Originally Posted by ptownrob

The top six CEO's of the oil companies make more than $1 billion a year, so where is the "free market" for investing in the future of private industry? Exxon brags when it talks about spending $1 billion dollars in research for horizontal well drilling, yet all this discussion centers around Uncle Sam putting out the money to do the research.

This is the problem with unfettered "free" markets- it's not really capitalism, and the CEO's have not produced any "product" and there really isn't any competition. It's just unregulated greed, not free enterprise.

The non-productive rich- the corporate class (not entrepreneurs)- have declared a class war since the days of Carnegie, Kennedy, Mellon and Rockefeller. It's not fought by the little guy or the working person because, other than unions, they have no power to overcome that class.

It's been age old Republican policy since Taft- and now multi-millionaires like Rush & Palin- to make people think these non-productive rich are just plain folks like you and me.