I agree 100% (hense my footballers hate) however generally, most of those people (please note, generally) have worked to get to such a position. Education and promotion and so forth. Of course, the problem is this is that with anything in life, there is more than one way to get what you want.

Blackmail is a fun way to get promoted, afterall!

I feel that if someone genuinley worked their way up the ladder from making the tea and coffee to project management and leadership/whatever, they deserve not to be penalised.

Of course, there are huge flaws - like when assholes get promoted.

I just basically said the same thing twice in different words.

The problem is that you can't say who got there on plain hard work and who got there by sucka means. And realistically speaking, most ppl who become rich only become so because they come from a rich/well-educated background (which often is a parallel). It's possible to work from rags to richess, but unless what the capitalist dream pictures it's not quite a common sight.

It's one of the biggest flaws of capitalism: the rich will become richer and the poor poorer. After a long time such a situation becomes unbearable for a society, so you need to give things a push in the back by measures like these. (taxing the very rich more than others)

Extremes never work. Democratic capitalism with social checks and balances seems to be the best bet.

I dunno, I think a benevolent dictatorship can work. The problem with those is that a) there will always be people opposed to it so repression is inevitable and b) the longevity sucks. Once the benevolent dictator kicks the bucket for one reason or another, things can get very ugly.

But take Bolivia for example: Chavez definitely isn't perfect and is gathering an awful lot of power (parliament gave him personal authorisationin some fields), but has undubitably and vastly improved the social situation in Bolivia and is immensely popular. His elections and authorisations are all a result of popular vote. You can rig an election, but the type of landslide victories Chavez gets can't be staged with the EU and the US paying close attention like they do. Heck he even survived a CIA coup attempt.


As for the government...well, don't be fooled: the top politicians don't really make that much money, compared to the filthy rich business top managers. In fact, they're beggars in comparison. That doesn't mean they should waste our hard-earned tax money, but still. I worked at the Belgian minister of Home Office's personal department (about 40 ppl) for a month as an intern as you know, and yes there is a lot of slacking and money-wasting going on. And I wish I had a cool car with a personal driver as well. But I've also seen that the minister (and the heads of the different cells) doesn't have a life. No life at all. He wakes up at 7, works, works, works, goes to bed at 12. No matter if it's Monday, Sunday or any other day. I believe he had an hour or two for his family on Sundays, wow. Heh, point being: for working like a madman they don't really make that much money. Of course, the UK and US are bigger countries so the ministers will make more money too, even though they can't humanly do more work than a Belgian minister (only 24 hours in a day). Anyway, I'm just saying: politics is a calling for 95% of the ppl involved, the wages really aren't that spectacular. They only start making BIG money when they retire from politics and become board members in big companies.

The Health Service thing is tragic, of course, but it's not just about money or how its spent. The US spends a multitude on the public school system compared to many other countries, yet it is one of the worst failing school systems of the West. The reason? Who'll say...mentality problems, bad training, whatever. It's the same with health services. But beats me who's gonna reform it though. You'd think that it'd be a lot easier in the British political system to make drastic changes, with the two-party system. But apparently not.