I dream of the day that I can discover the various companies who have any data about me...

Agreed, sadly there’s no chance for the US to get this for the next 2.5 years at a minimum

and you really think that they will? you pretty sure will get the following response:

ok -- hidden in their database -- (date_deleted = now()) fixed.

That's exactly what GDPR is for - I can be somewhat sure they'll delete it, and and if I'm wrong and they do what you described, I'll laugh hard as they bleed money when discovered.

Yeah, the companies I know of who are implementing "right to be forgotten" because of GDPR are taking it 100% seriously and going through, in some cases, significant pains (dealing with legacy systems) to ensure compliance.

Well the problem is who will control it? Angela Merkel? Manuel Macron? Oettinger - the European Comissioner? Seriously.. nobody will control.