Re: Occupy America A friend posted this on Facebook & I thought it was pretty good. Spoilered for length Spoiler Open Letter to that 53% Guy Hello, I briefly visited the “We are the 53%” website, but I first saw your face on a liberal blog. Your picture is quite popular on liberal blogs. I think it’s because of the expression on your face. I don’t know if you meant to look pugnacious or if we’re just projecting that on you, but I think that’s what gets our attention. In the picture, you’re holding up a sheet of paper that says: I am a former Marine. I work two jobs. I don’t have health insurance. I worked 60-70 hours a week for 8 years to pay my way through college. I haven’t had 4 consecutive days off in over 4 years. But I don’t blame Wall Street. Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53%. God bless the USA! I wanted to respond to you as a liberal. Because, although I think you’ve made yourself clear and I think I understand you, you don’t seem to understand me at all. I hope you will read this and understand me better, and maybe understand the Occupy Wall Street movement better. First, let me say that I think it’s great that you have such a strong work ethic and I agree with you that you have much to be proud of. You seem like a good, hard-working, strong kid. I admire your dedication and determination. I worked my way through college too, mostly working graveyard shifts at hotels as a “night auditor.” For a time I worked at two hotels at once, but I don’t think I ever worked 60 hours in a week, and certainly not 70. I think I maxed out at 56. And that wasn’t something I could sustain for long, not while going to school. The problem was that I never got much sleep, and sleep deprivation would take its toll. I can’t imagine putting in 70 hours in a week while going to college at the same time. That’s impressive. I have a nephew in the Marine Corps, so I have some idea of how tough that can be. He almost didn’t make it through basic training, but he stuck it out and insisted on staying even when questions were raised about his medical fitness. He eventually served in Iraq and Afghanistan and has decided to pursue a career in the Marines. We’re all very proud of him. Your picture reminds me of him. So, if you think being a liberal means that I don’t value hard work or a strong work ethic, you’re wrong. I think everyone appreciates the industry and dedication a person like you displays. I’m sure you’re a great employee, and if you have entrepreneurial ambitions, I’m sure these qualities will serve you there too. I’ll wish you the best of luck, even though a guy like you will probably need luck less than most. I understand your pride in what you’ve accomplished, but I want to ask you something. Do you really want the bar set this high? Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week? Do you think you can? Because, let me tell you, kid, that’s not going to be as easy when you’re 50 as it was when you were 20. And what happens if you get sick? You say you don’t have health insurance, but since you’re a veteran I assume you have some government-provided health care through the VA system. I know my father, a Vietnam-era veteran of the Air Force, still gets most of his medical needs met through the VA, but I don’t know what your situation is. But even if you have access to health care, it doesn’t mean disease or injury might not interfere with your ability to put in those 60- to 70-hour work weeks. Do you plan to get married, have kids? Do you think your wife is going to be happy with you working those long hours year after year without a vacation? Is it going to be fair to her? Is it going to be fair to your kids? Is it going to be fair to you? Look, you’re a tough kid. And you have a right to be proud of that. But not everybody is as tough as you, or as strong, or as young. Does pride in what you’ve accomplish mean that you have contempt for anybody who can’t keep up with you? Does it mean that the single mother who can’t work on her feet longer than 50 hours a week doesn’t deserve a good life? Does it mean the older man who struggles with modern technology and can’t seem to keep up with the pace set by younger workers should just go throw himself off a cliff? And, believe it or not, there are people out there even tougher than you. Why don’t we let them set the bar, instead of you? Are you ready to work 80 hours a week? 100 hours? Can you hold down four jobs? Can you do it when you’re 40? When you’re 50? When you’re 60? Can you do it with arthritis? Can you do it with one arm? Can you do it when you’re being treated for prostate cancer? And is this really your idea of what life should be like in the greatest country on Earth? Here’s how a liberal looks at it: a long time ago workers in this country realized that industrialization wasn’t making their lives better, but worse. The captains of industry were making a ton of money and living a merry life far away from the dirty, dangerous factories they owned, and far away from the even dirtier and more dangerous mines that fed raw materials to those factories. The workers quickly decided that this arrangement didn’t work for them. If they were going to work as cogs in machines designed to build wealth for the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies, they wanted a cut. They wanted a share of the wealth that they were helping create. And that didn’t mean just more money; it meant a better quality of life. It meant reasonable hours and better working conditions. Eventually, somebody came up with the slogan, “8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of sleep” to divide the 24-hour day into what was considered a fair allocation of a human’s time. It wasn’t a slogan that was immediately accepted. People had to fight to put this standard in place. People demonstrated, and fought with police, and were killed. They were called communists (in fairness, some of them were), and traitors, and many of them got a lot worse than pepper spray at the hands of police and private security. But