>>I agree. If a person, by his or her intelligence, can do a better job at development and marketing and earn a larger income, my hat is also off to him/her. It is impressive to see that some can do these great things. For a person to be able to pull it all together and make that kind of income, he/she has my respect.

Playing Devil's advocate for a moment: the biggest earners today are not necessarily the most productive individuals, increasingly they are those who suck value from loopholes in systems established for other purposes.

For example, the financial system is there to streamline conversion of our work into goods and services of equivalent value. In this model, of course somebody who creates substantial value should be able to convert it to other things they enjoy..

But what about somebody who uses chicanery, e.g. fraudulent insurance policies applied to junk loans to be sold at inflated value? The resulting distortions do not deliver any benefit that fairly could be swapped for goods and services of equivalent value, in fact they put OUR financial system and its purpose at risk. Yet these people extract billions of dollars from the rest of us in exchange for... what exactly? Why should this sort of behavior be tolerated let alone respected?

The same applies to healthcare. A lifetime of healthcare needs for your average American is easy enough to predict and underwrite. That's what should occur in a sensible insurance model, with early surpluses invested to cover predictable future needs. Instead the most expensive costs are passed off to the next generation of taxpayers whose own insurance premiums continue to be sucked away as private dividends. With more being taken out than is put in and opposition to any attempt to balance the books, what do people suppose is going to happen?

It seems you are saying that if it is possible to extract value within the existing infrastructure, then that's the free market and we should applaud. But if behaviors keep collapsing the system, system owners (iow the people) surely have a Capitalistic duty to conserve the value of our capital and institutions? We're not doing it. We're clapping because people figured out a way to carry away the family silver when we're not looking. It's crazy.