Occupy Wall Street as gone global. Essentially the American protest but in the context of the society they are in.
I put "Evil" as the tagline because essentially it appears the protests are against those who the protesters perceive as the ones responsible for what is wrong with the world.
Japan- Against nuclear power plants.
Phillipines- Against US Imperialism
Australia- Change the economic pecking order (akin to US protests)
Taiwan- Benefits for middle class (economic issue)
Italian protests broke into a Goldman Sachs in Milan.
I thought this quote from the above article was succinct in how the rich are dealing with the crisis:
The targets of the protesters' wrath are also unlikely to be around to feel it. The City of London, for example, is deserted at weekends as wealthy city workers head for the golf club, country house or enjoy a spot of rest and recreation.
This article also gives another example of how the protests are being treated:
“Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” one hedge-fund manager tells The New York Times. A bank executive says it’s “fringe groups” while a money manager calls them “just disgruntled people.” The money manager is particularly angry at New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand for not coming to their defense, despite Wall Street’s generous campaign contributions: “They need to understand who their constituency is.”
The above article draws a parallel with another movement in Latin America:
This report from Liberty Plaza connects tactics and philosophies surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement with similar movements in Latin America, from the popular assemblies and occupation of factories during Argentina's economic crisis in 2001-2002, to grassroots struggles for land in Brazil.
Well, people everywhere have alot to protest. The way we run the world is unsustainable and unjust, and I think people have finally begun to wake up to that. Of course they will be mocked, and dismissed, and attacked. I hope that they've reached a critical mass that will make it difficult to derail.
I've been finding democracynow.org to be a fabulous resource in keeping track of this movement. They've had amazing coverage, bringing reams of images and the voices of those down there to the world.
MY COLLEAGUE is right that a relatively small number of pedestrians deliberately stepping into traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge is probably not going to be an effective method of social protest or political activism. But I think he's wrong to use that episode as a general characterisation of what's going on with the Occupy Wall Street protests. And I think a comparison to the tea-party movement actually turns up plenty of potential similarities.
One thing that became clear to me in watching the development of the tea-party movement over the course of 2009-10 is that I'm not necessarily a good judge of what sorts of direct-action strategies are going to lead to mass movements with significant influence, and what sorts aren't. I would never have believed, watching Rick Santelli rant on the floor of the NYSE about the possibility that he might have to chip in to bail out a neighbour who was underwater on his mortgage, that this might be part of the seeding of a major political movement. Wall Street traders complaining about the possibility that anyone besides Wall Street traders might receive government assistance did not seem to me, at that moment in political history, like a discourse that was likely to catch on with the public. The invocation of a new Tea Party seemed like a slogan pitched to eighth graders working through the American history year in their junior-high curriculum. And, as tea-party rhetoric caught on and spread around the country, many of the things said and done under its rubric were...well, not very intelligent or attractive. People with very limited or idiosyncratic fringe understandings of the financial system were making passionate pitches to abolish the Federal Reserve. It seemed hard to imagine how those people could find common cause with the Wall Street traders who initially cheered Mr Santelli. And that's not even taking into account the birthers, or the get-your-government-hands-off-my-Medicare folks. How could these people seriously hope to get anything accomplished?
As it turns out, they did. You don't necessarily know, at the beginning of a movement that generates a lot of spontaneous grassroots energy, which direction it's going to go, who's going to get involved, or what its lasting effects will be. The various tea-party organisations have pulled plenty of silly stunts over the past two years, but they have also shifted the right wing of Congress dramatically to the right, virtually paralysing the country's legislature. Whatever ineffectual and indeed offensive, anti-intellectual nuttiness the tea-party movement embraced, it also effectively focused the political attention of dissatisfied conservatives on the spectre of government action, creating a space where all sorts of different actors could intervene and grow. To the extent the Occupy Wall Street protests are working, it's because they do the same thing, focusing attention on a different entity of tremendous power which the mass of Americans resent and fear: the financial industry. Many tea-partiers, of course, are no fans of Wall Street either, and there are plenty of people who would likely be at home in both a tea-party protest and the Occupy Wall Street protest.
Anyway, I would try not to make the same mistakes in assessing these protests that I did in assessing the tea-party protests two years ago. Many of those involved in the Liberty Plaza protests are veterans of earlier left-wing protests. This is hardly surprising; many tea-partiers had experience in the pro-life movement and other conservative causes. Currently, unions and established progressive organisations are taking advantage of the protests and can be expected to infuse them with more of an agenda and more representative organisational strategy, much as conservative interest groups did with the tea-party movement. At that point the Occupy Wall Street protests may become engines for more effective political mobilisation. Or they may flame out and disappear. It's hard to say at this point.
Honestly? If I weren't busy with life I might join that occupy whatever protest. We need serious reform in the form of political donations (bribes) by corporations, a monetary policy dedicated to increasing demand (we have lots of supply, but not enough demand-- and have had excess supply for decades), and less religious nutjobbery in general (hey, I have no problem with any religious people, but stop pushing your religious ideas into my life via lawmaking and committee-stuffing).
Honestly? If I weren't busy with life I might join that occupy whatever protest. We need serious reform in the form of political donations (bribes) by corporations, a monetary policy dedicated to increasing demand (we have lots of supply, but not enough demand-- and have had excess supply for decades), and less religious nutjobbery in general (hey, I have no problem with any religious people, but stop pushing your religious ideas into my life via lawmaking and committee-stuffing).
I do not believe I've ever agreed with you as much as I do at this particular moment. I feel guilty that I'm not a part of this.
Having that been said, these protests aren't going to change anything. I still think they're vital though toward effecting change overall. They've shown that people are getting sick of the current situation. Sick enough of it to uproot themselves and travel somewhere to make a point, as opposed to complaining about it on the internet or in their local coffee shop. That's going to give them the chance to meet in person and better organize. That's big. Honestly, I figured it would take the masses standing in line to get a loaf of bread before protests would even begin, but perhaps people aren't quite as complacent as I thought. I wish I wasn't.
Honestly? If I weren't busy with life I might join that occupy whatever protest. We need serious reform in the form of political donations (bribes) by corporations, a monetary policy dedicated to increasing demand (we have lots of supply, but not enough demand-- and have had excess supply for decades), and less religious nutjobbery in general (hey, I have no problem with any religious people, but stop pushing your religious ideas into my life via lawmaking and committee-stuffing).
I do not believe I've ever agreed with you as much as I do at this particular moment. I feel guilty that I'm not a part of this.
Having that been said, these protests aren't going to change anything. I still think they're vital though toward effecting change overall. They've shown that people are getting sick of the current situation. Sick enough of it to uproot themselves and travel somewhere to make a point, as opposed to complaining about it on the internet or in their local coffee shop. That's going to give them the chance to meet in person and better organize. That's big. Honestly, I figured it would take the masses standing in line to get a loaf of bread before protests would even begin, but perhaps people aren't quite as complacent as I thought. I wish I wasn't.
So, er...who are you and Melissia going to vote for, for President?
Melissia wrote:...and less religious nutjobbery in general (hey, I have no problem with any religious people, but stop pushing your religious ideas into my life via lawmaking and committee-stuffing).
Just about the only way you're accomplishing that politically is via some rather...unsavory methods.
Religiosity ebbs and flows with culture, for the most part.
Honestly? If I weren't busy with life I might join that occupy whatever protest.
I do not believe I've ever agreed with you as much as I do at this particular moment. I feel guilty that I'm not a part of this.
So, er...who are you and Melissia going to vote for, for President?
Who indeed.
Spoiler:
dogma wrote:Just about the only way you're accomplishing that politically is via some rather...unsavory methods.
Well, the protestors are in favor of some "rather unsavory methods." The anti-semitism and general anarchist tendencies of the movement are plainly evident.
biccat wrote:
Well, the protestors are in favor of some "rather unsavory methods." The anti-semitism and general anarchist tendencies of the movement are plainly evident.
I don't see how antisemitism and anarchism indicates advocacy of "unsavory methods" (the definition of which I imagine we will not agree on). One could be a perfectly well mannered antisemite who wishes to restrict Jewish rights by Amending the Constitution, or an Anarchists who wishes to repeal it via the same process.
I'm also confused as to how a movement that is often criticized for having no coherent message beyond "Angry!" can exhibit, across its breadth, antisemitic and anarchist tendencies. But I'm sure you merely misspoke, and weren't trying to use labels, and guilt by association, to make a political statement.
I also like the Obama picture, though I'm sort of wondering what a "real job" is, though I generally wonder that whenever the cliche is used.
Why, I'm going to vote for... uh.. well, that's the thing, there's no candidate that I've seen that isn't either a nutcase or solely interested in lining his/her and their sponsoring corporation's pockets with taxpayer gold.
Buddy Roemer talked a good fight on the Daily Show a couple months ago. The backing of the Faith and Freedom Coalition is a little troubling, but I'm willing to tolerate a zealot if it gets us true reform. Don't get me wrong, I'm not holding my breath for him, but we'll see what he looks like a little closer to time. Call it quiet optimism.
dogma wrote:I don't see how antisemitism and anarchism indicates advocacy of "unsavory methods" (the definition of which I imagine we will not agree on). One could be a perfectly well mannered antisemite who wishes to restrict Jewish rights by Amending the Constitution, or an Anarchists who wishes to repeal it via the same process.
While you may have a point, philosophically, practically speaking anarchists and anti-semites tend not to be the most reasonable people in the world.
dogma wrote:I'm also confused as to how a movement that is often criticized for having no coherent message beyond "Angry!" can exhibit, across its breadth, antisemitic and anarchist tendencies. But I'm sure you merely misspoke, and weren't trying to use labels, and guilt by association, to make a political statement.
Because no one on this board ever makes those types of broad-based assertions of right-wingers. This must be more of your selective outrage.
dogma wrote:I also like the Obama picture, though I'm sort of wondering what a "real job" is, though I generally wonder that whenever the cliche is used.
I saw it on one of my favorite VRWC blogs. It amused me.
biccat wrote:
While you may have a point, philosophically, practically speaking anarchists and anti-semites tend not to be the most reasonable people in the world.
I generally think that's true of anyone with strong convictions, which is also a fair description, in most cases, of protesters in general.
biccat wrote:
Because no one on this board ever makes those types of broad-based assertions of right-wingers. This must be more of your selective outrage.
I consistently respond to those points as well (I have a history of objecting to charges of the Tea Party's racism), which leads me to believe its an issue of selective memory on your part (or a combination of the two), though I'm sure you won't agree.
Additionally, it most likely isn't the best idea to respond to sweeping generalizations about a political group you're sympathetic towards, with sweeping generalizations to one you're hostile towards.
Additionally, it most likely isn't the best idea to respond to sweeping generalizations about a political group you're sympathetic towards, with sweeping generalizations to one you're hostile towards.
Common sense is not a requirement to post in OT...
Melissia wrote:...and less religious nutjobbery in general (hey, I have no problem with any religious people, but stop pushing your religious ideas into my life via lawmaking and committee-stuffing).
Just about the only way you're accomplishing that politically is via some rather...unsavory methods.
Religiosity ebbs and flows with culture, for the most part.
It's practically institutionalized here, what with the Texas Board of Education...
They're as uncorrupt as Rick Perry is capable of winning a debate.
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Frazzled wrote:So, er...who are you and Melissia going to vote for, for President?
I don't know. If McCain was running and not running as a Bush clone, him. But that seems unlikely...
If it's Cain, Perry, etc. though, I'm voting for Obama simply because of the lesser of two evils concept. I shudder to think what the tea party would accomplish with both a majority and the president. It could quite possibly set the country back a few decades. Romney might be moderate enough to reign in the more stupidly extremist members of the party, so it'd really depend on which of the two of them have more substance in their platforms and debate...
Hell, by now, Obama at least can claim he has more experience actually governing and running things than Cain does, even though he was inexperienced when he got in to office.
Melissia wrote:
They're as uncorrupt as Rick Perry is capable of winning a debate.
Of the Republican nomination, if his numbers continue on their current course.
Just based on campaign acumen, its pretty obvious that Romney is the only present (serious) candidate used to playing to a nation audience.
Melissia wrote:
If it's Cain, Perry, etc. though, I'm voting for Obama simply because of the lesser of two evils concept. I shudder to think what the tea party would accomplish with both a majority and the president. It could quite possibly set the country back a few decades. Romney might be moderate enough to reign in the more stupidly extremist members of the party, so it'd really depend on which of the two of them have more substance in their platforms and debate...
I would guess that, even if Cain or Perry is elected, that the Democrats won't lose the filibuster in the Senate. Indeed, I would be surprised if they lost the majority, though the House will probably become more Republican.
But then again, if Cain or Perry wins the nomination, Obama will have a far easier time winning the presidency anyway because they're not centrist enough to pick up independents while at least Obama can claim he's tried to cross the isle (much to the chagrin of his own party), even if his attempts were usually rebuffed.
If Cain DOES get into the presidential seat, I'd damned well hope his tax plan is filibustered to death. Emperor that thing is attrocious.
I hope something does come of this, but I am sceptical. The main problem I have with everything that is currently happening is the fact that when the going is good we privatise the profits, but when the gak hits the fan we socialise the losses. And then demonize the public sector to cover.
So, yeah, hippie scum want to whinge, but I kinda agree with them, this time.
Melissia wrote:But then again, if Cain or Perry wins the nomination, Obama will have a far easier time winning the presidency anyway because they're not centrist enough to pick up independents while at least Obama can claim he's tried to cross the isle (much to the chagrin of his own party), even if his attempts were usually rebuffed.
If Cain DOES get into the presidential seat, I'd damned well hope his tax plan is filibustered to death. Emperor that thing is attrocious.
I doubt he would even find much support in his own party for getting it to the floor, at least not in any approaching its current form. I think he knows that too, and that his campaign basically decided that he needed some kind of brand piece to set himself apart from the field.
Besides, Romney will just say something to the effect of "Last time we elected an outsider (Obama), and look what happened!"
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Da Boss wrote:I hope something does come of this, but I am sceptical. The main problem I have with everything that is currently happening is the fact that when the going is good we privatise the profits, but when the gak hits the fan we socialise the losses. And then demonize the public sector to cover.
So, yeah, hippie scum want to whinge, but I kinda agree with them, this time.
Well, the losses are always social, that's just the nature of living in an interconnected social system. But yes, privatizing profits generally leads to a dangerous centralization of fiscal power, which helps no one; not even the people at the top in the long wrong (imbalanced economic systems tend to create highly unstable states, absent an iron fist).
Melissia wrote:...and less religious nutjobbery in general (hey, I have no problem with any religious people, but stop pushing your religious ideas into my life via lawmaking and committee-stuffing).
Just about the only way you're accomplishing that politically is via some rather...unsavory methods.
Religiosity ebbs and flows with culture, for the most part.
It's practically institutionalized here, what with the Texas Board of Education...
They're as uncorrupt as Rick Perry is capable of winning a debate.
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Frazzled wrote:So, er...who are you and Melissia going to vote for, for President?
I don't know. If McCain was running and not running as a Bush clone, him. But that seems unlikely...
If it's Cain, Perry, etc. though, I'm voting for Obama simply because of the lesser of two evils concept. I shudder to think what the tea party would accomplish with both a majority and the president. It could quite possibly set the country back a few decades. Romney might be moderate enough to reign in the more stupidly extremist members of the party, so it'd really depend on which of the two of them have more substance in their platforms and debate...
Hell, by now, Obama at least can claim he has more experience actually governing and running things than Cain does, even though he was inexperienced when he got in to office.
Yet, you sympathisize with the OccupyDumpwater crowd. Obama has received the most campaign donations from Wall Street in history. He just signed three free trade agreements.
Watched an interview last night where an "Occupier" was saying we need to get all the evil Zionists Bankers out of the USA. Priceless.
Frazzled wrote:He just signed three free trade agreements.
Which is a good thing, not a bad one.
One of the agreements, for example, forced a certain South American country to start to adapt new safety regulations in their copper mines, for example-- definitely appaudible. While it will raise the prices of that comany's exports, at the same time, having more copper will lower prices here; we're in a bit of a shortage, which is why you see things like people stealing copper off of church items and so on. Having more in the market will help alleviate the price and, as copper is a very commonly used material, help a lot of industries.
Don't forget that I'm a capitalist by heart, I just don't agree with megacorporation-focused capitalism that the US government has been pushing for the last few decades... I think smaller companies are the answer-- more competition, more innovation, more jobs,and better for the country overall.
Obama's campaign money from wall street is worrying-- then again, republicans have long accepted just as much money from the same donors (the party of big business, essentially) so I don't really see an alternative on that end. That will have to be solved through political donation regulation reform. In fact, I kinda like the idea of outright outlawing campaign contributions from corporations, myself... but that's about as likely as Perry becmoing democrat.
Why? Hippies don't make anything, or for that matter, do anything. Smoking dope and refusing to bath is anot a job occupation, unless your a hobo of course.
Frazzled wrote:
Watched an interview last night where an "Occupier" was saying we need to get all the evil Zionists Bankers out of the USA. Priceless.
And I've seen interviews where farmers genuinely believe they were abducted by aliens. I've also seen interviews where Christians believe that the Rapture will occur for reals this time this Friday. Does that mean that all farmers believe in aliens/that they will get abducted by aliens or that all Christians believe that they alone can predict events of divine intervention, when they've been wrong so many times before?
My point is that one person shouldn't spoil the message. Just because they found the most unhinged nut (and you KNOW they looked hard for him) to embarrass himself in the name of ratings/diminishing their cause doesn't mean they're all like that.
This is all assuming it was even a real interview and not staged.
Say what you will about Hobo's, but they are a proud and noble bottom class! I'd really like to see National Geographic do a piece on them with a follow up on Hippies.
From what I understand the Occupy Bay Street (Toronto's financial distict) is a bit of a joke. A small rag tag group sitting around with a few getting high. They can barely get a chant going and don't really have an idea as to why they're even there.
Infreak wrote:Say what you will about Hobo's, but they are a proud and noble bottom class! I'd really like to see National Geographic do a piece on them with a follow up on Hippies.