by the time we got through the Great Depression and WWII, we’d all learned some valuable lessons about working together and sharing the prosperity, and the 8-hour workday became the norm. The 8-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek became a standard by which we judged our economic success, and a reality check against which we could verify the American Dream. If a family could live a good life with one wage-earner working a 40-hour job, then the American Dream was realized. If the income from that job could pay the bills, buy a car, pay for the kids’ braces, allow the family to save enough money for a down payment on a house and still leave some money for retirement and maybe for a college fund for the kids, then we were living the American Dream. The workers were sharing in the prosperity they helped create, and they still had time to take their kids to a ball game, take their spouses to a movie, and play a little golf on the weekends. Ah, the halcyon days of the 1950s! Yeah, ok, it wasn’t quite that perfect. The prosperity wasn’t spread as evenly and ubiquitously as we might want to pretend, but if you were a middle-class white man, things were probably pretty good from an economic perspective. The American middle class was reaching its zenith. And the top marginal federal income tax rate was more than 90%. Throughout the whole of the 1950s and into the early 60s. Just thought I’d throw that in there. Anyway, do you understand what I’m trying to say? We can have a reasonable standard for what level of work qualifies you for the American Dream, and work to build a society that realizes that dream, or we can chew each other to the bone in a nightmare of merciless competition and mutual contempt. I’m a liberal, so I probably dream bigger than you. For instance, I want everybody to have healthcare. I want lazy people to have healthcare. I want stupid people to have healthcare. I want drug addicts to have healthcare. I want bums who refuse to work even when given the opportunity to have healthcare. I’m willing to pay for that with my taxes, because I want to live in a society where it doesn’t matter how much of a loser you are, if you need medical care you can get it. And not just by crowding up an emergency room that should be dedicated exclusively to helping people in emergencies. You probably don’t agree with that, and that’s fine. That’s an expansion of the American Dream, and would involve new commitments we haven’t made before. But the commitment we’ve made to the working class since the 1940s is something that we should both support and be willing to fight for, whether we are liberal or conservative. We should both be willing to fight for the American Dream. And we should agree that anybody trying to steal that dream from us is to be resisted, not defended. And while we’re defending that dream, you know what else we’ll be defending, kid? We’ll be defending you and your awesome work ethic. Because when we defend the American Dream we’re not just defending the idea of modest prosperity for people who put in an honest day’s work, we’re also defending the idea that those who go the extra mile should be rewarded accordingly. Look kid, I don’t want you to “get by” working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week. If you’re willing to put in that kind of effort, I want you to get rich. I want you to have a comprehensive healthcare plan. I want you vacationing in the Bahamas every couple of years, with your beautiful wife and healthy, happy kids. I want you rewarded for your hard work, and I want your exceptional effort to reap exceptional rewards. I want you to accumulate wealth and invest it in Wall Street. And I want you to make more money from those investments. I understand that a prosperous America needs people with money to invest, and I’ve got no problem with that. All other things being equal, I want all the rich people to keep being rich. And clever financiers who find ways to get more money into the hands of promising entrepreneurs should be rewarded for their contributions as well. I think Wall Street has an important job to do, I just don’t think they’ve been doing it. And I resent their sense of entitlement – their sense that they are special and deserve to be rewarded extravagantly even when they screw everything up. Come on, it was only three years ago, kid. Remember? Those assholes almost destroyed our economy. Do you remember the feeling of panic? John McCain wanted to suspend the presidential campaign so that everybody could focus on the crisis. Hallowed financial institutions like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch went belly up. The government started intervening with bailouts, not because anybody thought “private profits and socialized losses” was fair, but because we were afraid not to intervene - we were afraid our whole economy might come crashing down around us if we didn’t prop up companies that were “too big to fail.” So, even though you and I had nothing to do with the bad decisions, blind greed and incompetence of those guys on Wall Street, we were sure as hell along for the ride, weren’t we? And we’ve all paid a price. All the” 99%” wants is for you to remember the role that Wall Street played in creating this mess, and for you to join us in demanding that Wall Street share the pain. They don’t want to share the pain, and they’re spending a lot of money and twisting a lot of arms to foist their share of the pain on the rest of us instead. And they’ve been given unprecedented powers to spend and twist, and they’re not even trying to hide what they’re doing. All we want is for everybody to remember what happened, and to see what is happening still. And we want you to see that the only way they can get away without paying their share is to undermine the American Dream for the rest of us. And I want you and I to understand each other, and to stand together to prevent them from doing that. You seem like the kind of guy who would be a strong ally, and I’d be proud to stand with you.
