@nerdman @georgia @l0wk3y @moonman This wasn't a conversation about taxation so I'll avoid the bait.


However I'm absolutely going to take the bait on the "This is true of every society" line.

It's empirically not true of every society, and it wasn't even always true of the United States. Societies that encourage ambitious people to act on their ambitions still have the problem of inheritance, sure, but they allow genuine economic mobility; it's not unrealistic for someone to jump to the ruling class from nothing. The USSR was controversial, sure, but it had economic & class mobility more than the US does presently. That's not even implying the USSR was even remotely good; it's that the US has adopted what is more or less an invisible caste system.