While your ideas are interesting, the point I was making is that wealth need not be THE defining criteria for success. Other elements such as dominance in a market and ability to deliver what your customers want every time can be a measure of success as well. In some cases, this can actually be seen in the current marketplace. The point you quote is well visualized in a news article by ABC concerning companies that do NOT treat their employees like slaves, yet still somehow turn out successful.

However, just because there are some examples of companies that do right by their employees, there are many more examples of those that do not. In those cases, there tends to be a huge disparity between the pay at the top and the pay of the workers earning that money. Among the employees of those companies, only those at the top, those that have money or skill or power, really get to set the levels of compensation and define who gets to be greedy, which is kind of the point I was making. If someone at the bottom attempted that, they'd be kicked out in a heartbeat for someone else willing to slave away for a pittance.

It isn't just that tax avoidance has lost favor. It's that most people have come to the realization (I think) that big money interests work with legislators, whether obviously or covertly, to see to it such loopholes and 'special perks' exist in the first place. It's like playing poker and stacking the deck in your favor every time. It isn't hard to see how that puts the corporations on the 'wrong side' and how it comes off as unfair in most people's minds.

If the perception was that big money does not have a hand in the creation of laws and receives the same "bad treatment" everyone else does, then I imagine you'd see tax avoidance come back into favor.

Something tells me you answered your own question just there. And if it is 'the people in those countries' deciding when too much is too much, then the GP poster commenting he feels Gates has too much is certainly within his rights to say.

Saying that the problem isn't that some people are too rich, it's that some are too poor is trying to make excuses why being overly successful (in some cases, abusively successful) is desirable and 'them good for nuthin' lazy poor folk' are in the wrong for not being successful enough. The whole game is set up so that a few accumulate a lot that could otherwise be feeding the many. The phrase 'you have to have money to make money' didn't come about because it's a cute saying. I can't imagine that anyone that's rich now continued to slog away on the assembly line until they were rich. At some point they stopped doing manual labor and let their funds work for them through investments. Even still, SOMEONE needs to slog away on that assembly line, don't they? Why can't they be paid commiserate with the total value their work brings in, just like those awesome investors that ponied up a little dough but didn't otherwise put forth ANY effort for their return? It'd certainly keep them unsuccessful poor from being so poor, wouldn't it?

The simple fact is that people are greedy assholes no matter which end of the 'rich' spectrum you're on. It's just that those that have (money, skills, power), they get to flex their greed more strongly than the rest. If everyone played fair on their own, sought balance instead of their own aggrandizement, we wouldn't feel the need to put in such silly things like regulations and limits and 'how much is too rich' and such because you just wouldn't have that problem anymore.

By all means, please DO NOT link us to http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146679n .

May not work on an iPad or Windows 8 tablet.

Um no.

I'm the employee, you are the employer.

I come in ready to work, you supply the tools for me to work.

The tools are yours, you can monitor, adjust, replace, revoke, and have Orwellian standards on them. That's because you employed me and provided them.

Past that? fuck off.

What, you mean there's a reason we sometimes use vacuum insulation in our hot/cold thermoses? Scandalous ;).

"We know this because our game contains some code to send anonymous-usage data to our server. Nothing unusual or harmful. Heaps of games/apps do this and we use it to better understand how the game is played. It’s absolutely anonymous and you are covered by our privacy policy. "

Yes, you want our sympathy because you're indie, but yet you have no qualms in playing big brother and monitoring your users without explictly stating that you do so. Yeah, a "privacy policy" makes it okay.

Sorry, in my book you guys are assholes just like EA by merely doing that. Not that you deserve having your game "pirated", but you're still assholes. Not mutually exclusive.

you also need stickers of all the things you add, they add an additional 10 hp per sticker.

A while back you did a bunch of issues of The Brave and The Bold. I have to say, all of them were outstanding and brought some unusual/forgotten characters to the fore.

Were there any DC characters that you had wished you had the opportunity to tackle?

Started Using Ubuntu when Steam rolled out - I can definitely assure the Linux developers the easiest way to proportionally reduce my use of windows is to increase the proportion of linux gaming.

Please save me from Windows 8 and the trainwreck that follows!

signed - ex microsoft shill

Where I live, if I call a plumber, I pay his bill, and federal and provincial taxes. Ditto for painter, electrician, I have to pay sales taxes. So what is the difference if the programmer works to build a website. Do you pay his invoice without paying sales taxes?

Sales tax is payable on goods, not services. Building a website is a service. You don't pay sales tax when you procure the services of a doctor or lawyer; why would web coders be any different?

Boiled down, Gun control is simply the policy of cutting the antlers off of the antelopes to help keep them safe from wolves.

Thank you for your answer, but I've found in my experience that the people who fear guns cannot be reasonable in a discussion about gun control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childers_Palace_Backpackers_Hostel_fire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting

next...

Windows 2000 desktop please..

Some of us just want to use a pc, not get entertained by dancing buttons and other crap.

I'm going to hazard a guess that 50 years from now - we'll have better detection instruments set up that will change the age of the Universe dramatically.

Just look back 50 years and see the change.