Re: Occupy America Yeah, I never got the argument that taxes and jobs were connected. If the company is operating at the optimal employment level (ie: a new hire wouldn't be offset by increased revenues; a layoff would result in more losses than savings), taxes won't do anything. Laying someone off would further reduce profits. If a new hire would increase your revenues, you'll hire him whether you keep 75% or 71% of the revenues. The only time I could see it leading to layoffs or lower hiring is if you've overextended your budget and need a short term fix. If I have to make a payment on the little place I have in Nice and won't have the money because of a tax hike, I might lay off the secretary so I won't have to pay her. But, I expect these sort of tight budget situations to be rare and giving companies notice of the tax changes well in advance should eliminate most of that.
Re: Occupy America Record corporate profits: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/economy/24econ.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/busin ... 4econ.html</a> Record number of Americans at poverty level: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14903732" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14903732</a> A Bank of America exec get's $6 million dollars. For getting fired. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-07/bank-of-america-gives-krawcheck-6-million-severance-package-after-ouster.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-0 ... uster.html</a> This by the way, the lifetime's wages your average doctor will make in the course of a 40-year career. The same Bank of America that received $20 billion dollars in bailout money and another $118 billion in guarantees: <a class="postlink" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7832484.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7832484.stm</a> And is imposing new $5 debit card fees, "scrambling for new source of revenue": <a class="postlink" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/29/us-bankofamerica-debit-idUSTRE78S4GQ20110929" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/ ... GQ20110929</a> The timeline of bank consolidation: I put all of this stuff up to illustrate one point: There is something wrong with the way wealth is distributed, managed and created in the U.S. Just because you are not desperate like the unemployed or underemployed does not mean that there is nothing wrong with the way things are. The major financial banks are at the eye of this particular shitstorm, because they control a disproportionate amount of the money. Also, I think part of OWS's appeal is that there are no specified demands. Anyone tuning in long enough can find a stance that they agree with.
Re: Occupy America There's a lot of people in the home mortgage industry, specifically in the foreclosure divisions, who should be in jail for fraud. There are so fucking many accounts of fraudulent behavior coming from those divisions that it's beyond belief that more people aren't already in jail and that the industry isn't being treated as an organized crime syndicate. Hell, they should be in federal jail because they've repeatedly shuffled the processing centers as a few states have tightened up legislation to try and stop those cocksuckers. They should be being treated like any other scam working across state lines the manipulate jurisdictional limitations. But those fucking disasters are symptomatic - it wasn't horrible foreclosures that caused the finance industry melt down - it was the people who leaned on their foreclosure divisions so hard that they resorted to blatant fraud to keep their own houses. Just to play the other side for a moment. Steve Jobs - do you think he might have had more influence on the direction of Apple during his involvement with the business, than say - any 400 average income earners? At a fundamental level, there are plenty of CEO's out there, who contribute more value to the business than any 400 of their median wage employees. Strategic direction, or genuine innovation has a staggering impact on business function and total profit. But the average federal tax contribution of tax payers is 17,500 give or take depending on the year. The average income in the US is around $50k a year. Do you honestly believe that any CEO on 20 million a year, is paying 7 million a year in federal income tax? Honestly? You think that CEO hasn't figured out that $200k a year to his accountant can save him $2 million a year in tax? Wealthy people, like top level musicians and basketball players. Mid/high level white collar types - they pay a shitload of tax. But Rich people? The people who pay Musicians and basketball players and expensive white collar empoloyees? If you think they're paying 400 times as much tax as the average American, because they have 400 times as much personal wealth? You're on fucking crack. Because a comfortable middle class doesn't rebel. Middle class people with middle class jobs and middle class lives and middle class comfort, don't give a shit about politics. All they want is to raise their family or enjoy whatever petty shit they enjoy and be comfortable. People are giving a shit now, because they're not comfortable, and they're increasingly watch middle class comfort slip away and experiencing some actual hardship. And nobody with the American dream wants hardship. They want comfortable mediocrity and the chance for their kids to be great, with a reasonable assurance that they'll at least be comfortably mediocre. Take that away and watch how fast they find the pitchforks and the fire. And all that anger will go away once they're safe and comfortable again.
Re: Occupy America You aren't getting my point. Do you actually trust the government to actually use additional tax revenue to bring down the debt? Again, these are the same people that have claimed for a decade Bill Clinton left us with a budget surplus (his second article is good too). Somehow you don't trust exceedingly smaller numbers of banks with huge amounts of money but trust this single government to work in your interest with ungodly amounts of your money, plus their general powers in regards to our country's finances and economy the banks only can dream of having? Ive never had a rational explanation to that.
