Beautiful.  Tightly reasoned, succinctly stated, brief and to the point.  Facts are stubborn things - particularly verifiable historical ones.  You know, the kind most likely to be "revised" completely out of the history texts used in our schools. 

Umm .  .  .  I thought the announcement that "Sarcasm has been banned because its a form of violence" was, itself, sarcasm and therefore ignored it - much like I would if a stranger called me an unpleasant name.      Wait, you mean that announcement wasn't intended as sarcasm? Crikey!      How's a bloke supposed to know what is actual sarcasm and what isn't if it all sounds the same?       Some of me best stuff has been completely overshadowed by "official" pronouncements from administration and faculty at university!  Not even a bloody warning label! 

Agreed.  He does, however, tend to gloss over some things and not dig very deeply.   The obvious point in the whole story, to me, was that the whole discussion revolved around big business.  Small business(es) were and are still the backbone of the national economy and employ enormous numbers of people that don't or won't live within a hundred miles of an Amazon fulfillment center or a Walmart Superstore.  These large, brightly lit targets for media scrutiny and leftist/statist "outrage" are targeted for precisely that reason.  Never mind what happens to the folks in "flyover country" as a result of all this. 

As a practical matter, the philosophy behind all this is the same as the one behind the "global warming" - "climate change" scam.  They use economic theories and computer modeling to go from where they perceive themselves to be now toward what they perceive as a better place or outcome.  Nevermind the fact that neither the economic theories or the computer models are backwards compatible.  You cannot take either the economic theories or the computer models, input known historic data and get them to reproduce known historic trends or data points. GIGO - garbage in - garbage out.  At least when earthworms do it they leave something useful but with these idiots, not so much.   

Its not a matter of you "living under a rock".  The only time a national news organization is interested in doing a story about a small business is when they exercise their constitutional right to refuse to do business under conditions they object to.  Their existence is not news - people routinely take small business(es) for granted.  The only way CNN would do a news story about a small business owner is if they can scream some sort of headline that plays to their biases and political agenda. 

As far as the actual numbers go - I'll do some digging and let you know what I come up with.  Just off the top of my head I think Walmart is the largest U.S. employer by number of employees - something like 1.5 million or so people employed in the U.S. ( worldwide figures are higher ).  But, add up the total number of U.S. employees of say, the top 30 largest companies by number of people employed and you still come up with less than 20 million employees.  The number of people employed in various government jobs is higher than that.  I believe the number of people that work for smaller companies or are self employed is larger than the two of those numbers combined.

The last number I heard from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was about 126 million people employed in the U.S. in what were considered full time jobs working at least 35 hours per week.  The overwhelming majority of those people work in what could be considered "small business".  I get the idea that the term "small business" can include companies with as many as 500 employees but it encompasses all the companies that have 5 employees as well.  It also includes all those who have started their own business and either work alone or with a spouse as a family enterprise.   

That number is just the full time employees - not counting part time employees who work twenty hours a week or less.

Thanks. 

Well, you have to admit that is a pretty vague question.  Favorite is definitely a relative term and these days so is "female".  .  .   

Man, I learn all kinds of stuff following this thread .   .    .     

And, they are NOT happy about it .  .  .   

We predicted this mess. Now we all have to live with it. Thanks feminism  .

So, we've moved beyond the hopelessly outdated concepts of reason, logic, Judeo-Christian ethics and morality and all of that into what?  Shall we now take up the cause of identity politics and situational ethics?   

I despise that kind of thing but if those are the new rules of the game going forward I will endeavor to use them to the fullest advantage. 

I think a case can be made that white men have proven to be reasonable successful at whatever they set out to achieve.  Imagine the outcome if they finally perceive themselves to be more threatened by a common enemy than by each other.   

Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be in the shoes of that common enemy, that's for sure .

Possibly.  I personally think that the recent spate of market swings in the 2% range are more the result of computerized trading programs and algorithm based analysis.   Institutional traders are able to move the market and the speed with which these trading systems react can result in a significant profit margin for those that use them.  When you are trading in the volume these folks are even a small move in equities prices can be lucrative.  They aren't called "day traders" anymore because they can execute multiple trades per minute.  All this leaves the vast majority of individual investors holding the bag at the end of the day.