From what I understand the Occupy Bay Street (Toronto's fincial distict) is a bit of a joke. A small rag tag group sitting around with a few getting high. They can barely get a chant going and don't really have an idea as to why they're even there.
Wait a month and they won't be there.
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daedalus wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Watched an interview last night where an "Occupier" was saying we need to get all the evil Zionists Bankers out of the USA. Priceless.
And I've seen interviews where farmers genuinely believe they were abducted by aliens. I've also seen interviews where Christians believe that the Rapture will occur for reals this time this Friday. Does that mean that all farmers believe in aliens/that they will get abducted by aliens or that all Christians believe that they alone can predict events of divine intervention, when they've been wrong so many times before?
My point is that one person shouldn't spoil the message. Just because they found the most unhinged nut (and you KNOW they looked hard for him) to embarrass himself in the name of ratings/diminishing their cause doesn't mean they're all like that.
This is all assuming it was even a real interview and not staged.
kronk wrote:If you collapse from exhaustion on a campaign bus, you're a dedicated statesman.
If you collapse from exhaustion every night in a park, you're a hobo.
If you collapse from exhaustion at your high school reunion, you're living in the past.
If you collapse from exhaustion after a day at Disney, you're a parent.
If you collapse from exhaustion after climbing the stairs, you need to lay off the Doritoes.
If you collapse after exhaustion from walking an ancient wiener dog 200 yards in 2 hours because the little bastard meanders about a foot a minute without his personal seeing eye dog, you're Frazzled.
I walked past the rather sad-looking tent 'village' (more of a small hamlet) belonging to Occupy Manchester this morning on my way to work. It was lashing down with rain, as per usual. I couldn't resist a sly chuckle, if only because I find the overly-earnest hilarious.
In my opinion, some of those people looked like they need to 'occupy' a shower. And after that, the Jobcentre.
This is pretty much exactly how I feel about the ones in the US.
For example:
Unfortunately, almost no problem can be productively conceived in this way. A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization. They will have nothing to say about the way Americans have overconsumed and overborrowed. These are problems that implicate a much broader swath of society than the top 1 percent.
While some of this is insightful, I have to question the reliability of a polling firm that describes what could only be a person walking around a protest asking for interviews a "random sample".
The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.
dogma wrote:While some of this is insightful, I have to question the reliability of a polling firm that describes what could only be a person walking around a protest asking for interviews a "random sample".
The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.
WAA! Thats from the Wall Street Journal! Thats the Tokyo Rose of EVIL WALL STREET THATS EVILLY EVILLLLL!!!!
Well they are paper of notice for evil Wall Street Bankers, who evidently are the cause of all that is wrong with the world (they and GBush of course). in fact, because all the evil bankers read it, they are EVIL*2!
I hate to be the fatalist here, but I don't think this will accomplish anything. It's a fine display, but in the end, there will always be the greedy, the poor, and the powerful.
Kasrkai wrote:I hate to be the fatalist here, but I don't think this will accomplish anything. It's a fine display, but in the end, there will always be the greedy, the poor, and the powerful.
When you have one group saying 1% of the population is the cause of all the population's problems, thats not a recipe to fix those problems. Its a recipe for Kristalnacht.
Frazzled wrote:
When you have one group saying 1% of the population is the cause of all the population's problems, thats not a recipe to fix those problems. Its a recipe for Kristalnacht.
Well, when that 1% is generally composed of the wealthiest and most powerful members of society its closer to revolution than it is to genocide.
Frazzled wrote:
When you have one group saying 1% of the population is the cause of all the population's problems, thats not a recipe to fix those problems. Its a recipe for Kristalnacht.
Well, when that 1% is generally composed of the wealthiest and most powerful members of society its closer to revolution than it is to genocide.
I didn't say genocide, but thats about right. Usually thats the next day. the 1% usually end up not breathing or voluntarily being re-educated at the local enlightenment center, if they lose of course.
Which is precisely the problem. There are no jobs despite large companies sitting on record amounts of cash, and banks continuing to post high profits.
Where are the jobs?
It the 1% wants this all to go away, they can just create a bunch of decent jobs here instead of overseas, and get these people working. When they are too busy thinking about how to improve a companies bottom line and get promoted, then they won't have time to think about revolution and class disparity. If they do, they will be too shackled to the "Golden Handcuffs" to do anythign about it. It is the unemployed who are dangerous to the Status Quo.
Of course, that that "could" endanger their profits a bit, but would also allow them to maintain their system for a while longer. Corporate overlords of the past knew that, now apparently they are too stupid and greedy. Today's corporate ovelrods, aren't as smart as the corporate overlords of yesteryear.
All of this crying about the Top 1% yet there are no complaints about actors, musicians or athletes. Things that make you go hmm.
I resent these fools speaking for me, I am by no means wealthy, bit someone making a milli doesn't bother me. Did they steal it from me? No? Damn, guess I'll go complain about the banks giving me loans for an overpriced and overhyped school. That masters degree in Fine Arts from Columbia was such a great decision.
Frazzled wrote:
I didn't say genocide, but thats about right. Usually thats the next day. the 1% usually end up not breathing or voluntarily being re-educated at the local enlightenment center, if they lose of course.
Not when the 1% are simply "the wealthy". What you're describing is more akin to using ethnicity or religion as a scapegoat than it is to class revolution, historically anyway. There have been exceptions, of course (Nicaragua stands out), though not all that many.
Which is precisely the problem. There are no jobs despite large companies sitting on record amounts of cash, and banks continuing to post high profits.
Where are the jobs?
china, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, and interestingly Germany.
It the 1% wants this all to go away, they can just create a bunch of decent jobs here instead of overseas, and get these people working. When they are too busy thinking about how to improve a companies bottom line and get promoted, then they won't have time to think about revolution and class disparity. If they do, they will be too shackled to the "Golden Handcuffs" to do anythign about it. It is the unemployed who are dangerous to the Status Quo.
You do know thats now how hiring works...right? You have taken at least one economics course...right?
Of course, that that "could" endanger their profits a bit, but would also allow them to maintain their system for a while longer. Corporate overlords of the past knew that, now apparently they are too stupid and greedy. Today's corporate ovelrods, aren't as smart as the corporate overlords of yesteryear.
And then China will crush them.
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dogma wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
I didn't say genocide, but thats about right. Usually thats the next day. the 1% usually end up not breathing or voluntarily being re-educated at the local enlightenment center, if they lose of course.
Not when the 1% are simply "the wealthy". What you're describing is more akin to using ethnicity or religion as a scapegoat than it is to class revolution, historically anyway. There have been exceptions, of course (Nicaragua stands out), though not all that many.
No one appreciates chaos for it's own sake anymore. I made a playlist for some of my occupier friends in Melbourne, if for nothing but that. I have to think that drawing attention helps at least a little bit.
The Bolsheviks killed off the royal family, and Stalin killed off political opponents, but neither targeted the wealthy for extermination.
Frazzled wrote:
Cambodia
Pol Pot didn't purge the wealthy either.
Frazzled wrote:
North Korea
Neither did Kim il-Sung
Frazzled wrote:
Cuba
Or Castro.
Frazzled wrote:
Nicaragua
I already said this is one of the few cases in which purging the wealthy occurred, though largely because "the wealthy" could be swapped for "the Somozas".
Frazzled wrote:
China
Mao revolted, sure, but again did not target the wealthy for a purge.
You're confusing communist revolts with "kill all the rich people."
Frazzled wrote:You do know thats now how hiring works...right? You have taken at least one economics course...right?
I wouldn't know, have they been hiring?
Oh.
No.
They haven't.
What we DO have is record corporate profits, record unemployment, wages that aren't keeping up with inflation, and a tax system that heavily favors corporations and those whom make money with money instead of doing something productive.
And so people, including me, are angry. I damned well hope there's a job at the end of my Chemistry degree, or I might end up doing something I'll regret..
*Being angry doesn't create jobs (ok security jobs maybe).
*Someone having more money than you doesn't create jobs. They can give you their money or you can steal their money, but you haven't created a single job.
*Companies don't create jobs, just to create jobs. They create positions when they have a need for those positions, and the cash flows/busines case supports its.
Frazzled wrote:*Being angry doesn't create jobs (ok security jobs maybe).
Neither are corporations.
Frazzled wrote:*Someone having more money than you doesn't create jobs.
They're able to by hiring others.
Frazzled wrote:*Companies don't create jobs, just to create jobs. They create positions when they have a need for those positions, and the cash flows/busines case supports its.
So what you're saying is that these companies, because they have no reason to hire, are useless to the American public, so we should not give one gak about how our laws effect them.
Sounds good to me. Frak them, they aren't helping the situation.
Melissia wrote:
Sounds good to me. Frak them, they aren't helping the situation.
Well, they help my situation, but then I have a portfolio.
Though you are correct, they aren't helping the unemployed. But, that isn't their job, that's the job of government (braces for libertarian flaming). However, you can't just screw corporations over, that doesn't help anyone, so you have to consider their interests.
Melissia wrote: Sounds good to me. Frak them, they aren't helping the situation.
Well, they help my situation, but then I have a portfolio.
Though you are correct, they aren't helping the unemployed. But, that isn't their job, that's the job of government (braces for libertarian flaming). However, you can't just screw corporations over, that doesn't help anyone, so you have to consider their interests.
Oh, I wasn't thinking screw them over. Just ignore them in favor of someone whom WILL solve the problem and stop favoring them because it's not working now and hasn't really ever worked.
Melissia wrote:Oh, I wasn't thinking screw them over. Just ignore them in favor of someone whom WILL solve the problem and stop favoring them because it's not working now and hasn't really ever worked.
Ah, fair point then, though I wouldn't say that ignoring them is right approach; though relative to the present period it might be a fair recommendation. Certainly the issue is one of balance, or at least a balance people will accept, and that appears to be something that does not presently exist.
Either way, I'm pleased because political tumult means I'll have plenty of work going forward.
Which is precisely the problem. There are no jobs despite large companies sitting on record amounts of cash, and banks continuing to post high profits.
Where are the jobs?
Why? You looking for a job? I could get you a job with my company tomorrow. There are actually plenty of jobs here. I should know, I was job-searching less than 3 months ago - there was no shortage then. The private sector in the UK has actually not been too bad at creating jobs in recent months.
Sure, the situation might be different over there in the States, but then, I wasn't talking about the States. Also, I'm not convinced that banks posting healthy profits is a particularly bad thing, especially if they're state-owned. Even if they aren't, it's in all of our interests for the institutions to remain healthy. It would be disastrous if another major bank went to the wall.
But record profits combined with job losses and stagnating wages which can't even match inflation IS a bad thing.
This is exactly why there's no consumer confidence. The average consumer is having less and less money to spend, and (in the US) a harder time finding jobs, with real unemployment being quite a bit higher than the government's reported unemployment numbers (such as govt. saying 9% when the real number is 15-20%).
Melissia wrote:Record profits by itself is not bad, sure.
But record profits combined with job losses and stagnating wages which can't even match inflation IS a bad thing.
This is exactly why there's no consumer confidence. The average consumer is having less and less money to spend, and (in the US) a harder time finding jobs, with real unemployment being quite a bit higher than the government's reported unemployment numbers (such as govt. saying 9% when the real number is 15-20%).
How, in your opinion, would consumer confidence be affected by another run on a major high-street bank (as in the case of Northern Rock) or the collapse of another major financial institution (see Lehman Brothers)? When people are already being squeezed, the prospect of their savings potentially going up in smoke is not something I'm prepared to tolerate. Are you? I doubt that. Don't get me wrong, it's easy to look at one side and see people struggling to get by, and to be mad when you look to the other side and see banks doing reasonably well. I get that. What I don't get, is why people would be so keen to knee-cap a major cornerstone of their country's economy at a time when that same economy is looking so precarious. Do you think spooking the markets by taking punitive measures against banks is going to help the recovery? I don't. It just doesn't make sense to me. We've got to be prudent in our public spending, and that means people will lose their jobs, but we can cushion the blow by supporting the private sector. The UK has shown that this can be done, as we HAVE been doing it. We are recovering slowly, sure, but it's sustainable and built on solid foundations.
One of the ways in which we can support the private sector is by nurturing market confidence - attacking our banking sector is not the way to go about it. Neither is stimulus, at least, not in this context. That's a different discussion, though.
Albatross wrote:How, in your opinion, would consumer confidence be affected by another run on a major high-street bank
Why do you support the logically fallacious point that you either prop you the banks at the expense of everyone who actually needs help, or you push them into trash can and kick them over?
I never said these things you think I'm saying. You are wrong.
If me pointing out that you are arguing with someone other than me (because I never said that) pisses you off, you probably shouldn't be debating in the first place...
I hear a lot of complaints and rhetoric from these protests, but not a lot of solutions.
I get that people are mad, and a growing number of people are getting desperate. Desperate, mad people do desperate, mad things. They do not want to do them, and anybody else who likes to sleep at night without worrying about their homes and families doesn't want those mad, desperate things.
Class war and eating the rich (two phrases I've heard a lot over the past few weeks,) aren't good solutions. They don't allow us to change the government to a more equitable system, they only allow people to pick a target and blame them carte blanche for all the reasons their lives aren't the best.
I'm not attacking anyone here, but my overall impression from reports on these protests is that people are mad, but expect a solution to rise up out of that angry soil. I think they'll be dissapointed in that.
Melissia wrote:If me pointing out that you are arguing with someone other than me (because I never said that) pisses you off, you probably shouldn't be debating in the first place...
Right, one last thing... I never said that you did. This isn't a debate. It's not an argument. It's a discussion. There is absolutely no need to be as hostile as you are with such tedious regularity. It is this hostility that has led me to place you on ignore. That sort of behaviour is just boring to read.
To clarify (not that it should be necessary): You rightly said that consumer confidence is lagging. My post was meant to address this issue within the wider context of the punitive measures against banks (and very loosely-defined 'fat-cats') that the 'Occupy' groups seem to be demanding. I was asking you genuine questions and you responded with your usual anti-social bs.
Melissia wrote:Solutions ARE rising out of the anger. The debate is more "which ones will work"...
What are these 'Solutions'?
People can debate till they're blue in the face but A. They won't ever agree upon a course of action and B. No-one in power will take the slightest bit of notice.
Alba is right when he says that we should leave the banks alone for a while.... Although (at least here in the UK) we do need a government that will keep a tighter rein on the 'investment' banks. The ConDems current proposals for 'Ring-Fencing' are laughable.
The thing is J, I don't see any alternative to separating the investment arms of banks from their high-street operations. The latter need to be tighter than a duck's arse, over-capitalised, if anything. The former need to invest, as they are a major source of equity for all sorts of things...
...But never the twain should meet. HBOS should not be able to gamble with my wedding fund.
Melissia wrote:Solutions ARE rising out of the anger. The debate is more "which ones will work"...
What are these 'Solutions'?
Well, the ones I've suggested are campaign finance reform (such as, but not limited to, outright outlawing corporate donations), focusing efforts on small business as opposed to big (small businesses are generally more innovative than big ones, and having a few big ones leads to far less competition), focusing tax and financial reform on increasing demand instead of increasing supply (IE, tax breaks for corporations and the rich are the wrong way to go, as proven by the fact that it isn't wroking now), etc.
If all you look at are the protests, sure, that's all you'll see-- a few catchy phrases and angry people. But you could instead try talking to people who support the idea....
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Albatross wrote:I was asking you genuine questions
Questions that were utterly irrelevant to me. It's like if someone asked Obama "why do you support communism" and then got pissed off when he responded "I don't."
Wow. Alot of cynicism, alot of dismissal, alot of belittling and apathy. Seems to me like history is being made, and many people aren't keeping up. The banks, the president, the 1% - they are behind the curve. So are alot of regular joes. Things are changing, this is part of a global movement. The 21st century will be the Century of Democracy, and personally, I'm exited to be witnessing the start of a new world.
Albatross wrote:The thing is J, I don't see any alternative to separating the investment arms of banks from their high-street operations. The latter need to be tighter than a duck's arse, over-capitalised, if anything. The former need to invest, as they are a major source of equity for all sorts of things...
...But never the twain should meet. HBOS should not be able to gamble with my wedding fund.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, actually dismantling all those banks into 'bank' and 'investment houses' would be a political nightmare, though. I mean, I saw the fight accounting firms put up to have audit and financial services properly* seperated, and that was just from the relatively minimal political connections of accounting firms. The banks can't be tackled in the same way.
There's also a whole load of people in the US who have recently gotten in the habit of freaking out ridiculously at the suggestion of government doing anything, and a whole lot of people on the other side who find it a lot easier to talk about fantastical dreams of revolution against the capitalist oppressors. The net result is that practical modifications to the system become near impossible.
*A new business model has developed in the last couple of decades in accounting, where the minimally profitable audit services are used as a way to sell highly profitable financial services from the same company. Predictably, this led to compromised audit reports, which in turn led to Enron.
Frazzled wrote:*Being angry doesn't create jobs (ok security jobs maybe).
Neither are corporations.
Frazzled wrote:*Someone having more money than you doesn't create jobs.
They're able to by hiring others.
Frazzled wrote:*Companies don't create jobs, just to create jobs. They create positions when they have a need for those positions, and the cash flows/busines case supports its.
So what you're saying is that these companies, because they have no reason to hire, are useless to the American public, so we should not give one gak about how our laws effect them.
Sounds good to me. Frak them, they aren't helping the situation.
You do realize that if you "Frak them" lots of people get unemployed right? Unless there are magical mystery jobs sprinkled with faery dust there are either corporate jobs or government jobs. Corporations aren't "them." Corporations are us.*
*Unless of course you're a hippy or government employee, in which case, never mind.
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Melissia wrote:Solutions ARE rising out of the anger. The debate is more "which ones will work"...
Horse gak.
Taxing the rich, eating the rich, driving the zionist bankers out of the USA, and killing the fed are not solutions to anyone except maybe Chavez. How's that cancer Chavez?