Re: Occupy America Just to be clear, a lot of what I'm saying is what I want our government to do, not what I think they will do. They could use higher taxes to help offset the debt. I think they should do it. Whether they will or not, is sadly a lot more up in the air.
Re: Occupy America That's why blindly supporting tax increases is a mystery to me. Theyve proven quite well they can spend the money, very rarely and for short highly contentious periods have they really slashed spending or even controlled it to a measurable degree. They floated a balanced budget amendment during the debt ceiling which pegged federal spending to a percentage of GDP, an idea Milton Friedman supported. But like the rest of the budget cutting talks it seemed that every penny of government spending was 100 percent needed for all time lest old people would starve in the street and cancer would go unresearched.
Re: Occupy America I look at this whole situation and shake my head. If there is anything I'm an expert on, it's codependency. A lot of people are really good at being codependent, not so much on recognizing it. This is a fucking codependent relationship. "The 99%" are on one side and "the 1%" are on the other. For the 99% to blame the 1% is a river of denial deeper than the sea. The 1% is the alcoholic and the 99% are the enablers. My hypothesis: "The 99%" are borne of boundless optimism. The generation that lived through the depression and World War II, and who knew that bad shit happens to a lot of people for no reason, insulated their children and their grandchildren. Those grandchildren, the 99%, act as if nothing bad can ever happen to them, and live their lives with no margin for error. When something bad does happen, they find themselves completely fucked without a whit of understanding why. Both my Grandfathers taught me a simple lesson in a million little ways: "You're a smart kid, but bad shit can happen to anybody, you ain't special, and life ain't fair." This generation has completely missed that message. Here is the average member of the 99%: Seriously, when I read that blog I want to reach through the screen and stab some of those people in the face. There are two very specific elements of sob stories in there I will actually sympathize with: 1. People who have bought health insurance all their lives, but who lost it through getting sick or losing a job and now can't get it back. Of course, Obama actually tried to fix this, but it was utterly scuttled for stupid reasons. Basically, 50% of the 99% are keeping the other 49% from having health insurance. Awk-warrrd... 2. Military vets who were injured on duty and now are getting shit on. Those people should go to the fucking front of the line. If I could melt down half the whiny assholes on that site to pay for healthcare for one wounded vet, I probably would. Of all the shit the 1% is guilty of, the ultimate thing that everyone is mad about is that they saw, and had the audacity to take, an opportunity to milk a goddamn mint out of idiots who were begging like crack addicts for the opportunity to bury their heads deeper in the sand and sign contracts in their own blood.
Re: Occupy America Here's the thing though. I struggle to think of a time where Congress or the government raised taxes solely for their own wallets. Sure, it might be for social programs that don't benefit you or you don't like, but it necessarily can't be just for themselves, because they'll need votes come election time. Democracy is nice that way. This is a pervasive attitude in this country, and it's fucking stupid. See Aetius's post, and this. TL;DR Personal responsibility doesn't mean what you think it means. You have to be seriously delusional to think that every, or even the majority of poor people are in their position because they are stupid. It is rather because they are amateurs (in the field of financial manipulation) negotiating with professionals. Who do you think will win there? Please do explain. Are you talking about people you know and see, or people who have the time to post on tumblr? People who suffer without cause, or people who don't think through their choices and therefore suffer? And isn't it possible your experience is not the reality of the situation?
Re: Occupy America You shut your whore mouth right this minute. I will not have you speak ill of this wonderful woman:
Re: Occupy America Yes. Hell, half my fucking family. Why don't you go down to visit my uncle, who stuck his own mother in shitty nursing home and then spent all of her money buying himself two houses, half a dozen TVs the size of a wall, a pool in the backyard, and a goddamn Tiki bar with a kegerator. I'm sure he didn't just spend all her money, he's probably got $100K on credit cards too. Now his wife, my aunt, has a major medical problem and they're in trouble. And you know what happens to his mother in the nursing home when the money runs out in 6 months? Neither do I. And neither does she. She better die first, because it'll probably be worse for her if she doesn't. Why don't you go visit my aunt, who got divorced 20 years ago and still lives in a huge house she can't afford and can't maintain, with it crumbling to dust and shit around her. While you're there, visit with her two daughters who also live there and have both made it to 30 without real jobs? Or maybe you can hang out with my coworkers. They're all brilliant folks, more letters after their names than Eskimos have words for snow. They avoided making most of these huge major mistakes and landed in the top 10-15% of the bottom 99%. Some of their kids have even moved out, though most of them are pushing 60 with small kids still at home. By and large, they have the work ethic of three-toed sloths. Send them detailed instructions to do something that should be simple and straightforward, and you'll get half-assed shit back a week late, bearing little resemblance to the assignment. It's not my fault they self-identify. What am I supposed to do, just make up a whole bunch of people who AREN'T identifying as the 99% and assume that they're the ones with real problems? No, these people have fucking #firstworldproblems. These people aren't the poor. These people may make themselves that way, eventually, but they are not the poor. As my grandfathers told me, everybody is subject to intense suffering without cause. Because that's the way the fucking world works. I have walked plenty of people I loved and cared for out of this world after long, depressing, and painful illnesses. I did not fritter away my resources on frivolity, denial, and unfounded optimism; I saved them so I could use them for these people when they needed them. And I save the rest for someday when, God forbid, I will need them. Not thinking through your choices causes immense suffering. The world imposes suffering enough, your job is to minimize the suffering you can actually control. People today do a shitty job of it. Yep. But again, they're self-identifying right there on the Internet. Who am I to tell them that they aren't who they say they are?
