And I think this is one of the precursors to the present unrest among OWS. Nothing this guy really did was illegal. I did like this one, I would further suggest "Inside Job" for a documentary about the current financial crisis. If I may, I'll try to sum up a bit of the discontent (at least as far as I see it as a neutral observer). Steal a car? Go to jail. Steal 760 Billion? Get a bonus. I think it's really an issue of scale, more than anything else.
Lets entertain a tax increase and closure of current loopholes in the tax code. I know you're not naive enough to think that in our thousands of pages of tax code, new loopholes won't open. So we'll spend millions in tax dollars, dollars that could've been used for social services, to rewrite an increasingly complicated tax code. I can play the idealist role and we can keep playing this cat and mouse game with the rich but with the government vs well funded tax specialists, I'll put my money on the rich every time. In the end, the poor always suffer the most from the misallocation of tax dollars. This is NOT an endorsement for a flat tax, but if these millionaires really want to be taxed more, they'd propose specific legislation to monitor overseas tax shelters, for instance. It appears to be a PR stunt more than anything else.
Can someone with a stronger Econ background than myself explain how valid of an article this opinion piece is at New York Times? The New Progressive Movement
The crux of the article is economic growth and decline is sinusoidal, which is basically true. Some arcs are bigger than others, but it just goes up and down. Which catalysts are responsible for each shift is debatable. His final suggestion seems a little contradictory. If the economy is heading towards prosperity, and its sinusoidal, then that should mean another inevitable decline afterwards which he fails to mention because he's too busy congratulating the protesters. However the basic tenet of breaking the chains of rich, corporate donors is something everyone can agree with.
The article is correct that the Reagan movement was fighting a bogeyman by targeting exclusively taxes, and the current conservative politicians still don't get it either. If the policy items and talking points they promote are correct, then a 0% marginal tax rate would result in full employment...but that isn't how it works. Blog Maverick covered it earlier this week. It is true that low taxes make it easier to run a business by creating more cash on hand - but a consistent tax policy (high or low), would be even better when it comes to creating jobs and allowing for growth. I'm frustrated, because I consider myself fiscally conservative; none of primary candidates from either party are fiscally conservative - because none of them will admit that getting out of the current financial mess will require both cutting spending AND increasing revenue. Additionally, despite a near religious devotion towards "free market capitalism", the current crop of Republican candidates will be the first to condemn the elimination of any tax breaks given to particular segments (oil subsidies, farm/corn subsidies, etc) - if those segments aren't able to compete without preferential treatment, the market should punish them accordingly; just like it has with every other industry.
I'd say the writer is jumping the gun a bit. What have the occupiers accomplished in their months of protesting? Are they any clearer on goals or leadership? Has their movement gained any momentum? If we had millions of the population protesting, striking, or directly supporting OWS I'd say the piece was more accurate. But as we currently sit, occupiers may consider themselves the 99%, but they have less than 1% of real, tangible support. They have a popular, albeit vague message, but few are doing anything about it. Their only resource at this point is the media, and without progress, their headlines will start dwindling.
What you need is someone with a background in history who studied the periods in question in detail for the interpretation. Luckily I happen to somewhat meet that criteria, my primary focus was in Reconstruction but I studied this area in less detail. The suppositions are correct. We are likely on the edge of major reforms if the movement can become more than a bunch of people sitting in a camp. This country has a history of finally coming around when it needs to, and it needs to. The author seems to brush the issue by merely mentioning how long it took for the last major reforms to be felt. This is too important to ignore. We really seem to live in an era where people are even less capable of planning for the future, or to be honest, even realizing what the future means. Instant gratification seems to have eroded the idea of how long people really have to live, and how things don't happen overnight. Over the past 6 years or so I have noticed an eroding of the concept of the future in many of the younger generation. Stupid, shitty tattoos are an ok example. I really don't think that people understand that the future is ahead of them, and guess what, No Use For a Name and NOFX will not mean the same to you even 10 years down the line. So why did you get them tattooed on your forearm? (No shit, I knew a guy who did this) They will still be there when you are 60-70-80. The future is a long way away, and this guy is right we are on the way to reforms. But we have to be careful that people don't react and revolt because change doesn't happen right away.
I'd argue that disregard for the existence of the future is not something exclusive to this current crop of 20-30somethings, and is something they share with their parents and grandparents. But I'm a tree-hugging socialist, so my perception of "thinking for the future" might differ from yours.
It's kind of like the poorest of the rich kids at boarding school complaining about inequality. Yeah, I guess it sucks and sometimes it takes an insane amount of work and money to get ahead. But fuck you for liking yourselves to the Middle East. Leave the country, chances are you'll end up in a worse spot.