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murdog wrote:Wow. Alot of cynicism, alot of dismissal, alot of belittling and apathy. Seems to me like history is being made, and many people aren't keeping up. The banks, the president, the 1% - they are behind the curve. So are alot of regular joes. Things are changing, this is part of a global movement. The 21st century will be the Century of Democracy, and personally, I'm exited to be witnessing the start of a new world.
Frazzled wrote:You do realize that if you "Frak them" lots of people get unemployed right?
So basically the same situation we're already in, yes?
Oh wait. Yes. that is the situation we're in. Continuing to do the same thing (tax breaks and other favors to corporations), which has a long history of failure as well as not working right now, and expecting different results-- isn't there an old adage about what this is? Something about insanity?
murdog wrote:Wow. Alot of cynicism, alot of dismissal, alot of belittling and apathy. Seems to me like history is being made, and many people aren't keeping up. The banks, the president, the 1% - they are behind the curve. So are alot of regular joes. Things are changing, this is part of a global movement. The 21st century will be the Century of Democracy, and personally, I'm exited to be witnessing the start of a new world.
@sebster - Couldn't agree more. It seems like the only sensible option is the least practical - to facilitate any sort of bank 'break-up', we'd have to rely on the banks in question being willing to make themselves a less attractive investment vehicle, because it's the investment side of the operations that generate the lion's share of returns for their shareholders. I can't see those particular turkeys voting for Christmas any time soon.
Frazzled wrote:You do realize that if you "Frak them" lots of people get unemployed right?
So basically the same situation we're already in, yes?
Oh wait. Yes. that is the situation we're in. Continuing to do the same thing (tax breaks and other favors to corporations), which has a long history of failure as well as not working right now, and expecting different results-- isn't there an old adage about what this is? Something about insanity?
No its not, not at all. The more you crush corporations the higher unemployement will be. Your ultimate goal of frakking them would create 70% unemployment. brilliant.
Albatross wrote:The thing is J, I don't see any alternative to separating the investment arms of banks from their high-street operations. The latter need to be tighter than a duck's arse, over-capitalised, if anything. The former need to invest, as they are a major source of equity for all sorts of things...
...But never the twain should meet. HBOS should not be able to gamble with my wedding fund.
See we aren't that different after all. We agree on this completely.
Thanks for the offer on helping me get a job. I have one, and it is pretty good. It's at a bank. I am "Teh EEEEVIL!"
That doesn't change the fact that in the states, "real" wages have been declining since 1977. I have never lived in a time where I could reasonably expect wages to increase faster than other factors. How long can that last before something breaks? We were all able to mask it for a long time by putting more peope to work (i.e. women and teens) and then by taking debt from our equity. Now what are we going to do to mask it?
I know, lower the legal working age to 10 and get those pre-teens into the job market!
Frazzled wrote:No its not, not at all. The more you crush corporations
Whoever said anything about that? Oh wait no one, go back and read.
So what do you mean by frakking corporations? Offering them daisies?
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Easy E wrote:
Albatross wrote:The thing is J, I don't see any alternative to separating the investment arms of banks from their high-street operations. The latter need to be tighter than a duck's arse, over-capitalised, if anything. The former need to invest, as they are a major source of equity for all sorts of things...
...But never the twain should meet. HBOS should not be able to gamble with my wedding fund.
See we aren't that different after all. We agree on this completely.
Thanks for the offer on helping me get a job. I have one, and it is pretty good. It's at a bank. I am "Teh EEEEVIL!"
That doesn't change the fact that in the states, "real" wages have been declining since 1977. I have never lived in a time where I could reasonably expect wages to increase faster than other factors. How long can that last before something breaks? We were all able to mask it for a long time by putting more peope to work (i.e. women and teens) and then by taking debt from our equity. Now what are we going to do to mask it?
I know, lower the legal working age to 10 and get those pre-teens into the job market!
Frazzled wrote:No its not, not at all. The more you crush corporations
Whoever said anything about that? Oh wait no one, go back and read.
So what do you mean by frakking corporations? Offering them daisies?
BEHOLD FOR THE ANSWER IS...!
Melissia wrote:
dogma wrote:
Melissia wrote:
Sounds good to me. Frak them, they aren't helping the situation.
Well, they help my situation, but then I have a portfolio.
Though you are correct, they aren't helping the unemployed. But, that isn't their job, that's the job of government (braces for libertarian flaming). However, you can't just screw corporations over, that doesn't help anyone, so you have to consider their interests.
Oh, I wasn't thinking screw them over. Just ignore them in favor of someone whom WILL solve the problem and stop favoring them because it's not working now and hasn't really ever worked.
... already stated by me in a post almost immediately following the one you are raging so hard about.
So gak or get off the pot. What are you actually recommending? This is sophistic nonsense and why this OccupyDumpwater movement is balls as the Brits would say.
WHAT THE feth DO YOU ACTUALLY CONCRETELY WANT TO DO???
Frazzled wrote:So gak or get off the pot. What are you actually recommending?
... how many times do I have to answer this question before you finally get it?
I know you don't like reading and have a flair for the dramatic, Frazzled, but I've repeated myself numerous times. That you refuse to read is your failure, not mine. But I'll repeat again, with quotes from three separate posts on three separate pages of this thread:
... IE campaign finance reform or whatever you want to call it has been a big issue for me, that I've stated numerous times in this thread, including-- though not exclusively-- the idea of outlawing all campaign contributions from corporations.
Melissia wrote:a monetary policy dedicated to increasing demand
... is something I've mentioned numerous times. Supply-side economics-- IE trickle-down policies-- is a lie that politicians tell people to get them to support them even as theyr'e putting in policies which only benefit corporations and the already-rich. It hasn't worked... and it's not going to, either. Tax cuts, stimulus packages, and other economic plans should be focused on increasing the spending power of the common person, thus increasing demand and thus bettering our economy.
Melissia wrote:focusing efforts on small business as opposed to big
... is something I've consistently supported throughout my stay on Dakka, so this is hardly new. Lower taxes on small businesses, patent reform with an eye on helping small businesses and preventing patent predation, simplifying paperwork, reducing monopolies or oligopolies, and so on.
You mustn't be an Occupier then. None of these statements, outside of limiting speech by corporations (fine by me but limit unions too) is on the Occupied agenda.
However your concept of tax cuts is supply side. How Republican of you...
Frazzled wrote:You mustn't be an Occupier then. None of these statements, outside of limiting speech by corporations (fine by me but limit unions too) is on the Occupied agenda.
The fact that US Government fiscal policy is focused on benefitting the rich is constantly mentioned by the Occupy Whatever movement. I just worded it more intelligently than the average protestor is capable of.
The small business bit can also be extrapolated from the Occupy Whatever's hatred of Wall-Street and corporations, as well as with the fact that small businesses hire more private sector employees than big businesses. Again, I dont' really expect protesters to state their positions eloquently and intelligently. Certainly the Tea Party protesters didn't (and still haven't).
But that doesn't mean that there is nothing the movement can support.
Frazzled wrote:However your concept of tax cuts is supply side.
No it isn't. Supply-side tax cuts focus on corporations and those with money, believing that the benefit will "trickle down" to everyone else.
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:TBF, I'm seeing a lot of "That will never work!" but not a lot of "This is how we can fix the thing that is objectively broken and unsustainable."
Its hard to even start the argument when one group is saying its all the fault of 1% of the population, that evil corporations are evilly evil, banks are evillyevilly evil *2, and that government (ie me I guess) needs to pay for every mouthbreathing hippy's education, healthcare, all their amassed debts, and provide them a "living wage" which is substantially higher than my dad had when he retired as an engineer. Frankly I'd rather communism. At least everyone will be screwed and not just me.
It's harder to start an argument with people who ignore all attempts at intelligently written discussion to instead attack slogans and catch phrases...
Normally these kinds of people would be called trolls, I think.
Frazzled wrote: Its hard to even start the argument when one group is saying its all the fault of 1% of the population, that evil corporations are evilly evil, banks are evillyevilly evil *2, and that government (ie me I guess) needs to pay for every mouthbreathing hippy's education, healthcare, all their amassed debts, and provide them a "living wage" which is substantially higher than my dad had when he retired as an engineer. Frankly I'd rather communism. At least everyone will be screwed and not just me.
Stephen Colbert couldn't caricature that any better.
Compensation should be limited by law in all publicly held companies... The highest annual compensation, including wages, fees, benefits and stock options, for employees, directors, consultants and consulting firms should be limited to the higher of 100 times the annual compensation of that company's lowest paid full time employee (after one year of employment) or 50 times the median (not average) annual compensation of all its employees... If current overpaid CEOs refuse these limitations, they can form their own private companies and pay themselves without restrictions.
Notably, she had kept her name off the idea because she is "isn't very brave", in her words. But it's an interesting idea for executive compensation reform. According to the article she also mentioned "several additional tax brackets at income levels starting above $750,000" and "allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies."
Compensation should be limited by law in all publicly held companies... The highest annual compensation, including wages, fees, benefits and stock options, for employees, directors, consultants and consulting firms should be limited to the higher of 100 times the annual compensation of that company's lowest paid full time employee (after one year of employment) or 50 times the median (not average) annual compensation of all its employees... If current overpaid CEOs refuse these limitations, they can form their own private companies and pay themselves without restrictions.
Notably, she had kept her name off the idea because she is "isn't very brave", in her words. But it's an interesting idea for executive compensation reform. According to the article she also mentioned "several additional tax brackets at income levels starting above $750,000" and "allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies."
You seem to be advocating, or find "interesting" what the early Nazi's proposed in Germany.
You seem not to have any problem with heading down the slippery slope.
Please show the rest of us where in the constitution it says that the government has the authority to decide executive compensation?
Freedom isn't free, and Liberty is hard to get back once it's gone. Sometimes a Republic can be messy, there are no (and should not be) guarantees of success, nor should there be punative measures against an entity for making the most of it's opportunities. Sour grapes are more of a vice than avarice.
Compensation should be limited by law in all publicly held companies... The highest annual compensation, including wages, fees, benefits and stock options, for employees, directors, consultants and consulting firms should be limited to the higher of 100 times the annual compensation of that company's lowest paid full time employee (after one year of employment) or 50 times the median (not average) annual compensation of all its employees... If current overpaid CEOs refuse these limitations, they can form their own private companies and pay themselves without restrictions.
Notably, she had kept her name off the idea because she is "isn't very brave", in her words. But it's an interesting idea for executive compensation reform. According to the article she also mentioned "several additional tax brackets at income levels starting above $750,000" and "allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies."
You seem to be advocating, or find "interesting" what the early Nazi's proposed in Germany.
You seem not to have any problem with heading down the slippery slope.
Please show the rest of us where in the constitution it says that the government has the authority to decide executive compensation?
EDIT: Ah. In my haste I misread the post. I mistook 'publicly-held' for 'publicly-owned'. Disregard.
Though, I will say this - Phanatik, you're crazy. Just because something bears a structural similarity to something the NSDAP did, that doesn't mean that said thing will necessarily lead to extermination of the Jews. The Nazis wore trousers. My trousers will not lead to gas-chambers, per se.
Albatross wrote:
Though, I will say this - Phanatik, you're crazy. Just because something bears a structural similarity to something the NSDAP did, that doesn't mean that said thing will necessarily lead to extermination of the Jews. The Nazis wore trousers. My trousers will not lead to gas-chambers, per se.
Phanatik wrote:
You seem not to have any problem with heading down the slippery slope.
The slippery slope is a fallacious argument.
Phanatik wrote:
Please show the rest of us where in the constitution it says that the government has the authority to decide executive compensation?
I was unaware that one must use the Constitution as the basis for policy advocacy.
Phanatik wrote:
Freedom isn't free, and Liberty is hard to get back once it's gone. Sometimes a Republic can be messy, there are no (and should not be) guarantees of success, nor should there be punative measures against an entity for making the most of it's opportunities. Sour grapes are more of a vice than avarice.
So, I shouldn't be punished for making the most of my opportunity to kill another person, or take another person's car?
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Frazzled wrote:
Taxing the rich, eating the rich, driving the zionist bankers out of the USA, and killing the fed are not solutions to anyone except maybe Chavez. How's that cancer Chavez?
First, why make light of Chavez's cancer? Don't you consistently talk about having experience with the suffering it causes?
Second, taxing the rich (excessively) and ending the Fed are thing that many consider to be solutions, and specifically would solve the problems they likely believe exist; ie. the insufficient taxation of the wealthy and the existence of the Fed.
Also, taxing the rich (appropriately) is like to be a component of any sound tax policy.
Albatross wrote:Though, I will say this - Phanatik, you're crazy. Just because something bears a structural similarity to something the NSDAP did, that doesn't mean that said thing will necessarily lead to extermination of the Jews. The Nazis wore trousers. My trousers will not lead to gas-chambers, per se.
I don't know what windmill you are tilting against.
My comments were not directed at anything you said; and if you re-read my post, you will see I said "early" nazi goals. I'm talking about before the Nazi's started courting Big Business.
Phanatik wrote:
I don't know what windmill you are tilting against.
My comments were not directed at anything you said; and if you re-read my post, you will see I said "early" nazi goals. I'm talking about before the Nazi's started courting Big Business.
And then you made an argument from a slippery slope, which indicates that your comparison extended to Nazism in general.
For a guy with an IQ of 151, you aren't doing very well.
Melissia wrote:It's harder to start an argument with people who ignore all attempts at intelligently written discussion to instead attack slogans and catch phrases...
Normally these kinds of people would be called trolls, I think.
Pot me kettle. Saying you should frak corporations etc. is not helpful, in the least.
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Melissia wrote:Here's an interesting idea, from a person who has a CPA in fact:
Compensation should be limited by law in all publicly held companies... The highest annual compensation, including wages, fees, benefits and stock options, for employees, directors, consultants and consulting firms should be limited to the higher of 100 times the annual compensation of that company's lowest paid full time employee (after one year of employment) or 50 times the median (not average) annual compensation of all its employees... If current overpaid CEOs refuse these limitations, they can form their own private companies and pay themselves without restrictions.
Notably, she had kept her name off the idea because she is "isn't very brave", in her words. But it's an interesting idea for executive compensation reform. According to the article she also mentioned "several additional tax brackets at income levels starting above $750,000" and "allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies."
I'm so not against this.
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Monster Rain wrote:You know who else wore trousers?
Hitler.
Bob Hitler was especially partial to tweed.
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dogma wrote:
Albatross wrote:
Though, I will say this - Phanatik, you're crazy. Just because something bears a structural similarity to something the NSDAP did, that doesn't mean that said thing will necessarily lead to extermination of the Jews. The Nazis wore trousers. My trousers will not lead to gas-chambers, per se.
Oh no, its already begun!
For some reason i so want to see how many stars are on that flag.
Ah, it only took three pages this time for Godwin's Law to prove correct.
Phanatik, do you plan on posting ANYTHING worth reading?
Frazzled wrote:Pot me kettle. Saying you should frak corporations etc. is not helpful, in the least.
I clarified what I meant; "frak them" in that context equated to "they're useless for our purposes, so let's go with someone else". Your choice to not read this clarification or simply to ignore it lowers my value of your response from "worth reading" closer towards "is he just trolling?".
I'm sure you feel the same way if I (accidently or intentioanly, which happens sometimes when I'm stressed out) take a post of yours out of context.
First, why make light of Chavez's cancer? Don't you consistently talk about having experience with the suffering it causes?
***He’s a dictator. I get off when dictators suffer like normal people.
Second, taxing the rich (excessively) and ending the Fed are thing that many consider to be solutions, and specifically would solve the problems they likely believe exist; ie. the insufficient taxation of the wealthy and the existence of the Fed.
***Taxation of wealthy is discussion point for budget – indeed you are correct. Its not especially helpful when trying create more jobs though. More importantly its seen as the panacaea for all the US’s ills. Fine. Do it. Then what?
Wacking the Fed is just stupid. Its nattering nabobedness. One the lists of “points” of the Occupy Bob’s House was eliminate the Fed and then start a national bank. Er.. the Fed is the national bank. Derp derp.
Also, taxing the rich (appropriately) is like to be a component of any sound tax policy.
***Again I’ll concede you are 100% correct.
Melissia wrote:Phanatik, do you plan on posting ANYTHING worth reading.
Since when do I require you to sign off on anything I post?
And to use your style of debate:
Melissia, do you plan on being consistent or making any sense when posting? ( I mean, REALLY, you go from supposedly voting for a non-Bush McCain to voting for Obama? That's like you-know-who and Netanyahu golfing together.)
Phanatik wrote:Melissia, do you plan on being consistent or making any sense when posting?
I have been consistent. Saying that "I might vote for McCain" and "I might vote for Obama" isn't inconsistent; it's merely keeping my options open because for one, McCain isn't running anyway and I don't like the other Republican nominees thus far (which means I'd vote for Obama), and yet I also don't know what Obama offers as his solutions to the problems, as well as other things such as what he plans to do (or doesn't plan to do) about DADT/DoMA/gay marriage in general, abortion in general, education reform (every politician claims this, but few of them actually do it), etc. And so Romney is still an option if he wins-- if Romney offers a better platform, I'd vote for him.
The other republican candidates will not offer a better platform. They're too extremist right wing conservative, and therefor I strongly oppose their desire to control the social lives of Americans even if I might (except for Cain) agree with their economic views. I am not registerred in either party-- I'm an independent who doesn't vote on party lines, I vote on a person's platform and how it meshes with what I want. Both parties suck.
Phanatik wrote:Surely, you must know that Obama is a large part of the problem?
Yes, that is the standard Republican rhetoric whenever a Democrat is in office; "it's [president's name]'s fault". Also the standard Democrat rhetoric whenever a Republican is in office.
Thus I ignore statements like this because they are at best oversimplified inanities.
Phanatik wrote:What do you plan on doing with your chemistry degree, when you graduate?
Ugh, hell no, not teaching. I'm not enough of a people person to be a competent teacher. I understand well, but explaining my understanding isn't easy.
Melissia wrote:Ugh, hell no, not teaching. I'm not enough of a people person to be a competent teacher. ....
I hear that. I have as much use for people as Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.
Chemical Engineering sounds like an investment in time and/or money. I was curious about your plans because I wondered if when you get your first position, you will request that they limit your salary so that you don't make disproportionately more money than anyone else at the company?