Re: Occupy America So what do people want as an end result of this? What do they think the outcome should be? I get that people are protesting income inequality or whatever, but whats the solution? Ive heard zero proposals of how it should occur and what it should be other than "tax the rich more." If not the horribly unfair and unjust system that is our current form of capitalism, then what?
Re: Occupy America A couple of heads on pikes on the ramparts of the Red Keep as a warning to would be usurpers.
Re: Occupy America How long ago did you graduate? If I remember right you're around 28ish? So you would have come out of school before shit hit the fan(unless I'm remembering wrong which is likely). U of M isn't such a prestigious university that it should be too far off the median. I know people that made over 50k/yr when graduating, but I also know ppl who made less than 20k, and a few more that just flat out couldn't find shit. The numbers seem about right to me, especially when you consider how many people study worthless majors. Honestly, the only group that I saw consistently doing real well straight out of school was the computer science majors.
Re: Occupy America I think he's talking about the pie charts I linked showing incomes, not the unemployment rate. Regarding those I believe they are talking about bachelor's degrees as well. Edit: Now that I think about it, I'm not sure it's that hard to find a job that pays over 50k/yr shortly after graduating. I found one that paid north of that within a year of graduating, but I didn't stay very long because working there was like getting your soul sucked out. Instead, I took a somewhat significant pay cut to do something I enjoy. Edit 2: Errr, that actually might not be the best example. From what I remember none of the hires were fresh out of the gate and they were thinning the applicants out during the recruiting process. I'm not sure how many got cut though. I need to edit less.
Re: Occupy America Yeah, I think he pulled from a (relatively) lucky sample, we had it bad, but not THAT bad. On the other hand pretty much every friend of mine is an older brother and their siblings are FUCKED. I know a crap load of recent college grads that joined the military because that was their only option. Not saying joining the military is bad, but when you flat out admit it's because that's the only bite you've had, obviously things aren't going too well. My friends who are all 28 are doing just fine besides the one that just got his bachelors, he decided to do a four year stint in the marines first, not quite what that was 30 years ago.
Re: Occupy America The median starting salary for an attorney working full time in the private sector these days is about $63,000, so I'm guessing with just a bachelor's it's pretty tough to get $50k. Where you really get screwed is if you don't find a job before the next cohort graduates. You basically move to the back of the line.
Re: Occupy America I would do this but PNC is a pretty awesome bank and I support them for being an awesome company to me. However, I do support other people closing their bank accounts. Go for it! Show them who's boss! (hint: it's them) I live pretty comfortably right now and I work for tips. But then again, I don't have any kids and I'm on the income based repayment plan for my student loans so I only pay $60 a month. What drives me to support OWS is the absurd influence lobbyists have over our government. You can literally do whatever the fuck you want if you have a big enough company. Phila Lawyer's take on the situation is dead on. The only way a revolution is going to happen is if people stop targeting Wall Street and focus on congress. Politicians will support whatever movement is going to get them (re)elected; which is why I feel OWS has a real chance. So far, it has worked for the Tea Party. OWS just has to scream louder.
Re: Occupy America I don't have the time to go trawling through bank financial reports to determine what portion of the balance sheet represents at call cash accounts for the great unwashed. But I can easily relate bank mentality to what I'm used to here. Part of the philosophy in putting up fees for transaction accounts is that the bank doesn't want them. They're pissy little things that fluctuate too much to use them to the best effect on the money market, and are considered a bone to throw to consumers to get what the bank really wants... your debt. Once you're locked in there, they really couldn't give a shit. Unless you're piling a couple of million into a term deposit CD, earning them bulk fees through lending or business transactions or similar they really couldn't give half a fuck about your shitty $5 balance in your account. Unless you got everyone to put a run on and possibly affect their liquidity requirements, the plan won't do shit.... except perhaps raise a chuckle of amusement. (For what it's worth, I'm mish mashing Australian banking practice with perceptions of the US situation. I may be WAY off the mark here. But I like to sound big and important on the internet, because I can't get to Wall Street at the moment.)