Re: Occupy America That fucking woman is the problem! Because of her, most paleobotanists I know are actually convinced that one day a white-haired guy is going to show up and take them to a magical land of resurrected plants from the Triassic. What's sad is that this is slightly more likely than them ever making enough to pay off their student loans.
Re: Occupy America Plus, she ditched uber-stud Grant for fucking Ben Harper. She was always just in it for the money.
Re: Occupy America Dude, I'm bitter about family members gaming the system, too. My grandmother has never worked a day in her life yet somehow she is collecting Social Security minutes after she became a citizen (while barely knowing English, and my brother coached her through the exams). But that doesn't mean the system is worthless. So fuck the other people who don't or haven't thought ahead? Or thought and were told by everyone that things were going to be great, only for things to go sour? Let them go bankrupt, or not feed their families, or die? Your morality is not contingent on other people's lack of foresight. The right thing to do is the right thing to do, regardless of the stupidity of other people. I don't think, if our society can prevent these things and chooses not to, that we can hold the moral high ground as our ideals demand we should. And in case I sound like a raging pinko here, I'll just note that my position would have been mainstream 10 years ago, even. That should tell you how much the national discussion has swung, not even to the right, but to the nutty.
Re: Occupy America This attitude annoys me, especially when it goes as far as to use it as an excuse to entirely discredit the whole meaning behind the protests. Are there kids out there protesting because they can only afford a Mac and not a Macbook Pro? I'm sure there are. Are there kids who really are whining merely about the very existence of student loans without it being deeper than that? Definitely. But I think laughing at and looking down on the people who are protesting because they couldn't find a job in a career with reasonable expectations and now have to move back home is wrong. The stability and state of the middle class is really important, and if that falls to shit then it's going to be a big domino effect. Sure, it would be more effective if people living in extreme poverty were represented at the protests, but that's not really something that happens too often, and there's nothing wrong with these people in the next rung up protesting in the name of those that are worse off. Not to mention that poverty looks a lot different in our country in this era than the stereotypes that pop into your head when you think of The Poor. Last year, I made too little to qualify for this housing that was being created mostly to serve starving artists. I sure as hell don't look or seem like The Poor and my life isn't full of food stamps and decrepit apartments in the projects, but when it boils down to just the numbers, I'm below the poverty line. Are my struggles equal to those experiencing what you typically think of? Absolutely not, but if I wanted to get pissy about it, I would "count."The point being, you can't exactly judge a book by its cover when deciding who is and who is not poor when looking at a picture of these people or walking past them on the street. And if you're still not convinced, then I'll just repeat what I said in my first post. It's the trickle down effect at work. The most active people in the protests are my group of people. The only person I have heard have the expectations that everyone mocks and scoffs at ($50k right out of college, etc) is the one who wants to go into politics. Everyone in the "creative class" that I know wants a perfectly appropriate entry level position where $35k sounds damn impressive so they can afford to live in a place with opportunity without having to work for free for years to get it, or attempt to pay back their student loans with a minimum wage job, which is now actually really difficult to get. Everyone has been knocked down a rung. The people who were mid-level are now fighting for the entry level positions that are opening, and getting them because they're obviously more experienced. The people who should be getting the entry level jobs are taking up the hourly day jobs. The people who wanted the entry level jobs but wouldn't have gotten them can't get the day jobs, but are too qualified to do menial labor (and people hiring for those jobs will actually turn down applicants for being too qualified), so what do they do? And maybe some of them are getting the shittier jobs, but that replaces the people who usually get those, and they turn to government assistance, which is paid for both literally and figuratively (meaning they feel it the most) by those mid-level people who already feel like they're not making what they're worth. It just seems so obviously fucked up to me that it's really hard to wrap my head around the idea that there are people who think the entire thing is totally unjustified. Arguing about the smaller and/or more particular details of where exactly the problem is happening and how to fix it is totally understandable, but to just write it off entirely? I just don't get it.