I figured you'd ask a dumb, loaded question like that.
The answer is: No. Because I would not be paid disproportionately more than anyone in the company. As a skilled employee-- IE, one with an education and a degree that's worth something (IE not liberal arts)-- I would be paid more than unskilled labor. This is because, proportionately, I have more value because of my skills on paper. However, because of my inexperience, I would be paid less than others of the same level of skill-on-paper.
The same cannot necessarily be said of CEOs. Not only do CEOs often have executive severance packages that do not change in value regardless of their success or failures as CEOs, but frequently, the non-severance pay of an executive officer is not actually linked to the company's success.
Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates, for example, deserved their compensation immensely. The CEOs of failing companies who had to rely on government bailouts because of their own incompetence? Not so much. These CEOS failed. They did not deserve their severance packages or their continued raises in levels of compensation if they were not severed (a frequent occasion).
Melissia wrote:Ugh, hell no, not teaching. I'm not enough of a people person to be a competent teacher. I understand well, but explaining my understanding isn't easy.
Organic chemicals right? Please tell me you're not one of those down with nature inorganic chemical guys.
Melissia wrote:I figured you'd ask a dumb, loaded question like that.
The answer is: No. Because I would not be paid disproportionately more than anyone in the company. As a skilled employee-- IE, one with an education and a degree that's worth something (IE not liberal arts)-- I would be paid more than unskilled labor. This is because, proportionately, I have more value because of my skills on paper. However, because of my inexperience, I would be paid less than others of the same level of skill-on-paper.
The same cannot necessarily be said of CEOs. Not only do CEOs often have executive severance packages that do not change in value regardless of their success or failures as CEOs, but frequently, the non-severance pay of an executive officer is not actually linked to the company's success.
Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates, for example, deserved their compensation immensely. The CEOs of failing companies who had to rely on government bailouts because of their own incompetence? Not so much.
Well, me being just a right-wing dummy, who could expect more?
CEOs don't have value? Would there not be a disparity in skill level between the CEO of your company and yourself? If your value entitles you to make more, than a CEO should make more, which could include executive packages. Should you prove to be unsuccessful for the company, should you give some of your compensation back? A company takes a risk when hiring any employee, that they will be of greater benefit than what they cost. If you felt your services were of such great value, you could try to negotiate some kind of package upon entering employment, which might not necessarily be linked to any "success" or "failure" on your part.
Surely a chemical engineer would make far more than someone from, say enviromental services? There would be quite a disparity between what you make, and what the person that empties your trashcan at night would make. You indicated "interest" in your link above, but don't seem to think it should apply to yourself? Wouldn't that be inconsistent?
Fraz: Oh yeah. O.Chem. all the way. Especially with oil companies here in Texas.
Also, inorganic chemistry is just as unnatural as organic chemistry. Metallurgy for example is inorganic chemistry to an extent. Metallacrowns are another example.
Phanatik wrote:CEOs don't have value?
I never said that.
In fact, if you did bother to read what I had posted (which you did not), you'd notice I supported executive pay based off of performance-- which is a departure from the system we're currently using which essentially amounts to executive pay for the sake of executive pay.
Melissia wrote:Fraz: Oh yeah. O.Chem. all the way. Especially with oil companies here in Texas.
Phanatik wrote:CEOs don't have value?
I never said that.
In fact, if you did bother to read what I had posted (which you did not), you'd notice I supported executive pay based off of performance-- which is a departure from the system we're currently using.
Business is all about incentives. The more jobs I outsource, the more money I take home. I think we can all agree what any "rational" actor in the market would do then right. Outsource those jobs.
Therefore, we have to simply change the incentives to keep jobs in the U.S., thereby making it more likely that such jobs will stay, and people here can work.
That's where taxing the rich comes in. Granted, its not a direct path like a tarriff, but it will essentially limit the incentive to try and make huge amounts of money just because you can. Now there is a consideration about how much is "enough" and where the "tipping point" is. Like I said, not the most efficient method, but it IS a method where none exists now.
Therefore, that's how taxing the rich "theoretically" creates jobs. It reduces the incentive to outsource as there is a point where making more money is no longer helpful. Then, instead the jobs here stay here as the Stockholders and CEOs are now making "enough". Not perfect.
However, it creates at least as many Jobs as supply-side economics makes going by the last 10 years. Using that benchmark anything over 0 seems to be a win!
Melissia wrote:Fraz: Oh yeah. O.Chem. all the way. Especially with oil companies here in Texas.
Also, inorganic chemistry is just as unnatural as organic chemistry. Metallurgy for example is inorganic chemistry to an extent. Metallacrowns are another example.
Phanatik wrote:CEOs don't have value?
I never said that.
In fact, if you did bother to read what I had posted (which you did not), you'd notice I supported executive pay based off of performance-- which is a departure from the system we're currently using which essentially amounts to executive pay for the sake of executive pay.
The only chem company I ever almost lost money on was an titanium dioxide manufacturer. White pigment manufactuer in everything blech!
Eh, never really needed to know about them. If you know carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, magnesium, and some other elements you're golden. Palladium is necessary to know as well.
Your opinion matters so much to me. Thanks for chiming in.
And apparently, you are not very discerning.
Have a nice day though.
I am very discerning. I drink tea and everything.
Melissa never said CEOs were useless she said she was opposed to them being paid not in accordance to their performance like many other people are.
Your opinion matters so much to me. Thanks for chiming in.
And apparently, you are not very discerning.
Have a nice day though.
I am very discerning. I drink tea and everything.
Melissa never said CEOs were useless she said she was opposed to them being paid not in accordance to their performance like many other people are.
The "useless CEOs" thing was a red herring.
She believes that people's salaries should be capped based on what other people in the company make, but her own salary shouldn't.
While normally I try to keep my nose out of politics, and haven't read this thread, I simply must chime in on this:
The money manager is particularly angry at New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand for not coming to their defense, despite Wall Street’s generous campaign contributions: “They need to understand who their constituency is.”
That infuriates me. I'm sorry, mister money manager, I guess since I can't afford to hire a lobbyist and contribute a hundred million dollars to a senator's campaign, your interests are more important than those of the average middle-class person.
How has there not been a mod warning in this thread for politeness? Be nice or I'll drag this whole she-bang mercilessly off-topic like a Family Guy cutaway.
That being said, I'm still seeing more "these people are stupid and lazy" and less "here's how to fix the blatantly broken thing." Opinion question: why does anyone need more than aforementioned 10 million per year, and does demanding that make said person a douche? Also of note is that people are defending the riches right to be rich, but again, nothing is making them create jobs. They have disproportionate social power if nothing else.
This thread is about 75% flamebaiting and flaming.
First and last warning. We can disagree and the world will not end. If you want to discuss this, please keep in mind that it's just one thread on the internet and a lovely autumn (or spring for the Southern Hemispherites) stroll might be a better use of your time.
Your opinion matters so much to me. Thanks for chiming in.
And apparently, you are not very discerning.
Have a nice day though.
I am very discerning. I drink tea and everything.
Melissa never said CEOs were useless she said she was opposed to them being paid not in accordance to their performance like many other people are.
The "useless CEOs" thing was a red herring.
She believes that people's salaries should be capped based on what other people in the company make, but her own salary shouldn't.
Regards,
Man, you twist and bend those words any farther back and the internet is going to break.
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Opinion question: why does anyone need more than aforementioned 10 million per year, and does demanding that make said person a douche? Also of note is that people are defending the riches right to be rich, but again, nothing is making them create jobs. They have disproportionate social power if nothing else.
The most money I've ever made for a days work (roughly 10 hours) was around $2400... from the perspective of pure causality I "earned" it but that doesn't make it "right" or even sane. That’s capitalism in a nutshell, causality posing as morality. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
As much as I enjoy having money and being a good ole’ consumer it has always struck me as entirely absurd that I would have had to work 6 weeks at a minimum wage job to earn the same amount of money I made in one day.
OCCUPY WALL STREET is not only a mass protest movement intended to draw attention to economic injustice and political corruption. It seeks to embody and thereby to demonstrate the feasibility of certain ideals of participatory democracy. This is, to my mind, what makes OWS so interesting, and so unlike a tea-party protest. OWS is not simply a group of like-minded people gathered together to make a point with a show of collective force, though it is that. The difference is that it has developed into an ongoing micro-society with a micro-government that directly exemplifies a principled alternative to the prevailing American order. The complaint that OWS has failed to produce a coherent list of demands seems to me to miss much of the point of the encampment in Zuccotti Park. The demand is a society more like the little one OWS protestors have mocked up in the park. The mode of governance is the message.
And what is the message of the "General Assembly", the governing body of the original financial-district occupation? According its website:
New York City General Assemblies are an open, participatory and horizontally organized process through which we are building the capacity to constitute ourselves in public as autonomous collective forces within and against the constant crises of our times.
Got that? If this sounds a bit academic, that's because it is. Whether you're having trouble parsing this or not, this piece by Dan Berrett on the academic roots of OWS's governing ideology is incredibly helpful.
Mr Berrett focuses on the influence of David Graeber, "an ethnographer, anarchist, and reader in anthropology at the University of London's Goldsmiths campus." Mr Graeber was impressed by the people of Betafo, in Madagascar, who ruled themselves through a process of "consensus decision-making" demonstrating the left-anarchist ideal of "democracy without government". Mr Graeber applied what he learned in his ethnographic work in some of the left-wing anti-globalisation protests of the 1990s, and has now brought his experience to bear on Wall Street, laying the groundwork for OWS's experiment in participatory democracy. As Mr Berrett reports:
Soon after the magazine Adbusters published an appeal to set up a "peaceful barricade" on Wall Street, Mr. Graeber spent six weeks in New York helping to plan the demonstrations before an initial march by protesters on September 17, which culminated in the occupation.”
Spontaneous order can take a bit of planning. But it seems Mr Graeber's planning has born fruit:
“The defining aspect of Occupy Wall Street, its emphasis on direct action and leaderless, consensus-based decision-making, is most clearly embodied by its General Assembly, in which participants in the protest make group decisions both large and small, like adopting principles of solidarity and deciding how best to stay warm at night.
This intensive and egalitarian process is important both procedurally and substantively, Mr. Graeber says. "One of the things that revolutionaries have learned over the course of the 20th century is that the idea of the ends justifying the means is deeply problematic," he says. "You can't create a just society through violence, or freedom through a tight revolutionary cadre. You can't establish a big state and hope it will go away. The means and ends have to be the same."
When 2,000 people make a decision jointly, it is an example of direct action, or direct democracy, Mr. Graeber says. "It makes you feel different to go to a meeting where your opinions are really respected." Or, as an editorial in the protest's house publication, Occupied Wall Street Journal, put it, "This occupation is first about participation."
It is hard to deny the romance of this, and part of me would like to camp out in Zuccotti Park and pitch in. But I wouldn't expect it to last. Not only is is it hard to see how this worthwhile little experiment in leaderless, consensus-based decision-making is a realistic means to the end of a whole society governed by leaderless, consensus-based decision-making, it's hard see why this is a desirable end.
Because the participatory democracy of OWS is an ideological endeavour, it can avoid the hard problem of liberal society: the ineradicable diversity of moral belief and the impossibility of consensus. Consensus-based communes composed of individuals who opt in specifically because they already agree with the commune's founding values can work precisely because the people who would make consensus impossible—people with very different opinions and values—stay away. But not only does the OWS experiment skirt the problem of pluralism through self-selection, the ideological homogeneity of self-selection may make deliberation tend toward extremism, as Cass Sunstein's important work on deliberation and group polarisation shows. He writes: "When like-minded people are participating in 'iterated polarization games'—when they meet regularly, without sustained exposure to competing views—extreme movements are all the more likely."
Even given a climate of ideological similarity, this mode of communal egalitarian living doesn't tend to scale up well beyond a few hundred people, and requires intense and often invasive surveillance and monitoring to minimise free-riding, as well as heavy communal pressure to maintain the kind of conformity of belief necessary to maintain ongoing consensus. This is not, to my mind, a beautiful dream. Anyway, insofar as people are serious about it, egalitarian participatory democracy points in the direction of radical decentralisation and hyper-local control. The immense scope and diversity of the American territory and population, as well as the vast scale of the American state and the number and complexity of its activities, are fundamentally incompatible with the kind of society now being performed by the romantics in Zuccotti Park.
Moreover, direct deliberative democracy by its very nature puts effective power disproportionately in the hands of extroverted, energetic, and charismatic individuals with a knack for persuasion. The opinions of introverts and those of us who need a good deal of time to mull things over tend not to be fully included into the decision-making process. So these people (most of us, I think) must go along, their views systematically underrepresented until the rule of the pushy yammerers becomes too intolerable and they leave. Exit is more powerful than voice if voice is not your strong suit.
There is a great deal wrong with American governance, and not only within government. I think that the concentrated management and diffuse ownership of public corporations has left a relatively small numbers of corporate managers with insufficiently checked control over trillions of other people's property. And I think that the relatively unchecked power of government to make or break fortunes has made it more or less inevitable that corporations would in time end up writing their own regulations to their own advantage. Occupy Wall Street is a great boon to the extent that it helps draw attention and build effective opposition to the unjust mechanisms of upward redistribution and to the many flaws in our political economy responsible for the disproportionate influence of the wealthy and powerful over the rules that profoundly affect us all. However, insofar as OWS is meant to persuade Americans to adopt a wholly different and better way to live with one another, it is bound to fail. Even if consensus-based, leaderless participatory democracy could work on a grand scale, Americans aren't interested. And face it: sooner or later, Brookfield Properties is going to get it's park back. So for those deeply committed to realising a lasting community governed by the ideals of OWS, let me recommend a seastead.
.Anyway, insofar as people are serious about it, egalitarian participatory democracy points in the direction of radical decentralisation and hyper-local control. The immense scope and diversity of the American territory and population, as well as the vast scale of the American state and the number and complexity of its activities, are fundamentally incompatible with the kind of society now being performed by the romantics in Zuccotti Park.
This here is what I think is the most interesting bit, aside from the idea of decentralizing the control of money from the rich and powerful.
Point one- this is the extreme version of what Republicans want; taking power away from the Federal government and investing it in smaller units of power (the states and counties). Republican pundits are confused/saddened/scoffing at the protesters. I wonder what a Republican would say if you told them the Occupy Wall Street group is practicing a decentralized form of government akin to what Republicans are asking our Federal government to do.
There is a great deal wrong with American governance, and not only within government. I think that the concentrated management and diffuse ownership of public corporations has left a relatively small numbers of corporate managers with insufficiently checked control over trillions of other people's property. And I think that the relatively unchecked power of government to make or break fortunes has made it more or less inevitable that corporations would in time end up writing their own regulations to their own advantage. Occupy Wall Street is a great boon to the extent that it helps draw attention and build effective opposition to the unjust mechanisms of upward redistribution and to the many flaws in our political economy responsible for the disproportionate influence of the wealthy and powerful over the rules that profoundly affect us all.
The last part about spreading out the responsibility in handling America's money, we'd need to change the fundamental education of lots of Americans to make that happen. We have market managers and rich people for a reason; they know how to handle/accumulate money. Putting monetary policy in the hands of the less experienced would probably see no difference in the way money trickles up to those in power, or at worst causes the money to be lost or spent irresponsibly.
I wouldn't worry Mel. To me that is a cleverly-worded scare article. He praises the movement to open the piece. Indeed half the article is supportive of OWS. But in the second-last paragraph, his opinion of the the protesters as 'pushy yammerers' slips out. If you go back over the rest of the article, you see that he has chosen to focus on one prominent organizer, with a dirty word like 'anarchist' attached to his resume (much like how corporate media will show only one incoherent protester, instead of the multitude down there who are speaking eloquently). As if Grabner is running the show! As if anyone in there is under the illusion you could run a superpower military with a nuclear arsenal by consensus! Because Grabner has certain views, that means that that is where we are going to end up? What are the opinions, views and backgrounds of dozens of other organizers?
But this article is even more clever. Where is it that he thinks this movement would take us? He manages to use some of the worst of the current system, namely 'invasive surveillance to minimise free-riding' as a brush with which to paint this movement. The national-security state provides for invasive surveillance already, and isn't free-riding sorta what this is all about? He's talking about communal living and ideological similarity, as if this movement doesn't already cut across all kind of lines and divisions. WarOne already pointed to that. As if the people in the encampment really want to be camping there! Like they all want to live in hippie communes!
Another dose of praise and support in the closing paragraph, twisted in with a threat, some mocking, and a prediction of failure (which is standard stuff). Seems to me like a tragic ironic point of view. He's trying to get you to agree with him at the start so that you agree with him at the end.
To me, this article exudes fear. The movement is only beginning to gather strength and hasn't even begun to effect concrete changes!
In related news, the "Occupy Baltimore" group also wants to keep police out of their area.
The pamphlet says that members of the protest group who believe they are victims or who suspect sexual abuse "are encouraged to immediately report the incident to the Security Committee," which will investigate and "supply the abuser with counseling resources." ... The directive also says, in part, "Though we do not encourage the involvement of the police in our community, the survivor has every right, and the support of Occupy Baltimore, to report the abuse to the appropriate authorities."
Dang cops, you stay out of our protest! If someone gets raped, we'll provide appropriate counseling.
One wonders what Former Sen.* Biden has to say about this.
* Senator is a more impressive position than VP. I'm not disrespecting Mr. Biden, I'm disrespecting the office of VP. It's a very important and utterly powerless post.
Thanks for the link Phanatik. Not very compelling, however. More of the same 'ol same 'ol. Instead of communism, she manages to throw Hitler and the Holocaust in there! She manages a whole article where her only real critique of the movement is that they didn't stop their march at a certain billionaires house, which has her concluding that that billionaire is helping OWS. No sources or references. The rest of the article is filled with raging against Democrats, whom the movement has not particularly endorsed (in fact alot of this has to do with the sobering realization that Obama is more same 'ol same 'ol). Mockery, belittlement, and insults; "brain-dead zombies... playing bocce ball and getting stoned" is how she characterizes the "pea brained" protesters. She save the most blatant misrepresetations until the end:
"they have no interest in actual malfeasance by actual Wall Street bankers. They're too busy denouncing Fox News... [some] think stuff should be free and America is the moral equivalent of al-Qaida". Where is she getting this stuff? She says you must choose between "Wall Street looters and protesters defecating in the street, throwing rocks at police and chanting 'F—k the USA,'". Why are you believing it?