Re: Occupy America Yeah, I'm 27. I'm talking about a sample of 25-27 year olds, so really not that far off but I guess was right before the shit hit the fan. Here's my thing - I recently wanted to change jobs. Within a month of deciding I wanted to really leave, I had an offer from a new company. Is it because I'm in IT (I do have a "Liberal Arts" degree in Economics)? Probably. But it doesn't change the fact I worked my ass off to make my resume the best it is, practiced the shit out of interview questions, and did a fuckton of research for every opportunity that was presented. I've recently done interviews for my last company. It shocks me how many people give the most retarded, unprepared, answers. They sound like bumbling idiots. This is the majority, not the minority. There was an actual real lack of acceptable candidates through the 50 resumes we got with college degrees. So what am I saying? Does there need to be more training on how to actually get a job? Do people actually need to put more effort into getting jobs? Do people need to actually pick career paths that have a future and not a dead-end at hoping and dreaming at 30k? Probably a little bit of all of them. I think the system needs to change a bit (I agree with putting higher corporate taxes and I think the union system needs to change - too many shitty/incompetent workers are protected from having to get with the times). I also think adults who chose to fuck themselves over, it's their fault, but we should not fuck the kids over. I think there needs to be more of an emphasis on K-12 and teaching people actual real life skills.
Re: Occupy America Last year's graduating class from Carlson (Minny's business school) reported 87% accepting job offers within 90 days of graduating and I know my class isn't too far off. I'd expect that rate to vary widely between colleges within the U.
Re: Occupy America You know why you got an offer? Because you have years of experience, experience you gained because you were lucky enough to graduate before the shit hit the fan. I'm not saying you didn't earn it or didn't work for it, but there was some luck involved. Someone with your motivation and talent graduating today doesn't have the same options. I'm not saying anything should be done about it, life is just unfair sometimes and the guys graduating today just have to settle for less if they won't or can't go off on their own (most people that age aren't cut out for entrepreneurship anyway). Also, I wouldn't call your degree a liberal arts degree, I have a bachelor of arts in math, but math and econ are not liberal arts fields.
Re: Occupy America 85% of the graduating class of 2011 moved back home after graduation. Hell I make this very post from my parent's metaphorical basement (it's actually a second floor bedroom). SOMEONE HIRE ME!
Re: Occupy America There wasn't luck involved, that's the thing. I had interviews with four, yes four, different companies. You know what that tells me, there is a lack of acceptable candidates out there. What everyone is bitching about is that there are no jobs. On the contrary, there are a lot of unacceptable candidates who don't put the effort into a good resume or practice interviews. Or, they selected a shitty career path. As I said (and I know many friends who've had to interview have had the same thing), the vast majority of applications you get are under-qualified. They have college degrees, but worthless ones, and zero other experience that can go towards the career they're applying for. As katokoch reported, 87% of CSOM grads have a job within 90 days. Are they just lucky? No, they're useful. If you have a useful degree/experience, and some determination, you will find a job. EDIT - I know people will get mad at me for this, but the way I look at it, there's a genuine lack of people planning and taking responsibility nowadays. Hell, look at how irresponsible people are with credit cards. It wasn't like that before. It's a lack of social structure, parenting, and schools teaching proper skills K-12; and then people just doing whatever the hell they want once they head off to college.
Re: Occupy America I agree with this based on what I saw. It's funny how kids are willing to spend hours on research papers or studying for exams, but then when the job interview comes up, which is way more important, they take a 20 minute glance at the company website. I guess this is good for the rest of us though. I just don't understand it. You studied four years to get this job, but you can't even put aside a couple hours to get to know the company and improve your chances? It seems most colleges actually give a shit ton of info on how to get ready for interviews, where to look, how to act, etc. It's just that students don't take it seriously. Katokoch- Are those numbers really encouraging though? That's 13% who can't find jobs, which seems a little high to me.
Re: Occupy America So degree = job? Compared to similar statistics, isn't 13% unemployment for 22 year olds pretty low?
Re: Occupy America I'm also assuming that 87% is going into the field they studied. Out of the other 13%, I'm assuming they find some type of job (which is what all the statistics have been based on). I would love to see those same graphs/stats that were posted before done by industry/major.
Re: Occupy America If it's 87% finding jobs in their major, and a chunk of the rest finding jobs not in their major it doesn't seem that bad to me, but if it's 13% that flat out can't find shit that still does seem high to me. That's a lot of kids that have to move home. Especially considering people studying business are supposed to be taking 'safer' majors. Anything over 10% is considered ugly. Granted, it should be a little higher than average for kids just getting out of school, but still... Based on the stats I posted on the last page it was 10.7% who were unemployed with a bachelor's degree (as of August this year), but that's for anyone under 25, not within 90 days.
Re: Occupy America I was actually off, the 87% is for my class (up 5% from last year) and we're pulling in an average of $48,239. So that means the vast majority of the grad class got the job they were shooting for in their finance/accounting/marketing/operations/MIS/etc. field. At least the $48K number is encouraging. Spoiler http://www.csom.umn.edu/about/facts-and-figures/index.html Source