http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/tom-perkins-commonwealth-1-percent-nazis-san-francisco

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Tom Perkins, cofounder of the storied Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, could have used a forum at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club to row back from his much-maligned comments comparing the treatment of America's wealthy by the left to that of Jews under the Nazis. Instead, the man who provided seed money for Amazon and Google doubled down, telling the audience that "I think the parallel holds."

It was hardly the only bombshell Perkins dropped during a Q&A with Fortune's Adam Lashinsky, provocatively entitled, "The War on the 1%." Asked to offer one idea that could change the world, Perkins proposed a change to Americans' voting rights: "You don't get to vote unless you pay $1 in taxes&#8230][INDENT]■"if Germany had American gun laws, there would have never been a Hitler"

■the Koch brothers are victims of "persecution"

■he couldn't get his start as a paper boy these days due to "child labor laws"

■Silicon Valley "is a meritocracy. Race has absolutely nothing to do with it."[/INDENT][/INDENT]

During the talk, the octagenarian VC suggested that his outbursts were part of being "in my midlife crisis now." At a subsequent press conference, he looked tired as he nursed a plastic cup of white wine. "I won't keep going on this," he assured a reporter who asked why he continues exposing himself to ridicule.

While acknowledging that wages have remained stagnant for decades despite huge increases in productivity, Perkins offered no solutions for what ails the middle class other than kneecapping teachers' unions and rekindling the spirit of 1980s Britain. "You need and we need another Margaret Thatcher," he told the press. "I've met Margaret Thatcher, actually. Charming lady. Look, free-market capitalism, it's what has created most of the wealth in the world, and it's the only way to proceed. Free. Market. Capitalism."

About halfway into the forum, Lashinsky asked whether Perkins might have lost touch with the real world. Perkins cheerfully acknowledged the possibility. "Philosophically," he said, "nobody can prove that they are connected to reality."
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