It's the same format as the last one: get you to agree at the start (who can argue against a list of Democratic incompetence?) so that you agree with her at the end (where she presents you with a non-choice).
Phanatik wrote:You seem to be advocating, or find "interesting" what the early Nazi's proposed in Germany.
You seem not to have any problem with heading down the slippery slope.
Please show the rest of us where in the constitution it says that the government has the authority to decide executive compensation?
The completely ridiculous reference to Nazi Germany is beautiful in and of itself, but when you also consider the US already has limits on executive pay*, it might have become the most perfect piece of rightwing nonsense I've ever read on dakka.
*On the tax deductibility of salary paid over $1 million. Clinton brought it in. It included a comically obvious loophole that you could still pay stocks and bonuses over and above that $1 million, and the result was no effective cap on salaries at all. That's kind of the black comedy about this whole thing, while the right wing twists themselves in knots to panic about how a limit on executive pay means death camps are just around the corner, the left wing spends their time crafting legislation that seems almost specifically crafted to not actually do anything.
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Phanatik wrote:Since when do I require you to sign off on anything I post?
As I explained in the other thread, this isn't about whether or not we approve of your posts. The question is what you think you're getting out of your time on Dakka.
What result did you honestly expect to get out of your post claiming caps on executive salaries was a slippery slope towards Hitler? Did you think a bunch of people would read it and think 'hmmm, well I like capping the pay of corporate executives, but I really don't like Hitler, and if this guy on the internet said one led to the other it must be true, so I better stop supporting a pay cap on executives."
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Phanatik wrote:CEOs don't have value?
Of course they do, they have considerable value.
Can you now claim the value of those CEOs was determined at arm's length, with no subjectivity involved? Can you claim that the value of those CEOs has grown by a factor of around ten, to justify the growth in real remuneration paid to the average CEO in the past two decades?
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Easy E wrote:I will admit, I'm not an economist.
Business is all about incentives. The more jobs I outsource, the more money I take home. I think we can all agree what any "rational" actor in the market would do then right. Outsource those jobs.
Therefore, we have to simply change the incentives to keep jobs in the U.S., thereby making it more likely that such jobs will stay, and people here can work.
Is the answer to long term US prosperity to keep low skilled jobs at home when they can be done by labour outside the US, or is to grow new skilled jobs at home?
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Phanatik wrote:Well, doesn't everyone know that Soros is funding all of the left-wing groups?
If having a wealthy backed de-legitimises a movement, do you feel the Tea Party is similarly de-legitimised through the backing of the Kock Brothers.
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Monster Rain wrote:I always suspected. So what's Katy Perry like?
DIDM wrote:in Portland it is hard to tell the difference from the bums, and the pretend bums these past few days
They way to tell the difference is to see where they go. If they go into the statehouse you know they are a State politician, if they sleep on the steps of the statehouse then it is a 50/50 that it is a homeless guy.
Phanatik wrote:Well, doesn't everyone know that Soros is funding all of the left-wing groups?
I don't know who/what Soros is...
Exactly.
We walked past the patheticness that is the Occupy Houston group. There were about thirty, not counting the three-four genuine homeless who were hanign out in the same park. One homeless guy was watching enviously at all the food and stuff they had.
It doesn't help your argument when you have a nice flat screen hooked up. Its not nearly as convincing.
On the positve the whole area did indeed wreak.
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Monster Rain wrote:
Phanatik wrote:Well, doesn't everyone know that Soros is funding all of the left-wing groups?
I thought it was the Lizard People.
Or the Zionists. Or Zionist Lizard People.
Lizard People. Not nearly as cool as Crab People, but still cool nonetheless.
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Ahtman wrote:
dogma wrote:So, what you're saying is that the British Isles are the center of Reptilian society?
Was there ever any doubt?
So much is so clear now.
TBone the Terrible likes lizards when he gets within six inches of them and sees them. They entertains him they do.
Rodney the Rocketing Wiener Dog With Special Needs doesn't. They remind him of snakes. He kills snakes for sport, and rolls on their corpses in his wiener dog victory dance.
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Albatross wrote:...Or mattyrm, drunk, because its 8.00AM.
The question is what you think you're getting out of your time on Dakka.
Once again, it's really none of your concern to trouble yourself with whether or not I find my time on dakka worthwhile. Also, to do so is not a refutation of anything I've said.
sebster wrote:What result did you honestly expect to get out of your post claiming caps on executive salaries was a slippery slope towards Hitler?
In your rush to criticize, you don't seem to have comphrehended what I said. I said early Nazi. I never mentioned Hitler.
Phanatik wrote:Well, doesn't everyone know that Soros is funding all of the left-wing groups?
sebster wrote:If having a wealthy backed de-legitimises a movement, do you feel the Tea Party is similarly de-legitimised through the backing of the Kock Brothers.
First of all, it's Koch brothers. Second, I don't think they ever collaborated with the Nazis, or made their money by wrecking foreign currencies, thus destroying the life savings of millions of people.
sebster wrote: Is the answer to long term US prosperity to keep low skilled jobs at home when they can be done by labour outside the US, or is to grow new skilled jobs at home?
We have reached a point where all jobs can be outsourced regardless of skill level. It doesn't matter whether it is high skill or low skill.
The city of Delhi puts out 4 times as many college graduates in a year as my local metropolis. Think your white collar or lab coat jobs are safe from outsourcing because it requires special training or high skill? With modern communication methods and data transmission, think again. I know because part of my job is about getting work to people overseas instead of here. Like I said before, I am 'Teh EEEEVIL!1!!1"
The only jobs that are safe are ones where you have to be in the same place as what you are doing, like mechanic, nurse, etc. Instead, they will just continue to stratify these positions with lower skill/lower wage equivalents such as the infamous "Nurse Practitioner" instead of an actual nurse or doctor. That's how you lower labor costs so you can maximize your executive bonuses... wait I mean shareholder value.
So about overpaid CEO's
first of all, when lehman brothers collapsed, no one lost more money, than Lehman brothers CEO.
second: his pay was almost entirely in lehman stock which he had sold about 500 million dollars worth from 2000 to 2007. That seems like a lot of money but when you realize that his company was controlling assets worth 688 BILLION, he's really payed a pretty reasonable amount. (for instance if someone managed a 2 million dollar resturaunt for the same time period. They'd get payed less than 17k over 7 years.)
The thing with business that people hate is that it scales. Melissa, you can only do so much whatever you do with chemistry to earn money. That will only create so much value. Financial industry has no such limitations.
The best way to decrease that disparity is educate people on getting in on the prosperity! Not killing it out of some sory of jealous fit.
Oh and Melissa, if you don't want job security to depend on merit, there's a whole lot of government workers that you should talk to before CEOs.
Also, on taxing the rich. First of all, I have a minor in accounting and Corporate profits actually get taxed twice. The corporate entity gets taxed and then dividends given to investors get taxed.
Secondly, 47% of the country isn't even paying taxes and half of those are actually EARNING money from the government. In the near future, if your paying taxes, you'll be in a minority. We are already taxing the rich, considerably. the thing is that every time you cast a net trying to get rich peoples money, you're going to miss. Because rich people got that money by being smart with money and they'll probably outwit whatever government 9-5 not paid by how good he does his job accountant who comes to get it. whenever you cast that net, you're going to hit the rest of the 53% that pays taxes and can't afford accountants with a law degree.
The Organizers vs. the Organized in Zuccotti Park
10/20/11 at 5:38 PM 32Comments
It began, as it so often does, with a drum circle.
Photo: Andrew Burton/AP
All occupiers are equal — but some occupiers are more equal than others. In wind-whipped Zuccotti Park, new divisions and hierarchies are threatening to upend Occupy Wall Street and its leaderless collective.
As the protest has grown, some of the occupiers have spontaneously taken charge on projects large and small. But many of the people in Zuccotti Park aren't taking direction well, leading to a tense Thursday of political disagreements, the occasional shouting match, and at least one fistfight.
It began, as it so often does, with a drum circle. The ten-hour groove marathons weren’t sitting well with the neighborhood’s community board, the ironically situated High School of Economics and Finance that sits on the corner of Zuccotti Park, or many of the sleep-deprived protesters.
“[The high school] couldn’t teach,” explained Josh Nelson, a 27-year-old occupier from Nebraska. “And we’ve had issues with the drummers too. They drum incessantly all day, and really loud.” Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day. “The drumming is a major issue which has the potential to get us kicked out," said Lauren Digion, a leader on the sanitation working group.
But the drums were fun. They brought in publicity and money. Many non-facilitators were infuriated by the decision and claimed that it had been forced through the General Assembly.
“They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music," said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it ... they suppressed people’s opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn’t.”
To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest," he said. "They didn’t even give the drummers a say ... Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.”
The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting."
All belongings and money in the park are supposed to be held in common, but property rights reared their capitalistic head when facilitators went to clean up the park, which was looking more like a shantytown than usual after several days of wind and rain. The local community board was due to send in an inspector, so the facilitators and cleaners started moving tarps, bags, and personal belongings into a big pile in order to clean the park.
But some refused to budge. A bearded man began to gather up a tarp and an occupier emerged from beneath, screaming: “You’re going to break my fething tent, get that gak off!” Near the front of the park, two men in hoodies staged a meta-sit-in, fearful that their belongings would be lost or appropriated.
Daniel Zetah, a 35-year-old lead facilitator from Minnesota, mounted a bench. “We need to clear this out. There are a bunch of kids coming to stay here.” One of the hoodied men fought back: “I’m not giving up my space for fething kids. They have parents and homes. My parents are dead. This is my space.”
Other organizers were more blunt. “If you don’t want to be part of this group, then you can just leave,” yelled a facilitator in a button-down shirt, “Every week we clean our house.” Seth Harper, the pro-drummer proletarian, chimed in on the side of the sitters. “We disagree on how we should clean it. A lot of us disagree with the pile.” Zetah, tall and imposing with a fiery red beard, closed debate with a sigh. “We’re all big boys and girls. Let’s do this.” As he told me afterwards, “A lot of people are like spoiled children." The cure? A cold snap. “Personally, I cannot wait for winter. It will clear out these people who aren’t here for the right reasons. Bring on the snow. The real revolutionaries will stay in -50 degrees.”
“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle ... It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”
Another argument broke out next to the pile of appropriated belongings, growing taller by the minute. A man named Sage Roberts desperately rifled through the pile, looking for a sleeping bag. “They’ve taken my stuff,” he muttered. Lauren Digion, the sanitation group leader, broke in: “This isn’t your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort [the working group]. It belongs to comfort.”
And as I spoke to Michael Glaser, a 26-year-old Chicagoan helping lead winter preparation efforts, a physical fight broke out between a cleaner and a camper just feet from us.
“When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people’s lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can’t kick them out.”
In response to dissatisfaction with the consensus General Assembly, many facilitators have adopted a new “spokescouncil” model, which allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective. “This streamlines it,” argued Zonkers. “The GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant."
From today’s battles, it’s not yet clear who will win the day: the organizers or the organized. But the month-long protest has clearly grown and evolved to a point where a truly leaderless movement will risk eviction — or, worse, insurrection.
As the communal sleeping bag argument between Lauren Digion and Sage Roberts threatened to get out of hand, a facilitator in a red hat walked by, brow furrowed. “Remember? You’re not allowed to do any more interviews,” he said to Digion. She nodded and went back to work. But when Roberts shouted, “Don’t tell me what to do!” Digion couldn't hold back.
“Someone has to be told what to do," she said. "Someone needs to give orders. There’s no sense of order in this fething place.”
Frazzled, at first I thought you had made that article up. Then I read it.
It was delicious.
They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music
I’m not giving up my space for fething kids. They have parents and homes. My parents are dead. This is my space.
“Personally, I cannot wait for winter. It will clear out these people who aren’t here for the right reasons. Bring on the snow. The real revolutionaries will stay in -50 degrees.
“When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people’s lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can’t kick them out.”
“Someone has to be told what to do," she said. "Someone needs to give orders. There’s no sense of order in this fething place.”
I can't help but feel overly cynical and sadly, apathetic, about the occupy protests and protesting in general about austerity measures.
This 99% were quite happy to ride the coat tails of the 1% before the bust. It's almost as if the protetsors are lashing out at their own niavety. And yet, they still want water turned into wine.
vercingatorix wrote:Oh and Melissa, if you don't want job security to depend on merit, there's a whole lot of government workers that you should talk to before CEOs.
Uhm. What.
I never said I DIDN'T want job security to depend on merit....
As for government workers, I never disagreed that the government's policies could use reform...
If you think a jobs pay depends on merit and board of directors believe that CEO's skill merit their high price tag. Why complain about CEO's salaries?
Does every salary that increases at faster than market average deserve to be ousted for unfairness?
vercingatorix wrote:If you think a jobs pay depends on merit and board of directors believe that CEO's skill merit their high price tag. Why complain about CEO's salaries?
Because quite a few boards of directors are staffed with a large number of idiots, stooges, idiot stooges, and stooge idiots whom are manipulated into giving away millions of dollars to CEOs that just drove their company into the ground. And because the free market is proving too incompetent to solve this problem, the government has to instead (a scary thought indeed).
You know that old saying-- with great power comes great responsibility? CEOs have great power. But for many big companise this comes without the responsibility.
Melissia wrote:And because the free market is proving too incompetent to solve this problem, the government has to instead (a scary thought indeed).
Who is Melissia that she gets to decide that the free market* has failed and so we must turn to government** instead? I don't recall voting for you, or agreeing to give up my freedoms and rights.
* We'd have a free market, if only the government wouldn't interfere so much.
** The government doesn't do anything well. How could getting them involved lead to improvement?
I love the idea of the free market as much as the next guy (who loves the free market) but this is what happens when you deregulate. It happened.
I don't understand your link, other than it proves my point.
Instead of letting the banks fail (because they were forced by the government to make bad loans), the government used taxpayer money to interfere again and save the banks that gave them political donations.
Whats deregulation got to do with it?
Regards,
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Melissia wrote:
Phanatik wrote:The government doesn't do anything well. How could getting them involved lead to improvement?
Because sometimes, as bad as government is, capitalists do it even worse.
True. Sometimes too true.
The difference is, if capitalists get it wrong, you can boycott them, email them, protest them, sue them, or generally make yourself a nuisance until they stop or go broke.
If the government does it wrong, you're screwed. End of file.
Melissia wrote:You can always vote them out of office or get them to change through voting, or through the courts.
Voting, if you can overcome the incumbent advantage - you are looking at 2-6 years to make a change, which could be too late. Also, you'd need a majority in both houses plus the WH to sign the Bill.
Courts (which have judges appointed by ... the government) - who can say how many years you are looking at, considering appeals, etc. Also, who has more bank than the government? How many lawyers, and for how long, can you afford?
The difference is, if capitalists get it wrong, you can boycott them, email them, protest them, sue them, or generally make yourself a nuisance until they stop or go broke.
So, why is this unique to Capitalists and not representative governments again? In theory, (I know theory isn't reality) a representative government should be more responsive than a Capitalist since the representative government is by its nature "representative" where Capitalists are not.
The difference is, if capitalists get it wrong, you can boycott them, email them, protest them, sue them, or generally make yourself a nuisance until they stop or go broke.
So, why is this unique to Capitalists and not representative governments again? In theory, (I know theory isn't reality) a representative government should be more responsive than a Capitalist since the representative government is by its nature "representative" where Capitalists are not.
In Economics 101, students learn that the share of national income received by labor stays roughly constant with the share received by capital. This is the first of “Kaldor’s stylized facts,” articulated half a century ago by the Cambridge economist Nicholas Kaldor.
Recent experience betrays this lesson. Over the past two decades -- and especially since about 2000 -- the share of national income that flows into wages and other kinds of worker compensation has been plummeting in various countries.
Labor share normally bounces around over the business cycle, but given how long the decline has lasted, it can’t be dismissed as cyclical. And this partly explains the kind of anger and frustration that is fueling the Occupy Wall Street movement worldwide.
The numbers involved are substantial: In 1990, about 63 percent of business income in the U.S. took the form of wages and other types of labor compensation, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 2005, that figure had dropped to 61 percent. And by the middle of this year, it had fallen to 58 percent. (Similar declines have occurred in other data sets, but are milder when the analysis includes the government, rather than only the private sector.)
The difference from 1990 to today -- about 5 percentage points or so of private-sector income -- amounts to more than $500 billion a year. In other words, if labor’s share hadn’t fallen, labor income would be $500 billion higher this year.
Worldwide Decline
Similar decreases have been occurring in other countries. In Germany and France, the labor share fell about 4 percent from 1995 to today, and it dropped about 6 percent in Australia and Japan during the same period. As Francisco Rodriguez and Arjun Jayadev wrote in a November 2010 paper for the United Nations, the labor share across the globe has “been subject to a consistent decline over the last two decades, contrary to the (earlier) received wisdom of a constant labor share across most regions in the world.”
Why the drop? Part of the reason is that the advanced economies have been shifting toward certain types of services and advanced manufacturing that have lower shares of labor income. But that explains only a small part of the decline. Even within such sectors, the share has been falling substantially. What’s causing that?
The two primary drivers are globalization and technological change. From 1980 to 2005, as the world became more integrated, the effective labor supply available on a global basis expanded by 100 percent to 300 percent (depending on how the estimates are done). That increased competition has pushed labor compensation down in the industrialized economies.
The effects of technological change are more subtle. As automation reduces the demand for workers, the labor share initially falls, but in time, as people adjust their skills to suit the new technology, the effect is often reversed.
