I thought one of the most educational points of the night was when Ron Paul described the difference between Crony Capitalism and real capitalism. I never thought of it this way but he was dead on. Companies that get rich from GOV bailouts, fed bailouts, sweetheart GOV contracts, etc are crony capitalism. Real capitalism is when Steve Jobs creates something unique for the market place and they love it. Real capitalism is when Starbucks started up from nothing, etc.[/quote]
Someone who made money by making the world a better place (cure cancer…) should definitely be treated differently from someone who made their money by cheating others or by crony capitalism.
The difficult question is (and there is always a difficult question) how is it decided which category someone is in. Or who gets to decide. There is always a huge grey area. Probably everyone is somewhere in the grey area. Just some are darker grey than others. Except for some in the financial industry. Many of them made all of their money without making society any better off.
