Wealth, Google, and a common sense description of corporate competition...

Why is wealth such a bad thing? It seem you are only allowed to want wealth in this nation, but you are not socially allowed to actually acheive it. I still struggle to see what the inherrant problem is with American companies in large scale operations. I'm talking about American oil, insurance, energy, technology, health, and auto companies... The people who complain about these huge industries don't realize that they are AMERICAN! Isn't having a strong AMERICAN company a good thing in this global market? Isn't it a great thing to have a company be able to employ a large amount of AMERICAN workers? Isn't it helpful to the rest of AMERICA to have the taxes that these AMERICAN companies provide? Why drive them away with political and social pressure, regulations, and lack of incetives?

Wealth is not a bad thing - sometimes companies do bad things with it though. Those actions, when left to public opposision will cease. Instead of bailing out a company who fails, you should let them fail, rebuild without the wastefulness that cause their downfalls, and let them be wealthy again. Bad actions are bad - but American wealth is great. People do not seem to separate the two.

Wealth breeds innovation. A great case for that is Google. In it's most recent push, it is getting into the wireless phone hardware industry. Hypothetically speaking, what happens if Google takes over the cell phone market by introducing free/cheap ad-based cell service using VOIP technology(GoogleVoice?) on a Google created, HTC manufactured handset? First of all, everyone would freak out. Customers would shop around for the best deal. Advertisers would participate in an instant. ATT, Verizon, and Sprint would lose such a large base they would have to lower fees to gain or retain customers. This means better devices, new technology, lower fees, and more revenue for the companies responsible and thier employees. GOOD-FOR-THEM! Yes, the other cell carriers may lose some because of this, but that means they will have to compete and come up with either something better or cheaper. This means more innovation, more advances, and cheaper services and good for the end consumer. BTW, unless this Jan 5th announcement is game-changing and will result in more wireless freedom, lower costs, or a huge jump in innovation - I think whatever it is could be a flop, or at least highly over-hyped.