owen byrne wrote r a hettinga wrote begin pgp signed message hash shaNUMBER at NUMBER NUMBER am NUMBER on NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER gary lawrence murphy wrote cool i wasn t aware that the us had lifted it s population out of poverty when did this happen i wonder where the media gets the idea that the wealth gap is widening and deepening all the world loves a smartass seriously look at he life expectancy and human carrying capacity of this continent before the europeans got here look at it now even for descendants of the original inhabitants even for the descendents of slaves who were brought here by force more stuff cheaper that s progress poverty of course is not relative it s absolute disparity in wealth has nothing to do with it it s like saying that groups have rights when in truth only individuals do like group rights disparity in wealth is statistical sophistry besides even if you can t help the distribution industrial wealth is almost always transitory and so is relative poverty even when there are no confiscatory death taxes the NUMBERth anniversary forbes NUMBER just came out and only a few tens of people are still there since NUMBER a time which had significantly higher marginal taxes on wealth income and inheritance than we do now more to the point they re nowhere near the top lovely quote from the forbes NUMBER list and not a single astor vanderbilt or morgan rates a mention on the current forbes four hundred but you have to studiously ignore the NUMBER rockefellers NUMBER gettys NUMBER hearsts fords kelloggs wrigleys and so on there are more self made people on the list than i previously alluded to i made a mistake most of them seem to have ivy league educations or are ivy league dropouts suggesting to me that they weren t exactly poor to start with some of them have lovely self made stories like NUMBER johnston summerfield k jr track this persontrack this person URL see all bacon makers URL NUMBER self made source food URL coca cola quote URL executives URL news URL net worth NUMBER mil returnee hometown chattanooga tn marital status married NUMBER children grandfather james and partner landed first coca cola bottling franchise in NUMBER company passed down NUMBER generations to summerfield NUMBERs became largest independent coke bottler merged with coca cola enterprises NUMBER javascript openmap pol javascript openmap dist by a compensation committee owen 