Posted on 05/07/2014 2:09:35 PM PDT by Biggirl
In the Gilded Age, wrenching economic and technological change hardened life for the vast majority of Americans while an elite few prospered. Innovators like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt disrupted old industries, creating news ones, and cemented their fortunes via government-approved monopolies. The most pernicious of these were railroad trusts. In our times, wrenching economic and technological change hardens life for the vast majority of Americans while an elite few prosper. Innovators like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg disrupt old industries, create news ones and
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(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
Hope so. Without Net Neutrality there is no Internet. Think sites like this will be able to stay in existence? Wanna buy a bridge? ODimwit’s FCC is in the pocket of those that want to take away our Internet. And it is happening ... fast.
Well, no. The vast majority of Americans were economically much better off in 1900 than in 1870.
As in recent decades, much of this improvement was not in higher incomes, so much as it was in everyday products becoming better and cheaper.
John D. Rockefeller himself couldn't get an iPad, even though his personal wealth - at its peak - exceeded one percent of the total value of all the capital in America.
Today, elementary-school kids own them.
In 1865 whale oil, the main source of lighting for Americans (outside cities), cost $1.77/gallon. in 1896, the then primary source of fuel for lamps was kerosene. It sold for .07/gallon.
And of course gas and electricity were major competing sources of lighting by that time.
So were rural Americans worse off in 1865 or 1896, after Rockefeller had pillaged the country?
Net neutrality just empowers government and is tyranny
more government laws . who does that give more power to? gov and the FCC ,Obama. and you TRUST THESE cretins to make the Internet work?
In 1865 whale oil, the main source of lighting for Americans (outside cities), cost $1.77/gallon. in 1896, the then primary source of fuel for lamps was kerosene. It sold for .07/gallon.And of course gas and electricity were major competing sources of lighting by that time.
So were rural Americans worse off in 1865 or 1896, after Rockefeller had pillaged the country?
Absurd, isn't it?
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