(no subject)

[coldblossom.livejournal.com]

Facebook IPO demonstrates "trickle-down economics" at work. At least in my humble and under-educated opinon. Read on:

Facebook’s $104 billion initial public offering on Friday transformed thousands of young people into instant millionaires – as well as a few billionaires – and already the booming luxury market in Silicon Valley is experiencing an upswing.

Multi-million dollar mansions and $100,000 Porsches are flying off local shelves in the Palo Alto, Santa Clara and Menlo Park areas of California. And the charge of luxury living is being led by a group of young entrepreneurs and techies as well as investors and venture capitalists that have scored famously from Facebook’s Nasdaq debut.

Facebook (FB: 38.23, +0.23, +0.61%) began trading on the stock exchange Friday morning in a $104 billion IPO that marked the second-biggest in history behind Visa (V: 112.64, -2.37, -2.06%) and ahead of General Motors (GM: 21.18, -0.43, -1.99%). When CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the opening bell, he and few close colleagues became instant billionaires, while thousands of lower-level employees became millionaires.

The sudden wealth has already seeped into the local economy, causing sales of high-end cars like Porches and Bentleys to soar, and penthouses to sell hundreds of thousands of dollars above listing prices.

Local restaurants like Silicon Valley watering hole and local tech favorite Buck’s of Woodside – located just a few miles from Facebook’s headquarters and often considered the bellwether of the local economy there – have also reported a recent boom.


Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2012/05/18/facebook-overnight-millionaires-start-luxurious-spending-spree/#ixzz1vGmNka6o

This is what Obama and his friends don't get. The "1%" don't work at Chanel, Hermes, Botegga, or Bugatti. Average people do. Sure, there are people who get paid quite handsomely to act as personal stylists at any of these places (and others) but are still far, far away from touching the income and lifestyle of the people they service. Yet without the "1%," these jobs wouldn't exist.

Another wonderful benefit of our economic system: there are now a few thousand more millionares in this country today because they found a good opportunity in the free market. Nobody told them they couldn't, that it would be "unfair," and there were no laws on the books saying "you can't make/earn more than X amount or else you're too rich" to hold them back. At the rate we're going, such laws may actually exist and not only would they penalize people who are already wealthy, they would make it more difficult for people to be upwardly mobile.

I wonder how many of them will bail (like that other Facebook guy who's name I can't remember but has inspired Schumer's "Ex-Patriot Act") on the USA by renoucing their citizenship to avoid our tax system which penalizes success. If the "1%" bail, where do all the jobs they've created--either directly through their businesses or indirectly through their spending habits--go? They disappear without a clientele to serve, without a demand for their product or service. Why doesn't Obama understand this? Why doesn't OWS understand this?

And now, totally unrelated, but enjoy this awesome vintage image-spam courtesy of the Captain America  end-credits. I love WWII pro-USA, pro-Allies propaganda (did you know that's where the "Keep Calm" poster comes from? It was British WWII homeland propaganda) and all of these are authentic. If I could ressurect one and send it to Obama to put up in his office, it would be this one:


(loose lips sink ships...I've know this since I was 4. Why doesn't anyone in the O.Admin--unfortunately including the DoD--know it as well? The Navy SEALs want to know, and so do I.)


Anyway, video!