In a 2007 paper for the International Monetary Fund, Florence Jaumotte and Irina Tytell tried to parse the various causes of the declining labor share. In the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Canada, the economists concluded, labor globalization and technological change played roughly equal roles, and crucial ones at that. In European countries and Japan, technological change was more significant than labor globalization. Other factors --including unions and privatization trends -- have been found to be influential, but labor globalization and technological change loom as the dominant forces.
Further Decline Ahead
Over the next decade, the global pool of labor is likely to expand rapidly for many reasons -- as more workers in China obtain advanced educations and migrate to the coastal cities, for example.
(Interestingly, the labor share has also been declining significantly in China. Part of that appears to be a statistical error, and the remainder reflects an ongoing shift from agriculture to manufacturing. The early stage of that process often involves a decline in labor share, which is then followed by an increase as the development process continues.)
The labor share in the U.S. will probably bounce up and down as the economy slowly recovers. Unless we are somehow going to cut ourselves off from the world, though, we face the prospect of a continued downward trend in the labor share. The trite response to this reality is to call for more education and better training for workers, and more investments in research and development as well as infrastructure. It’s true that all such actions would help. But they take time, and even then they would probably only take some of the edge off the decline, not fundamentally reverse it.
No wonder the frustrated Wall Street protesters lack any specific proposals for change: We are effectively missing $500 billion a year in wages, and no one has a credible set of ideas that would bring it back.
(Peter Orszag is vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup Inc. and a former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration. The opinions expressed are his own.)/quote]
1. Workers own capital in the form of their pension funds. Why haven't these increased?
2. Labour compensation includes executive pay. Even if the division of GDP had swung from capital to labour, "face workers" would still be worse off due to the massive increase in executive compensation.
3. The population of Europe more than doubled between 1900 and 2000, which presumably doubled the labour force. Shouldn't this have adversely affected the labour/capital division? In reality, things got a lot better for the ordinary man in the street.
The reason why people are angry is simple. They think they are being ripped off by government, big business and the banks.
So Melissa, you ignored the entirety of my response except for one line, which after I (and another) tried to dispute you stopped responding.
you support capitalism at heart and want free trade
one of the tea parties three main goals is to be MORE free trade orientated
you don't like the tea party
you support occupy wall street and wish you were out there. yet it has no stated goal except stop corporate greed. with no clear way of doing it or really way of defining "greed" . Many of the ways are very much anti-free trade.
you think government should stop corporations from making poor financial choices by paying lots of money to CEO's (anti-free trade)
you think pay should be based on experience, occupation, resume, and skill. unless of course the title is CEO (pro-free trade until the end)
you think corporations make too much money (anti-free trade)
you also think we should "frak them" which you later explained means ignore corporations and banks (except for regulating politcaly donations)
you think we're currently ignoring corporations and banks right now, and this has caused lots of job loss (doesn't really work with above statement)
you simultaneously do not want to "crush" or help or ignore corporations (you think we should "fix" corporations with regulation while leaving them alone and god forbid giving them tax breaks
you think anyone who "makes money with money" is not being productive. (this would be every single business, but you must be refering to investors, who finance business that produce things)
you think corporations do not create jobs( you're kind of right here in that its about 30%, but their already employing half the population.)
you want to give tax cuts to the poor and middle class (http://visualizingeconomics.com/2010/02/05/who-is-not-paying-taxes/) what are we doing right now then?
Most of the things you have said on here are not free trade. So this might be why people have complained about your consistancy. you seem to present consistant views, but you're not calling them by the correct definitions.
you do not want free trade. You want a highly regulated economy, that is far from an open, free trade market. you want the government to equalize results, not opportunities. this is not free trade.
Because the tea party's views are abhorrent to me. They might talk a good deal about free trade but they haven't actually done anything about that and even decried Obama's free trade attempts. Because Obama did them, of course.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Another analysis:
"As the protest has grown, some of the occupiers have spontaneously taken charge on projects large and small. But many of the people in Zuccotti Park aren't taking direction well, leading to a tense Thursday of political disagreements, the occasional shouting match, and at least one fistfight."
Anarchists not following directions? I never would have counted these guys for having problems with authority figures. What gives?
again Melissa ignoring my entire post except for one line!
the tea party is generally in favor of free trade. why do you find this abhorrent when you said on this very thread that you wanted it.
I haven't seen complaints from the tea party about Obama's free trade, its his other stuff that bothers them. I may not be terribly hip after a year in canada but I don't understand what is abhorrent about enforcing laws and reducing national deficit.
well the laws that the tea party is talking about, enforcing immigration laws. I don't know why you consider those to be bad.
Also, the Tea party is for free trade, not laissez-faire economics which means they are in favor of laws requiring full disclosure, the main problem with wall street.
it seems to me like killkrazy, you're just going for a clever phrase more than substance.
Occupy grandma's house Oct 25th 2011, 19:09 by A.S. | NEW YORK
THE trouble with being a rebel without a cause is that people tend to project their causes on you. That seems to be the case with Occupy Wall Street (and its many local offshoots). The movement has gotten a great deal of attention, despite the absence of a clear objective, gripe or solution. Perhaps that’s what’s so fun about the movement; OWS allows everyone to make it about their favourite villain. For some, that's capitalism; for others, just the parts of capitalism they don’t like. Others get their kicks targeting the protestors. The popular interpretation of OWS is that its an outgrowth of class war: the 99% taking on the 1% who have all the wealth. It's rarely productive for one group of citizens to fight another over resources, because the game is so rarely zero-sum. But if I may be so presumptuous (pretty much everyone else is, so why not me?), I’d suggest that rather than singling out Wall Street fat cats for taking too much of the pie, the protestors look closer to home. Maybe they should look to their parents and grandparents.
A large part of the frustration downtown is probably driven by the fact that young people feel they've gotten a bad deal. The unemployment rate for those under 25 is 17.1%. There's evidence the recession will impact their wages for decades. But to some degree the trouble goes beyond current economic conditions. Some future economic problems are structural and much of the blame can be placed on older workers. Older generations aren't necessarily themselves to blame; shifting demographics and the current phase of globalisation mean there’s a chance many young people today will not enjoy the rise in prosperity their parents and grandparents did. The bill for pensions and retiree health care are set to take an increasing share of GDP, which means that fewer resources will go towards the young and their children. Spending fewer resources on capital that benefits current and future workers can have negative consequences for long-term growth.
Liabilities for state and local pensions are probably much larger than people realise, and the shortfall will likely come out of the pockets of the young and future workers. Or, as we’ve seen in places like Vallejo, California, savings will be achieved at the cost of fewer of the services used by the entire population. Buttonwood recently pointed out that any pension, even funded ones, is really a claim on future workers’ output. These claims are rising rapidly.
Another reason OWS may want to shift their focus is that the elderly (or at least the their most effective lobbby, the AARP) has declared war on them. Retirees recently marched on Washington demanding that Social Security and Medicare cuts not be included in any debt proposal. Yet, who is proposing that existing benefits be cut? Social Security benefits were actually just increased 3.6%, as part of the annual cost of living adjustment. If you read the fine print in most proposals I’ve seen, substantial benefit cuts affect people set to retire at least ten years from now and would have little impact on current or soon-to-be retirees. Is that what they’re protesting? AARP has historically fought any future benefit cuts (though recently they have changed tone and taken a controversial decision to be more open to the idea—as yet they have not endorsed any plan that involves benefit cuts), which implies that they’re counting on more revenue from future tax payers. They won’t even endorse raising the retirement age on future retirees. Recent history suggests that each new cohort lives longer than the last, so this means that each generation gets a longer retirement, while its children get stuck with a progressively bigger bill. Resistance among seniors to even engage in a serious discussion about entitlements makes reform poltically difficult. This is delays decisions, which makes the solution more expensive still for future taxpayers and retirees.
It seems ironic to me that retirees are marching on Washington as their grandchildren protest, concerned about their economic future. America and Europe are long overdue for entitlement reform precisely because the elderly are great at mobilising and wielding their political power. I suggest the OWS youth use this opportunity do the same.
Whether or not your protest is legitimate aside, when the cops show up, tell you you're breaking the law, and you throw bottles at them I don't know what other possible outcome you could expect.
Rikers cons flood Zuccotti for free eats
By REBECCA ROSENBERG, JAMIE SCHRAM and BOB FREDERICKS
Last Updated: 6:17 AM, October 26, 2011
Posted: 3:50 AM, October 26, 2011
More Print Newly sprung ex-cons and vagrants rousted from other parks are crashing the Occupy Wall Street protest, where gourmet meals are free and boozy, drugfueled parties are on tap, the movement’s leaders griped yesterday.
“They’re telling people who leave prison to go to Zuccotti Park,” lamented Daniel Zetah, a leader of the OWS community-relations group.
Volunteer Lauren Digioia, 26, said, “We have drug dealing going on here, gang activity, public intoxication. There are a lot of instigators. There are a lot of vultures.
“Everyone knows we give out free food and sleeping bags, and it’s a perfect opportunity for squatters.”
Digioia said she recently met a man who just before getting sprung from Rikers, was told by a fellow inmate to hit Zuccotti for the free accommodations.
The frustrated organizers said they’re brainstorming how to launch a protest within the protest to target the drunken, stoned layabouts.
The derelicts, organizers say, are terrorizing people who are there to support the movement.
“There’s a lot of drugs, alcohol, assault [and] theft [by] the homeless groups coming in. We’ve had meetings all day to brainstorm what to do,’’ said Zetah, 34.
The hardened thugs are having a field day preying on overly trusting protesters, many of whom hail from small towns, leaders said.
On Monday, a 24-year-old Brooklyn woman originally from Brownville, Maine — population 1,260 — told cops that three men threatened her because she’d fingered one of their pals for brutally punching her and two others, another woman and a man in the face Oct. 11.
“You got our friend arrested. We’re going to kill you. Watch your back,” one of them told her.
Garfield Leslie, 19, of Brooklyn, was later charged with assault and Hasan Castillo, 23, of East Orange, NJ, with intimidating a witness.
And when the undesirables aren’t intimidating protesters, organizers said, they’re adding to the filth.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said he was unsure whether ex-cons really are relocating to the encampment.
But he added that “we’ve made arrests of suspects who assaulted people in Zuccotti Park in one instance, sexually abused a woman in another, and removed an individual who had stolen another’s boots.”
Meanwhile, in other developments yesterday:
* The NYPD inspector who pepper-sprayerd a protestor has been quietly transferred to an administrative post on Staten Island, The Post has learned. Anthony Bologna had been docked 10 vacation days after he was caught on video spraying teacher’s aide Kaylee Dedrick, 24, in the eyes.
His new assignment, as the borough’s special-projects inspector, will “get him out of the line of fire,’’ a source said.
* Four demonstrators headed uptown yesterday to harass Rep. Charles Rangel, who’d twice visited Zuccotti Park to support OWS but drew their wrath by voting for free-trade agreements with South Korea and Panama.
* A splinter group of OWS protesters and supporters found a new target — the city Department of Education. More than 100 demonstrators, including teachers, last night disrupted a schools meeting — shouting down Chancellor Dennis Walcott — at Seward Park HS on the Lower East Side.
The protesters complained about too much test prep, lack of resources and recent layoffs.
They’re drowning out the parents, who were the primary focus for tonight,” Walcott lamented to reporters.
* Another Community Board 1 meeting was held to address ongoing concerns over Zuccotti, which is in its area. The board voted 33-3 to limit drumming there to two hours a day.
A motion to clear out all the protesters from part of the park was tabled.
Additional reporting by Jessica Simeone, Antonio Antonucci, Yoav Gonan, Erin Calabrese & Doug Auer
Frazzled wrote:Volunteer Lauren Digioia, 26, said, “We have drug dealing going on here, gang activity, public intoxication. There are a lot of instigators. There are a lot of vultures.
That's sad and disturbing... feel sorry for the protesters.
Say what you will about them, it's sad when any active political movement gets attacked by instigators and gangsters...
Frazzled wrote:Volunteer Lauren Digioia, 26, said, “We have drug dealing going on here, gang activity, public intoxication. There are a lot of instigators. There are a lot of vultures.
That's sad and disturbing... feel sorry for the protesters.
Say what you will about them, it's sad when any active political movement gets attacked by instigators and gangsters...
Quite awesome actually. The criminal occupiers having crimes committed against them. Who will protect them, the MAN? They clearly need more facilitators and drum circles.
Oh look, Bill Ayers, former domestic terrorist now college professor, hanging out at Occupy Chicago. I guess he misses the old days. Watch your backs police officers, the Weathermen have returned.
In fact, I'm fairly certain, seeing as the members of the various police forces usually arent' part of that top 1%, they want to make the police's lives better, not worse.
In fact, I'm fairly certain, seeing as the members of the various police forces usually arent' part of that top 1%, they want to make the police's lives better, not worse.
They are protesting THE MAN, MAN, and you can't rely on THE MAN!
Frazzled wrote:They are protesting THE MAN, MAN, and you can't rely on THE MAN!
You're confusing the protesters with the stoners and other drug-addled criminals that have come to infest their protest camps.
The Occupy Whatever protests are aimed at the inordinate and consistently increasing disparity between the wealthy and everyone else (middle class and poor).
Frazzled wrote:They are protesting THE MAN, MAN, and you can't rely on THE MAN!
You're confusing the protesters with the stoners and other drug-addled criminals that have come to infest their protest camps.
The Occupy Whatever protests are aimed at the inordinate and consistently increasing disparity between the wealthy and everyone else (middle class and poor).
I'm sure the OccupiedNY'rs were facilitating good relations with Police when they took a dump on their patrol car.
Frazzled wrote:They are protesting THE MAN, MAN, and you can't rely on THE MAN!
You're confusing the protesters with the stoners and other drug-addled criminals that have come to infest their protest camps.
The Occupy Whatever protests are aimed at the inordinate and consistently increasing disparity between the wealthy and everyone else (middle class and poor).
I'm sure the OccupiedNY'rs were facilitating good relations with Police when they took a dump on their patrol car.
Yes, the actions of a few extremists always match the beliefs of everyone else in the movement. That's why the Tea Party movement is actually a terrorist organization plotting to shoot congresswomen, bomb abortion clinics, and set fire to planned parenthood buildings.
Frazzled wrote:They are protesting THE MAN, MAN, and you can't rely on THE MAN!
You're confusing the protesters with the stoners and other drug-addled criminals that have come to infest their protest camps.
The Occupy Whatever protests are aimed at the inordinate and consistently increasing disparity between the wealthy and everyone else (middle class and poor).
I'm sure the OccupiedNY'rs were facilitating good relations with Police when they took a dump on their patrol car.
Yes, the actions of a few extremists always match the beliefs of everyone else in the movement. That's why the Tea Party movement is actually a terrorist organization plotting to shoot congresswomen, bomb abortion clinics, and set fire to planned parenthood buildings.
Yea but there aren't many occupiers, so really they're all extremists.
Wait, The Tea Party isn't that? (tears up tea Party membership card). Oh wait, no one in the Tea Party actually did any of that...
Frazzled wrote:Wait, The Tea Party isn't that? (tears up tea Party membership card). Oh wait, no one in the Tea Party actually did any of that...
The extremists who do things like that commonly associate themselves with the tea party. Their main complaint is that the tea party is too secular, heh...
Frazzled wrote:Wait, The Tea Party isn't that? (tears up tea Party membership card). Oh wait, no one in the Tea Party actually did any of that...
The extremists who do things like that commonly associate themselves with the tea party. Their main complaint is that the tea party is too secular, heh...
So thats a no then.
No tea party member has blown up an abortion clinic.
No tea party member has shot a congresswoman (unlike the socialist one who did last year).
Gotcha.
Actually a doctor was relatively recently murdered (the same doctor had also been shot in the early '90s for the same reason). But be that as it may, I said the same type of people.
You want to paint the Occupy Whatever protesters as horrible people who suck and aren't really people, fine. The tea party fanatics are just as bad if not worse.
Actually a doctor was relatively recently murdered (the same doctor had also been shot in the early '90s for the same reason). But be that as it may, I said the same type of people.
You want to paint the Occupy Whatever protesters as horrible people who suck and aren't really people, fine. The tea party fanatics are just as bad if not worse.
Yes and appareantly Khaddafy was shot as well. Neither of those are related to the Tea Party.
Live in denial all you want, there's still been more than enough nutty nutjobs with their nutty nuttery clouding up their message and making the entire movement seem nuty.
Monster Rain wrote:I bet that the Oakland PD identifies with the NYPD to a sufficient extent to have been annoyed by that action.
Probably, but it doesn't justify the head cracking on its face.
"This one guy across the country did something bad, so this other guy in front of us, who is also a part of this diffuse movement, is likely to do something similar."
I mean, I understand why that sort of argument would be compelling in the moment but, as you know, I also believe that stupidity should be pointed out.
That said, I doubt the police were aiming for that, but even still... you aim for the ground at their feet, not at their heads. You want the cannister to start dispersing tear gas to make them want to GTFO, not to hit them with it.
Easy E wrote:Well, just like the Tea Party got people talking about the Deficit, OWS is getting people to talk about the Income Gap.
Both groups have accomplished a lot regarding their core message in a short period of time.
Also, the OWS in Oakland is starting to morph into an anti-police thing. That is a huge mistake!
It is? Absent this board and CNN I don't notice anyone talking abut them much at all, and if so, its more along the lines of get a job you bum!
Serious issues but these are the exact opposite of the group of people you want to bring this up.
Then who is going to bring it up? The lazy do-nothings who proclaim "get a job you bums!" any time anyone complains about it?
Unemployed steel workers.
Unemployed auto workers.
Tea Party fellow travellers.
Small business owners who have lost their business.
People who's jobs were outsourced.
Frazzled wrote:
Unemployed steel workers.
Unemployed auto workers.
Tea Party fellow travellers.
Small business owners who have lost their business.
People who's jobs were outsourced.
Probably someone rented one or already had one and brought it over to help their newfound pals.
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dogma wrote:
Frazzled wrote: Unemployed steel workers. Unemployed auto workers. Tea Party fellow travellers. Small business owners who have lost their business. People who's jobs were outsourced.
So, the Tea Party, basically.
Isn't the Tea Party basically owned by business anwyay by now?
