you were in the flow coding and not hungry yet and wanted to continue for another hour before grabbing a bite, they had to interrupt you. And if you really wanted to stress them out say you brought a sandwich and wanted to eat at your desk while you worked. Losing the flexibility to take a meal at 3 to 5 hours of work depending on your focus and/or your hunger did not improve things.

The closest you could get to the bad old days was that we were salary and didn't get paid overtime. However at the one company where we put in a ton of overtime we got pretty decent bonuses that made up for it. Now are all companies decent in this manner, no, certainly not. But as "white collared" salaried employees things were not that different from the old strong union days. Want to talk about unpaid overtime, talk to an uncle who worked on the space program in the 50s and 60s. Of course in their mind they were on a holy crusade and happy to do it, even more so than a recent college grad offered a job at a video game company.

That is not my party. Pointing out a Democratic party lie does not make one a Republican.

The video you cite proves you wrong. Romney, in a very confused and inelegant way, was trying to say that corporations consists of two groups of people. Stockholders and employees. He specifically says in the video that the money that corporations earn goes into people's pockets, human's pockets.

Again, inelegant and confused, but something entirely different than the losing lawyer's spin that the left adopted. That corporations are themselves "people". Its brilliant spin, easily deceives those not paying attention, but spin none the less.