While all of this has been going on I've been working my ass off, making good money and complaining about not being able to find any decent employees. Same goes for all of the other employers around here. There are a ton of jobs in my area. Well paying jobs. the problem is, no one can find anyone who is A) willing to work hard. and/or B) not retarded. Anyone who meets these requirements already has a job. I don't disagree with the protesters' cause (whatever that may be), but I find it a little hard to believe that some of these people can't find any jobs. There has to be a McDonalds or a Wendy's somewhere that's hiring. It's not glamorous, but it's better than doing jack shit. Just because you have an engineering degree doesn't mean you're above having a shitty job when times are tough.
Oh, sweet Jesus Christ in a jumped up sidecar. THIS IS NOT ABOUT BEING UNEMPLOYED AND/OR UNABLE TO FIND A JOB. This is about corruption and greed, and a system designed to make the top 1% richer at the expense of the other 99%. It's about taxpayer's bailouts paying for absurd bonuses for criminals. It's about insider trading that's so shady it's impossible to determine what's legal and what's not. It's about members of Congress being controlled by corporate interest groups. It's about a system that allowed us to get to a point where someone with an engineering degree or a teacher or an accountant or a graphic designer has to listen to a bunch of self absorbed people who aren't paying attention telling them to go look for a job at fucking Wendy's because times are tough. Times ARE tough, and a major part of the reason for that is that the distribution of wealth is at an unprecedented place and getting worse, and we have deregulated the fuck out of anything we may have ever had in place to keep that from happening. My apologies for attacking your post directly, Danger Boy - you just happened to be the last guy to say the same thing many others before you have said.
What, really, is your problem with this? I'm not asking what is wrong with the likening of themselves to the Middle East, I'm asking why you are so mad about it. Your last post said: Now, you made this post the day after [estimated don't kill me I don't really know] there were 30,000+ people protesting in New York. It's not to say there is any more than a menial fraction of the population actually supporting them, but they certainly don't seem to be going away, even without media coverage. In fact they are growing; despite the many people saying OWS needs an agenda, or they need to enter into discussions, or they need to get violent, or they are a bunch of dirty hippies, or any number of things about what a protest can do and can't do. But I'm sure you get what it's about, and I'm sure you recognize that it isn't a movement just focused on the corruption of the U.S. government and the corporate oligarchy that it is linked to. For better or worse, it is a truly revolutionary movement, which means that it denies the system in toto, which is the obvious mistake when anyone asks "what are these people actually protesting for." If there were an answer for that, it would mean a sustenance of the system with changes; OWS does not accept that. They aren't asking for any changes (besides hangers-on with signs), they are saying we simply do not accept this system, now stare at us until you realize that yourselves, because we aren't the ones to figure out where to go with it, we couldn't even try with the firmly established ideology that is most people. And people are looking, and for some reason, it seems like people are joining. They aren't trying to change the system, they are saying fuck all this bullshit. And yes, the majority of people including everyone here already knew all of this, so what is the big problem accepting them? (And this is all pertinent, and worth repeating, including the youtube link that should be viewed, so here it is again)
To quote an old meme from the last psychiatrist here: if young people today are the worst bunch of douched-out-narcissists to ever exist, who could be worse? The parents that raised 'em that way.
I'm not sure if this is appropriate here, please remove it if it's not. Thanks to Sewer Pig for the Frederick Douglas quote.
Hotwheelz, great job with the video. I'm sure if just about anyone here had some say in governmentals, you, and others with muscular dystrophy and other debilitating illnesses would be taken care of. But that point alone is significant. Why aren't you and they, if we can here (anyone...?) agree to that care? To elaborate: even you take the high road and say these people are whining about nothing, the whole "govt. is contra people, and the wealth gap, unfair practices, etc...," is simply an illusion, the fact that the illusion exists means that there exists a significant problem. i.e. there is enough of a gap between normal people and those that control them for these fantasies to be created in the first place. Obviously, that ain't the kind of democracy anyone signed up for. [Sorry for the many posts, I'll slink off now]
Ah modern technology, where you enter your thoughts into a computer so that the computer may verbalize them, so that you may record it in order to put it back onto the computer.
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here or what your question is. But... thanks? Edit: Gravitas put it on reddit here
I didn't say that's what OWS is about. I was just talking about how most of the protesters are complaining that they can't find a job. Calm down, whittler.
I've been meaning to post here and let y'all know that occupy chicago is doing their thing right outside my office building. Yesterday, someone from the federal reserve lost their shit and told one of the guys to get a fucking job. The protestor threw soup on the guy and was promptly arrested. Besides that, they have been respectful, even making a path for me when I get some food west of my building. If you guys want, give me a list of questions that won't solicit a punch to the face and I can interview one of those dread locked hippies who insist on bringing their poor, bored dogs along.