By elites, I meant politicians and wealthy people. You seem really invested in the idea that there isn't a class aspect to our situation. I never said elites we

By elites, I meant politicians and wealthy people. You seem really invested in the idea that there isn't a class aspect to our situation. I never said elites were evil. I said that they were the elites. Simply, they were the people that were running things and have ran things...whether they inherited their position or worked their way into it. It was an implicit social contract. I never said or implied that people got together in a smoky room. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your either a conservative or a libertarian with the smug way that you are telling me "how the world works". If you look at rising wages and corporate profits...they both rose at roughly the same rate until the advent of cheap credit lines in the mid to late seventies. At that point, business stopped giving larger shares of the profits to employees and started loaning it to them. By that I mean businesses banked the profits, didn't issue raises in the same way, and then the banks made credit cards available with the surplus deposits to people that, until then, didn't have them. I don't know how you could look at the divergence of profits and wages around '75 in any other way. It's obviously a better situation from a financial standpoint if you are running a business or are an "entrepreneur", but it had deleterious effects as well. I never implied this was evil. I don't really use the word "evil" a lot in writing or language. It smacks of magical thinking. I think that most of this stuff is largely amoral. So, lets see. You've called me delusional. You've essentially made my argument out to be some laughable conspiracy theory...while not really rebutting what I actually said. You've insinuated that somehow I don't love my country because I'm an unthinking liberal idiot? You've lectured me on business. You're kind of a dick. How bout you just leave me alone?