Yes, the Tea Party bus tours and rallies were funded by billionaires like the Koch Bros. and other corporations who didn't want to see every American have affordable health care because it would cut into their profits. And of course those rallies were promoted free and endlessly on Fox Nausea, another major corporation and their propaganda machine.
Phanatik wrote:Once again, it's really none of your concern to trouble yourself with whether or not I find my time on dakka worthwhile. Also, to do so is not a refutation of anything I've said.
It certainly isn't my concern how much you're getting out of dakka. But it certainly should be your concern, and as such, while you don't need to convince me that your time here is well spent, you do certainly need to be able to convince yourself of that.
So again, did you believe, to yourself, that claiming there was a slippery slope between caps on executive pay and Nazism would lead to anything that would justify the time you spent typing it?
In your rush to criticize, you don't seem to have comphrehended what I said. I said early Nazi. I never mentioned Hitler.
And that difference is totally important and completely relevant, and makes one blind bit of difference to how ridiculous your comment was. I mean seriously dude, you're the one who thinks there's a connection between caps on executive salaries and Nazism, but then you get all pedantic over Hitler and the Nazis.
First of all, it's Koch brothers. Second, I don't think they ever collaborated with the Nazis, or made their money by wrecking foreign currencies, thus destroying the life savings of millions of people.
Uh huh. Because a 14 year old Jewish boy keeping his cover as a non-Jew accompanying his uncle as he collected property from other Jews and receiving no personal gain from it is totally 'collaborating with the Nazis'. And that's enough to justify condemning a man for the rest of his life, and therefore condemning every movement that he ever gives money to.
Your politics are ugly, and based entirely on bs. You should be fething ashamed of what type on this site. Absolutely fething ashamed.
And in amongst all that ugliness, you never even bothered to substantiate your assumption that the value of CEOs had grown by a factor of ten in the last two decades. It gives the impression you're only capable of parrotting cheap, nasty soundbites from Anne Coulter and not actually capable of substantiating your claims with original thoughts.
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Easy E wrote:We have reached a point where all jobs can be outsourced regardless of skill level. It doesn't matter whether it is high skill or low skill.
No, we haven't. If you study the make up of industry in different countries, and read analysis on why those industries formed where they did, you will see that not everything can be done everywhere.
The city of Delhi puts out 4 times as many college graduates in a year as my local metropolis.
Which makes the very bizarre assumption that the quality of education delivered by a city of Delhi graduate is exactly the same as one delivered by a first rate university in the West. If that were true, we wouldn't have overseas students paying an absolute fortune for educations in the West.
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vercingatorix wrote:So about overpaid CEO's
first of all, when lehman brothers collapsed, no one lost more money, than Lehman brothers CEO.
second: his pay was almost entirely in lehman stock which he had sold about 500 million dollars worth from 2000 to 2007. That seems like a lot of money but when you realize that his company was controlling assets worth 688 BILLION, he's really payed a pretty reasonable amount. (for instance if someone managed a 2 million dollar resturaunt for the same time period. They'd get payed less than 17k over 7 years.)
And if there was an arm's length review of the CEO's remuneration, with clear and objectively proven points of clear shareholder wealth, then maybe you'd have something. Instead, it's a guess. We really don't know how valuable one figurehead at the top of a 100,000 person organisation is, how much of the growth in share price is due to decisions made by his predecessor, or to good market conditions. We undertake
Ultimately, we know we don't have to pay people as much as we do to run our very big corporations. We know twenty odd years ago we paid them on average about a tenth of what we pay them now, and things were run about as well.
The best way to decrease that disparity is educate people on getting in on the prosperity! Not killing it out of some sory of jealous fit.
No, the best way to decrease that disparity is to ensure equal opportunity
Also, on taxing the rich. First of all, I have a minor in accounting and Corporate profits actually get taxed twice. The corporate entity gets taxed and then dividends given to investors get taxed.
I have a double major in accounting and finance, a CPA qualification and ten years industry experience. And the double taxation of corporate profits in the US was ended under Bush. One of the best things he did.
Secondly, 47% of the country isn't even paying taxes and half of those are actually EARNING money from the government.
Nope. 47% aren't paying federal taxes. They still pay all kinds of state sales taxes and the like.
And they're not paying federal taxes because they're unemployed, or working minimum pay jobs where they're barely able make ends meet as it is.
It absolutely blows my mind that you could build an economy where 47% of people earn so little that to tax them would be to drive them into absolute poverty... and then instead of thinking 'well perhaps we should do something to help those people grow their incomes' instead you complain that they're not paying taxes.
We are already taxing the rich, considerably.
Compared to? Compared to the rest of the world? No, the opposite is true.
Compared to your own country historically? No, the opposite is true.
daedalus wrote:Apologies for image spam, but I'm doing it anyway
I think this is somewhere where the right and left generally agree - the influence of money in government is a problem.
The difference, however, is in what the solution to this problem is. The left wants more regulation, more government involvement, and wants corporations to act "ethically" by stopping spending. The right, on the other hand, wants less regulation, less government involvement and wants the governmenet to stop creating the incentives by which corporations spend money on politicians.
Personally, I like the right-wing idea of reducing the power of government because it reduces the incentives that corporations have in spending money and they will willingly stop. I dislike the left-wing idea because more government creates an even bigger incentive for companies to spend money in government, which leads to calls for an even larger government...
biccat wrote:The right, on the other hand, wants less regulation, less government involvement and wants the governmenet to stop creating the incentives by which corporations spend money on politicians.
Personally, I like the right-wing idea of reducing the power of government because it reduces the incentives that corporations have in spending money and they will willingly stop.
No they won't. There is an intrinsic incentive to the expenditure of money on politicians.
biccat wrote:
I dislike the left-wing idea because more government creates an even bigger incentive for companies to spend money in government, which leads to calls for an even larger government...
Good, good, cast your opposition in a negative light, make it appear untenable without arguing to that effect.
sebster wrote:I have a double major in accounting and finance, a CPA qualification and ten years industry experience. And the double taxation of corporate profits in the US was ended under Bush. One of the best things he did.
Hm. Dunno about the best thing but my father's business certainly benefitted.
After Bush did that, he had his company become incorporated because he'd be taxed less that way than as a sole proprietor. Which left him slightly more money to help try to pay off debts.
It's really kinda sad, that non-corporations tend to be taxed more than corporations... and yes, before anyone asks, I still support the idea of raising taxes on corporations through cutting loopholes and penalizing offshore tax havens. Small businesses don't usually use those quite as often...
dogma wrote:No they won't. There is an intrinsic incentive to the expenditure of money on politicians.
There's only an incentive to spend money on politicians to the extent that the incentive exists. If you take away the incentive, people stop spending money on politicians.
It's no surprise that as the scope of government has grown so has the amount of money donated to politicians.
biccat wrote:
There's only an incentive to spend money on politicians to the extent that the incentive exists. If you take away the incentive, people stop spending money on politicians.
Indeed, but since politicians always have power, being as they are politicians, there is an intrinsic incentive to spend money to influence them.
biccat wrote:
It's no surprise that as the scope of government has grown so has the amount of money donated to politicians.
I'm not sure that's a valid conclusion given that, when adjusted for inflation, campaign finance has not grown more expensive in correspondence with the increase in governmental scope.
I mean, I guess you might claim that the government was smaller in 1978, but it would be a difficult case to make given the marginal tax rate.
Two out of three Americans surveyed tell the Hill the middle class is shrinking, and they've got some ideas about what's gone wrong:
Close to 7 in 10 said the income tax system is either somewhat or very unfair — a finding that was supported among most ideological groups and income levels.
But voters are also far from convinced that a flat tax — like the one Texas Gov. RickPerry (R) proposed last week — was the solution to that problem.
A clear majority — 58 percent — said they favored a graduated income tax system, with only 35 percent backing the sort of flat tax that magazine publisher Steve Forbes pushed for during his 1996 presidential campaign.
But here's the disjunct: Voters appear to be split almost exactly between the two parties when it comes to taxes. Democrats are pushing higher taxes for the rich and breaks for everyone else. Republicans are pushing a regressive flat tax, tax breaks for the wealthy and an end to tax breaks for working families. The choice is stark, but somehow it's not clear.
dogma wrote:Indeed, but since politicians always have power, being as they are politicians, there is an intrinsic incentive to spend money to influence them.
That's why there should be a limit on the scope of power. When there's less power to buy then you will decrease the demand for it.
dogma wrote:I mean, I guess you might claim that the government was smaller in 1978, but it would be a difficult case to make given the marginal tax rate.
No, actually it wouldn't be such a difficult case. The government was actually much smaller in 1978. Marginal tax rates, unfortunately, have at best a tenuous connection to government tax receipts or spending.
biccat wrote:That's why there should be a limit on the scope of power. When there's less power to buy then you will decrease the demand for it.
You know, the demand will still be there. A big reason why the government's scope has expanded is because there was demand for it to be so. Including fro mbig business, I should note.
Demand/supply for government services or power or whatever doesn't follow the economic model.
biccat wrote:
That's why there should be a limit on the scope of power. When there's less power to buy then you will decrease the demand for it.
Limiting the scope of power does not necessarily reduce demand for that power. If I have power over the money supply, and nothing else, then there will still be a lot of people that want to influence me.
biccat wrote:
No, actually it wouldn't be such a difficult case. The government was actually much smaller in 1978. Marginal tax rates, unfortunately, have at best a tenuous connection to government tax receipts or spending.
By what measure? Certainly not federal revenue, and not really according to budget either (exempting the last 3-4 years).
That's sort of the problem with talking about government "size", it doesn't really mean anything, and when its discussed the person who brings it up generally uses "big government" as a replacement for "Government I don't like."
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Melissia wrote:
Demand/supply for government services or power or whatever doesn't follow the economic model.
Especially since legal prohibitions are not absolute.
biccat wrote:I think this is somewhere where the right and left generally agree - the influence of money in government is a problem.
The difference, however, is in what the solution to this problem is. The left wants more regulation, more government involvement, and wants corporations to act "ethically" by stopping spending. The right, on the other hand, wants less regulation, less government involvement and wants the governmenet to stop creating the incentives by which corporations spend money on politicians.
Personally, I like the right-wing idea of reducing the power of government because it reduces the incentives that corporations have in spending money and they will willingly stop. I dislike the left-wing idea because more government creates an even bigger incentive for companies to spend money in government, which leads to calls for an even larger government...
This is really, really contrived.
Any way you cut it, the government sector is going to be a very large part of the total economy. There is just no avoiding that in a modern economy. As such, there is always going to be a significant incentive for private individuals to benefit from distorting the system to access some of that cash. Never mind that outside of direct government spending, there is a vast amount of gain to be found in beneficial legislation, or just on matters of principle.
Never mind that have close regulations on spending doesn't have any relation to the scale of government.
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Melissia wrote:Hm. Dunno about the best thing but my father's business certainly benefitted.
Oh, there's certainly better ways the reform could have been handled, but I really do believe it's the best thing Bush did because, really, there isn't much competition.
In terms of handling the reform better, it would have been better not to just not tax dividend streams, but instead have the dividends counted among other income for the year, but then have a tax credit come across with it for any tax already paid by the company on that income.
Effectively what you're doing is saying that it doesn't matter how the income is earned, in an incorporated body or not, it will be taxed the same - as part of the recipient's income. It's a principle most every developed country has accepted over years of tax reform, and something the US should embrace to start taking the nonsense out of it's own tax scheme.
sebster wrote:Any way you cut it, the government sector is going to be a very large part of the total economy. There is just no avoiding that in a modern economy. As such, there is always going to be a significant incentive for private individuals to benefit from distorting the system to access some of that cash.
Actually, it could be avoided in a modern economy. Because government does not have to be a significant economic actor.
sebster wrote:Any way you cut it, the government sector is going to be a very large part of the total economy. There is just no avoiding that in a modern economy. As such, there is always going to be a significant incentive for private individuals to benefit from distorting the system to access some of that cash.
Actually, it could be avoided in a modern economy. Because government does not have to be a significant economic actor.
Incomprehensible sentences removed for clarity.
Given the general incompetence and corruption of capitalism, I beg to differ. Government may also be incompetent and corrupt, but at least it answers to everyone instead of merely the almighty dollar (and note that I did not disclude the almighty dollar-- yes, the government also answers to that, but not JUST to that like corporations do).
sebster wrote:Any way you cut it, the government sector is going to be a very large part of the total economy. There is just no avoiding that in a modern economy. As such, there is always going to be a significant incentive for private individuals to benefit from distorting the system to access some of that cash.
Actually, it could be avoided in a modern economy. Because government does not have to be a significant economic actor.
Incomprehensible sentences removed for clarity.
Given the general incompetence and corruption of capitalism, I beg to differ. Government may also be incompetent and corrupt, but at least it answers to everyone instead of merely the almighty dollar (and note that I did not disclude the almighty dollar-- yes, the government also answers to that, but not JUST to that like corporations do).
What do you mean government asnwers to everyone? Where the hell do you live- Utopiatown? Go to the DPS office and see who it answers to. Bring a book, its going to be awhile.
Frazzled wrote:Given the general incompetence and corruption of capitalism, I beg to differ. Government may also be incompetent and corrupt, but at least it answers to everyone instead of merely the almighty dollar (and note that I did not disclude the almighty dollar-- yes, the government also answers to that, but not JUST to that like corporations do).
What do you mean government asnwers to everyone? Where the hell do you live- Utopiatown? Go to the DPS office and see who it answers to. Bring a book, its going to be awhile.
It answers to those who vote (which, yeah, isn't really everyone, but it gives most adults FAR more of a chance than they have with corporations), and to those who have money to give to campaign donations due to their resistance to campaign finance reform.
Melissia wrote:It answers to those who vote (which, yeah, isn't really everyone, but it gives most adults FAR more of a chance than they have with corporations), and to those who have money to give to campaign donations due to their resistance to campaign finance reform.
Really?
Like Frazzled said, go to some government agency - any really - and see how long it takes them to recognize you or offer to help.
Now go to a store and see how long it takes for someone to come and offer to help you.
biccat wrote:Actually, it could be avoided in a modern economy. Because government does not have to be a significant economic actor.
And once again we bump into your sweeping worldview, that you're happy to blindly follow, without any regard for how the world actually works.
To build powerful modern industry you need government support. This is just how it is. Go and read about any new major development, and read about the amount of infrastructure government committed to the project. Go look at the efficiency of commercial transactions in the modern world, and then ponder why the same efficiency doesn't exist in Africa - it's because of the underlying level of government support.
And well you might say that government that roads and legal infrastructure aren't as big as social services, and you'd be right. You could indeed cut the social portions right out of the budget, both welfare and medicaid, and you'd slash government spending by 45%, and reduce government to just 13% of the total economy.
At which point we might return to your original point, that you could remove the incentive to corrupt government, by reducing it to just 13% of the total economy. Just $2 trillion dollars. Who'd bother trying to get a piece of that?
And never mind, once again, the issues that private actors might try to influence on matters of principal. I mean, once government spending is down, who'd try to influence abortion laws, or matters of free speach? Nobody, because government spending is small, therefore magic.
EDIT
And it's a shame you found some of my answer hard to follow. I'm not really sure what I can do to help you there, it was typed in plain English. I could type it slower if you think that'd help, but I'm not really inclined to spend too much more time explaining the backing for everything I type, because you post so much nonsense and I only have so much time in the day to correct it all. Perhaps if you picked out a particular sentence you found confusing, and we could start from there.
sebster wrote:To build powerful modern industry you need government support. This is just how it is. Go and read about any new major development, and read about the amount of infrastructure government committed to the project. Go look at the efficiency of commercial transactions in the modern world, and then ponder why the same efficiency doesn't exist in Africa - it's because of the underlying level of government support.
I particularly like the part where you say I blindly follow a worldview and then say "that's just how it is" when defending yours. It's like some sort of bizarro world.
sebster wrote:At which point we might return to your original point, that you could remove the incentive to corrupt government, by reducing it to just 13% of the total economy. Just $2 trillion dollars. Who'd bother trying to get a piece of that.
Presumably only those providing services, not those who...I dunno, seek regulations to enmesh their current practices in law and punish competition.
biccat wrote:I particularly like the part where you say I blindly follow a worldview and then say "that's just how it is" when defending yours. It's like some sort of bizarro world.
Because when one worldview references how the world actually works, and the other doesn't, they are very different things.
Seriously dude, how the world works actually fething matters. How much you could conceivably cut government spending back to, and still have modern economy is actually an important thing to consider.
Presumably only those providing services, not those who...I dunno, seek regulations to enmesh their current practices in law and punish competition.
Both would. Obviously. Why would a cut in government to just $2 trillion stop corporations from trying to have legislation beneficial to them passed? Your answer of 'small government then magic' is ridiculous.
sebster wrote:Because when one worldview references how the world actually works, and the other doesn't, they are very different things.
This is your fallback position every time someone points out that your argument doesn't make sense. Simply stating "I'm right, you're wrong" isn't actually a hallmark of reasoned debate. It's simply bullying.
sebster wrote:Seriously dude, how the world works actually fething matters. How much you could conceivably cut government spending back to, and still have modern economy is actually an important thing to consider.
Yeah, you're right, it does matter. Which is why conclusory statements like "That's just how it fething works" aren't constructive to an argument.
sebster wrote:Both would. Obviously. Why would a cut in government to just $2 trillion stop corporations from trying to have legislation beneficial to them passed? Your answer of 'small government then magic' is ridiculous.
Since you appear to continue to intentionally misconstrue what I've been posting, I'll try it again. I'm talking about a limited government. One that has limited power and authority, not simply limited money. While social welfare spending causes deficit problems, it's expanded government authority that causes the problem of corruption and power imbalance.
If government doesn't have the authority to set wheat prices, then there will not be anyone lobbying for laws increasing wheat prices. So long as there are laws setting wheat prices, individuals/groups who have money to lobby will have an advantage over those who do not.
biccat wrote:If government doesn't have the authority to set wheat prices, then there will not be anyone lobbying for laws increasing wheat prices. So long as there are laws setting wheat prices, individuals/groups who have money to lobby will have an advantage over those who do not.
