Those "Robber Barons"

Yep, I've been thinking about this the past few days, since my post about the AP history standards and their biases.

If Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, James Hill, JP Morgan, etc. were "robber barons," can we fit that label, too, on the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, that Facebook founder (whose name I don't know), the guy who started Twitter/Tweets (whatever they are), etc.?

I think it's a relevant and important question to ask.  Which wealthy guys were/are "robber barons" and which weren't/aren't--and, a second question, why not?  My guess is any answer will reveal a prejudice, deliberate or otherwise, or ignorance.

As a corollary, I still haven't found anyone who can explain to me why CEOs and other corporate-types are "greedy" (and I might well agree that they are; how much is enough?), but professional athletes, Hollywood-types, hippy rock stars, etc. are not.  C'mon, how many tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars did that Tiger pitcher turn down?  "I have to think about taking care of my family" just doesn't wash.  How did the rest of us manage to "take care of our families" on tiny fractions of those amounts?  (And Hillary Clinton argued that we should be able to "chase our dreams" rather than take jobs we don't like, regardless if we have families for which to care.  Grow up and act like adults?  Who us?)

We have become a strange people......