If you look at the wikipedia page for Sam Walton, the founding looks a little more nuanced:
"Walton went on to open more Ben Franklin Stores with the help of his brother, father-in-law, and brother-in-law."
Sam Walton's autobiography mentions that his father-in-law provided the initial capital (that was about it), and his brother played an insignificant role (like buying things from suppliers). His brother, who was younger, was more of a helper while Walton built his first store (a Ben Franklin store that he later sold and started Walmart on his own based largely on his Ben Franklin stores).
Obviously, but we're talking absolute terms here. Look at his examples (20 fingers etc). He's talking about the efficiency of sewing buttons, not about the efficiency of sewing buttons compared to the salary.
Actually, why don't you do this if you think it's all about politics. Get your favorite politician, see who their economic advisers are, then understand their views. Mankiw stated economic points that are accepted by a wide political spectrum.
"Except for some points of information, biomedical, and materials technology, it's not clear that our standard of living is as high now."
This is probably the most uninformed, illogical, and inept points I've ever read on HN. Third-world children are now texting their friends on mobile phones, instead of dying of hunger. You have no idea what it was like growing up in the 50s. Do you even know what "economic growth" even means? Do you understand how many consecutive periods of growth our economy has had?
Sorry, but that's not true at all. iTunes alone makes Apple over $1 billion in revenue per quarter. That's a lot of money and alone could almost vie for a Fortune 500 listing.
Revenue is irrelevant. The question is how much profit iTunes draws in. I don't believe that Apple has ever released exact figures, but I've always heard that iTunes is a fairly low-margin business for them, so it's contributions to Apple's total profits are probably much lower than the contributions from the Mac business. Granted, the App Store may draw in much higher margins, but talking about revenue is still missing the point.
Yeah, I exaggerated. But out of $20.34 billion in revenue this quarter, that revenue is still a sliver. That sliver isn't going to lit Steve's eyes up and get him to go all crazy. You don't get Apple levels of success by acting shortsighted or stupid.
I think it depends on the type of application you're building. A Twitter like application probably doesn't need as much hardware as something more complex.
and Wikipedia. I went through most of the list. It's right to me.