Last I heard wheat prices were set by the Chicago Exchange?
Now, the subsidies that have been lobbied for by the Agricultural business by Corporations and farmers is a different matter. So no matter how small the Government is, if there is still a governemnt and not just anarchy; people will lobby the government to get what is best for them. Do you think those subsidies always existed? No, someone had to ask for them. Guess who that was?
Seriously biccat, I dunno how you can make these claims that demand of government support would vanish just because you restricted supply....
It's like saying "if I take all the supply away, there's no more demand for food!". No, people are still going to want food. The demand for food would still exist without the supply-- only in the most pedantic definitions would it be otherwise, and those definitions are so stupid and irrelevant that there's no point of using the useless things. It's an argument born out of a severe misunderstanding of economic theory AND a similar misunderstanding of government...
... and certainly not out of any basis in reality.
BrassScorpion wrote:Don't think these companies really need tax subsidies while most ordinary people are struggling to save enough to have a future at all.
How about GE, Apple, Arthur Daniels Midland, are you including those as well (ie wacking the tax incentive in general)? If so then I support, else I don't.
Mn, honestly, I think tax incentives shoudl probably stay state-side, so they're more focused . Usually, state tax incentives are given in order to ensure the company creates jobs in the state / county / city that gives the incentives, whereas national tax incentives don't seem to ever work.
New York City Chapter: Veterans of the 99% Call to Action published by carjos24 on 10/31/11 12:48pm Posted to: New York City Call to Action
Across the country Americans of all stripes are coming together in their cities and towns to demand government accountability and an end to Wall Street’s stranglehold on our political system. As the 99% movement has spread, the presence of veterans at rallies, marches, and occupations is becoming increasingly visible. Veterans who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and even World War II have participated in the occupations, speaking out for the 99%, and raising the movement’s visibility in the process. Most recently, the unconscionable treatment of Marine veteran Scott Olsen has drawn national attention to veterans’ participation in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
We are veterans of the 99%. We have been directly affected by the economic and social issues raised by Occupy Wall Street. We are part of this movement, and we believe it is time for us to make our participation as veterans more deliberate and more visible. As veterans who have served our country in the military, we now have a unique opportunity to continue serving here at home through our participation in this civic movement. As veterans, our presence in this movement is itself an intervention in the evolving narrative about Occupy Wall Street.
Over the past eight years, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War have been at the forefront of social justice movements involving veterans’ issues and war. We have learned many lessons from our efforts, and we now have an opportunity to help galvanize other veterans around our generation’s most visible and widely supported American social justice movement.
On November 2nd, members of the New York City Chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War and other veterans will come together at Wall Street with other Veterans of the 99%. We will march from Vietnam Veterans Plaza to Liberty Square (Zuccoti Park)—the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement—and hold a press conference announcing our support for the 99%, and calling on other veterans and service members to join us.
November 2nd, march with us in support of the 99%. If you’re unable to come to New York, organize veterans in support of the 99% at your local occupations.
We are veterans. We are the 99%.
Veterans of the 99% March to Occupy Wall Street Wednesday, November 2nd 11:00am - 1:00pm
Funny, I just saw that image linked at Maddow's gak-pile of a blog. You could at least source it.
Melissia wrote:Seriously biccat, I dunno how you can make these claims that demand of government support would vanish just because you restricted supply....
Umm...because the scope of governmental power is limited to the scope that the government will carve out for itself.
Melissia wrote:It's like saying "if I take all the supply away, there's no more demand for food!". No, people are still going to want food.
No, it's like saying "if there were no iPads, there wouldn't be any demand for iPads." Because that's true. Before the iPad, there was no demand for iPads.
Guess what the demand for Ipana brand toothpaste is today?
REPORT: House GOP’s ‘Job Creating’ Spending Cuts Destroyed 370,000 Jobs
House Republicans took the government to the brink of shutdown last spring by demanding across-the-board budget cuts to many vital programs. Instead of focusing on job creation, as Americans wanted them to, the GOP turned its attention to slashing funds for programs that funded assistance for women and children, local law enforcement, the social safety net, environmental protections, and many other programs they deemed as either too expensive or unnecessary. Worse, when challenged on why they hadn’t made the effort to tackle high unemployment, Republicans insisted that their slash-and-burn budget cuts were meant to create jobs.
Not all of those cuts made it through, but the GOP succeeded in passing massive spending reductions as part of a continuing resolution that kept the government operating. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress’ Scott Lilly, those cuts didn’t result in the job creating boon Republicans insisted would follow. Instead, it has done just the opposite, as those cuts will result in the destruction of roughly 370,000 jobs.
Lilly’s report focuses on three major areas where Republicans insisted on spending cuts: funding for local law enforcement, environmental cleanup of sites where nuclear weapons were disabled and destroyed, and investments into construction, repair, and maintenance of government buildings. Cuts to just those three areas will result in the loss of 90,000 jobs, the report found — 60,000 from direct cuts, and 30,000 additional jobs lost from the secondary impacts of job losses in each community.
And according to Lilly, those three areas weren’t among the worst budget cuts forced through by the Republican House:
“Similar stories could be told about many other budget cuts made in this bill—cuts that resulted in further job losses,” said Scott Lilly, author of the report and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. “All of the various 250 program reductions in the fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution probably eliminated more than 370,000 American jobs. The three areas selected for discussion in this paper are in my judgment neither the worst cuts made by the committee from a policy standpoint nor the best. But without a doubt they demonstrate the consequences of slashing government spending in a weak economy.”
According to the report, the $2.5 billion cut to local law enforcement funding could have prevented 36,000 police layoffs nationwide, and similar cuts made to grant programs could have prevented the loss of other state and local government jobs. Crunched by the recession and budget cuts, state and local governments shed more than 200,000 jobs in 2010 alone. Republicans not only cut such funding this spring but have now opposed the American Jobs Act — which included grants to state and local governments for the hiring of teachers, police officers, and firefighters.
'In God We Trust' instead of Jobs.... Submitted by louisehartmann on 1. November 2011 - 8:53
Republicans are continuing to ignore the jobs crisis. There are no votes on the schedule in the House of Representatives to pass any portion of President Obama’s American Jobs Act – or any other legislation to put Americans back to work. Instead – House leadership is demanding a vote to ensure that “In God We Trust” remains the official national motto. Even though nobody is trying to change the national motto – Republicans think it’s vitally important to pass legislation to uphold it today.
The bill’s sponsor – Republican Randy Forbes from Virginia defended his legislation saying it, “sends a message that 'In God We Trust' is not only written in the halls of our federal buildings, but it is a bedrock upon which our nation is built.” Putting aside the constitutional violations of such legislation – this bill - just like the anti-abortion legislation passed the week before – and the defunding NPR legislation passed earlier in the year – will not create a single job.
Not one job. Republicans have controlled the House since January, so, Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor, where are the jobs?!
The latest salient and hilarious New Rules from Bill Maher are now online.
"The nation faces enormous challenges and the biggest idea we've heard from them (Republicans) so far was, "Let's build a fence that electrocutes Mexicans." -- Bill Maher
Occupy Oakland Calls for a November 2 General Strike
The details are familiar to many by now.
On October 10, hundreds of members of Occupy Oakland descended on downtown to take over Frank Ogawa Plaza. Twelve days later, occupiers marched through the city in their first action. Then, in the pre-dawn hours of October 25, Oakland police—aided by officers from seventeen other agencies—raided the camp, employing tear gas and flash-bang grenades. That afternoon a protest rally and march was held, leading to a violent nighttime confrontation with the police in which Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran, was hit in the head with a projectile and suffered a skull fracture. The following night an overflow crowd filled the plaza, with nearly 1,500 voting to hold a general strike on November 2. In the words of a widely circulated flyer, “All banks and corporations must close down for the day or we will march on them.”
To review: in less than two weeks, Occupy Oakland went from its first public action to calling for a city-wide general strike. That’s one hell of an escalation. In my previous life as a community organizer, our campaigns were launched with the understanding that they would be long, drawn-out affairs—weeks of door-knocking, the initial meeting, our first collective action—with the butcher paper taped to the walls measuring the progression in months.
So what accounts for the breathtaking speed of the events in Oakland? The sketchy record of the Oakland Police certainly deserves some credit, especially with the injured Olsen and the video footage showing an officer tossing a flash-bang grenade into a crowd of people trying to help him. And then there’s Mayor Jean Quan, who has also been a key if unwitting ally. Absent during the raid, she has attempted to explain her shifting positions with remarkable incoherence, and was recently booed when attempting to speak at a general assembly. At meetings of Occupy Oakland, many of the people I spoke with watched the unfolding occupation with sympathy—but just watched. It took the raid, the images of tear gas clouds and a bloodied Scott Olsen to get them into the streets. As Saul Alinsky wrote, all action is in the reaction. A former organizer, Quan will not soon forget that axiom.
Organizers have taken the openings created by the city’s response and doubled down, using the anger over police behavior and growing distrust of Quan and channeled it back into the original targets of the Occupy movement. And let’s admit it: marches and rallies are tired tactics, at least when spent listening to official leaders mouthing approved lines while holding signs in which those approved lines are written. By calling for a general strike, Occupy Oakland has gone into the deep end of the left’s swimming pool, navigating imaginative and uncharted waters.
“Everyone was really receptive,” said one woman after spending the afternoon handing out strike flyers (nearly 20,000 were passed out during the first two days). “Just that the term ‘general strike’ is being discussed in the American public…” her voice trailed off. “We’ll see what happens Wednesday.”
That no one knows what will happen is a key source of motivation and excitement. We’re taught to dream big, but often when I’m shuffling along at a protest I feel those dreams shrinking to the size of the sign I’m holding, like a cog in someone else’s grand machine. In Oakland we are still cogs, but the machine belongs to us, and it’s moving in a direction that’s not entirely clear. They’re something liberating about an uncertain future.
Of course, it’s easy to argue that calling for a general strike is foolish overreach. “It’s not possible to organize a general strike in one week,” said a member of the California Federation of Teachers during opening comments at the first strike-planning meeting. His was a reasonable statement. Even as Occupiers like to remind people that Oakland was the site of a general strike in 1946, it’s hard to imagine something similar happening today.
Still, there have been numerous signs pointing towards November 2 as being a success, even if plenty of people still show up for work. Each day brings news of another union joining the cause. An organizer with Unite-Here, which represents restaurant workers, spoke of union members preparing a giant feast for strikers. The Executive Board of the Oakland Educational Association, whose 2700 members teach in the city’s schools, has endorsed the day of action, with teachers at one elementary school telling parents the school will be closed for the day. Meanwhile, SEIU Local 1021, which represents 1,750 city workers, has encouraged its members to take a leave of absence for the day and come to the protest.
“We’re the one’s losing our homes and having city services cut because of what bankers and Wall Street have done,” said Dwight McElroy, President of 1021’s Oakland chapter. “Occupy Oakland is out there taking baton blows and tear gas to protest what has been happening, so it is incumbent on the labor movement to protect them.”
And for sympathetic workers unable or unwilling to strike, the plan is to assemble at Frank Ogawa Plaza at 5 pm and march to the Oakland Port, the fifth busiest in the country. Union contracts prevent longshoremen from striking, but a large picket line could prevent them from clocking in to their 7 pm shift, effectively shutting down all activity at the port. “This will show that not only are we the 99 percent but that they are not making any money without us,” explained Raymond “Boots” Riley, an organizer with Occupy Oakland and member of political hip-hop band The Coup.
“Strong people don’t need strong leaders.” That statement fits into the ideology of the Occupy movement, but it comes from Ella Baker, a legendary Civil Rights organizer. As an advisor to the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, Baker played a key role in encouraging the organization’s non-hierarchical orientation. Made up of young whites and blacks, SNCC would led a direct action movement of countertop sit-ins and then organize Freedom Summer, a voter registration project in Mississippi. Some older Civil Rights organizations disapproved such tactics. “We’re sitting this one out,” was NAACP’s message about Freedom Summer, fearing a backlash.
There are many differences between the Occupy movement and SNCC, especially when it comes to SNCC’s emphasis on developing leaders among the dispossessed through the tireless work of grassroots organizing. But the Occupy movement, like SNCC, is dreaming big and making “impossible” demands, and seems to be lighting a spark under organized labor much as SNCC breathed new life into the civil rights movement. When you’re dying a slow death, after all, not taking risks can be the riskiest course of action. As one union member told the Occupy Oakland’s strike subcommittee, “Thousands of union members are looking for inspiration. And whether you like it or not, you occupiers are now the leaders we are looking to.”
On Sunday morning, October 16, 2011, I taxied down to the Occupy Wall Street shindig from the 92nd Street Y where the Singularity Summit was unraveling as organizers scrambled to figure out how to work the wireless Internet system in the room while speakers boasted about how close we are to computers achieving human level intelligence. Human ignorance maybe, but intelligence? More on that topic later. (See my Scientific American column for January—out mid December—for my skeptical thoughts on when I think computers will achieve human level intelligence. Hint: We’re five years away…and always will be. But since I don’t want to sound so pessimistic, I have taken a cue from the singer/songwriters Zager and Evans, that the exordium and terminus of the singularity will be 2525 and 9595.)
When I posted some pics I snapped with my iPhone on twitter and made a couple of snide remarks, many of my fellow skeptics chided me for my insensitivity or berated me for my libertarian blindness to real social injustices being protested at the various “Occupy X” events. I call them events (or “shindigs”) because my general impression is that although there are some real issues being mentioned here and there in a desultory manner, for the most part I think most people I saw were in one of two categories: (1) onlookers such as myself snapping pictures and taking in the scene; (2) participants wanting to be part of what might turn out to be this generation’s (a) Woodstock or (b) Montgomery bus boycott. In my opinion it is neither, but I have to admit that I haven’t inhaled that much second-hand pot smoke since I was in college (yes, even at the staunchly conservative Pepperdine University, there were bountiful plumes of pot smoke wafting down the dorm room hallways!).
I have appended various photographs at the end of this essay to let the moment speak for itself, grammatically challenged signs and all, but let me first make a few comments regarding what might be gleaned from the party atmosphere of a few salient points of political and economic significance.
Why has no one from Wall Street gone to jail for the financial meltdown? Bill Maher has asked this question several times on his HBO show Real Time. I have asked many experts myself, including economists, lawyers, and Wall Street traders. Answer: no one went to jail because they didn’t break any laws. Conclusion: If you want someone punished for the meltdown you have to first change the law. Perhaps these protests are the first step in that direction, although I doubt it because I don’t think Wall Street by itself caused the meltdown. It was a combination of many factors, primary being the removal of risk aversion from both Wall Street traders (and bankers) and Main Street home buyers. Still, if you want to blame Wall Streeters… What, exactly, did these Wall Street people do that was so wrong? Well, for one, the protestors seem to think that they are too greedy. This is like standing outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles to protest that Kobe Bryant and the Lakers are too greedy because they are constantly trying to win a championship and make a ton of money in the process. That’s the whole point of playing professional sports—to win and make a boatload of money in the process! Analogously, the only reason to work on Wall Street is to make a boatload of money. That’s the whole point of “playing the market.”
The Wall Streeters accepted bailout money that they shouldn’t have gotten. Yeah, well, whose fault is that? What did you think they would do? Turn the money down? Heck no! You offer someone a handout and they’ll take it, whether it is a main street worker or a Wall Street CEO. The problem is that they should never have been bailed out in the first place. That happened because of crony capitalism, which is nothing like the libertarian vision of real capitalism. So here I’m sympathetic with the Occupy X protestors: no “in profits we’re capitalists, in losses we’re socialists.” Sorry. If you want to play the game of Risk you have to accept the losses as well as the gains.
Wall Street CEOs and their resident COOs, CFOs, traders, and the like, make too damn much money, hundreds of times more than the gap used to be between the highest paid and lowest paid members of corporations. Emotionally I am once again sympathetic to the Occupy Xers: the amount of money some of these guys makes is obscene, and the income gap between them and us is Grand Canyonesque in yawning abyss. But what’s the number? How much is too much income? $1 million? $10 million? $100 million $1 billion? $10 billion? Is it really the job of some government agency to set a ceiling on how much anyone is allowed to make? Would any of my readers care to pick a number and defend it? And what if it is a number well under Bill Gates’ income? He’s giving most of it away to what most of us would consider very worthwhile causes (disease eradication in Africa, education in America). Is it okay to make $X if you give most of it away, or is it only okay if it is taxed away from you and spent on some cause someone else thinks is better than the causes you want to support?
The government should regulate Wall Street more. I agree that all competitions must be regulated by a well-defined set of rules that are consistently enforced with penalties assessed without prejudice or bias, from sporting contests to stock market trading. That is what the SEC is for, among other regulatory bodies. But from where I sit as an average Joe the Skeptic position of modest income who tries his hand at stock market trading in figures infinitesimally smaller than the Big Boys, it all looks like insider trading to me—from the Wall Street CEOs to the Beltway politicians appointed to look after them, who seemingly trade jobs and hold their positions no matter who is in power, Democrats or Republicans. Obama has drunk the Wall Street Kool Aid no less than Bush did. They all do. The entire system is corrupt, in that sense. Once you allow the players to dictate who enforces the rules of the game, the game is over. It would be like Barry Bonds being appointed Director of the Steroid Drug Testing Agency overseeing baseball to insure a fair contest, while he is still playing the game!
Will anything come of the Occupy This protests? Probably not. If the President of the United States can’t institute changes, who can? Congress? Yeah, right, there’s no corporate money tainting those jobs now is there? So here’s one man’s simplistic answer: no more government bail outs for anyone for anything, either on Main Street or Wall Street. Bail out money corrupts, and government bail out money corrupts absolutely.
That happened because of crony capitalism, which is nothing like the libertarian vision of real capitalism. So here I’m sympathetic with the Occupy X protestors: no “in profits we’re capitalists, in losses we’re socialists.” Sorry. If you want to play the game of Risk you have to accept the losses as well as the gains.
Oh crap I'm agreeing with the great wall of texter now.
Thanks for not simply assuming it was A and getting crabby about it!
hole in Oakland.
