In 1776, a corporation was formed. Its incorporating document invested a certain group of people with the ability to make certain decisions about the way that corporation should be run. One of the things this group was permitted to do was decide on fees that must be paid in order to own shares of that corporation.

Somewhere along the line, the corporation’s executive and board have decided that these fees should be charged, in part, according to the number of shares owned by the individual shareholders; from another point of view, the fees are charged according to the dividend that the shareholders get from holding stock in the corporation.

Thus, a “lucky ducky” whose benefit from being a shareholder is mostly intangible - sure, that person has life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but that’s a baseline: the initial incorporators decided that - pays almost nothing for their meager shares. On the other hand, a “titan of industry”, who derives maximum benefit from the infrastructure set up from the corporation, including, quite often, direct cash payments from the share fees paid by others, has to pay a slightly higher percentage of his or her dividends in fees. In return, however, this corporation has a better chance of continuing to provide a very high return on investment to that titan of industry well into the future.

You can’t get something for nothing, and that includes participation in the greatest nation in the world TEE EM.