Re: Occupy America I didn't say anything about the system. I said that most of the people are worthless. Every system that gets mature and stable enough eventually falls prey to hyper-optimization and gamesmanship. The 1% learned how to work the system, got money, converted the money to power, and optimized the system to work to their benefit. And they continue to do so. What I'm wondering is how it'll end. The optimizations are so complex that no one (or few) changes will fix them. You're trying to undo a million tiny little laws with, what, ten new ones? Good luck with that. The other option - the fall of empire or revolution - is almost unthinkable. Indeed, the USA is "too big to fail." By this I don't mean it cannot fail; I'm saying that its failure is perceived to be infinitely worse than every other option. As such, every other option, no matter how bad or desperate, is likely to be tried first. That will be fun to watch. It's not "the other people" anymore. It's the 99%. It's not a well-organized, responsible society with a small percentage that doesn't think ahead. It's EVERYBODY. There aren't enough people left to fuck over the other people who haven't thought ahead. They have fucked themselves. Aww, did the bad widdle piddle world lie to you? Everybody lies. For all their flaws, my parents at least taught me that. The man in the white van with the teddy bear does not have candy and did not lose a puppy. The boy scout leader does not want to show you something special in the basement. Everything is not going to be OK. I thought this way once, I really did. Remember when I said I was an expert on codependency? Try living with or "taking care" of an addict or three for a few years. You'll realize how much you want this to be true, and how much it's not. It is one of the gravest realizations I've ever had about the world. There is no right thing to do. By helping them, you enable the addiction and feed the behavior. By not helping them, you risk dire consequences that are perhaps worse. You know what the right thing to do is? There is no such thing. Let's say by some miracle you manage to thread the needle and get them on the road to making a real change. And you want to really help them, really address the underlying issues? OK, fine, but you have to give up yourself in return. You give up one healthy person to keep one unhealthy person afloat and healing. And within "the 99%," the unhealthy people outnumber the healthy ones. You misunderstand...there's no more "our society" that is separate from the problems. You think that society consists of the doctors ignoring the patients. No. Society is the patients. "We are the 99%." Where are the doctors? I try to be one. You may know a few. We're outnumbered thousands to one. Society has overwhelmed the hospital system. It is the contagion. It is the zombie apocalypse. 10 years ago is when we kicked it into high gear trying to see how far we could kick the can down the road and sell the future to keep the present from going bankrupt. This is the margin call. Everyone wants to deny it and come up with some magical solution that they say will put things back on track. What they secretly hope is that they can kick that can further down the road another 5, 10 years. But this is the margin call. The populace has not really been afraid since the 30s-40s. Maybe the result of this will be severe enough that it will bring fear back to America at large. Back then the banks just failed and everything else tumbled. There were no bailouts and ordinary families did go homeless and did live in real poverty for a decade. It was your nightmare scenario that you think we "choose not to prevent." Did we "choose not to prevent" the Depression? I think the entire nation has mistook living on a giant credit card for 40 years for prosperity. It's so easy to forget what things were like before those 40 years. Go read some Reminisce Magazine for a while. It's creepy. It's a magazine to give old people nostalgia for what youngsters today would consider a post-apocalyptic world. Except that world is real and it existed. It may be coming back. We survived and did some thriving after the Depression and the War, IMHO because the 99% back then learned fear. I don't wish for more fear in the future; I'd really rather avoid it. I do think it's better than revolution, but still bad. Fear is a bad motivator; it's much better to be motivated by ambition or will. But I look around and I see the 99% have neither.
Re: Occupy America What? First of all, I thought this was the "new protesting" and that there was explicitly no "whole meaning behind the protests." Even when I look at the various lists of grievances and demands, they are all against "the 1%." And that list is probably true. But it's codependency again. It is easy to blame the addict for all the problems in the family system, and that makes it impossible to heal. You have to heal the whole system. You have to redefine boundaries on both sides. As long as the demands go entirely one way, from the 99% to the 1%, and the 99% outlines ZERO changes and ZERO sacrifices it will make, it's bullshit and blamestorming. Every single one of them undermines any legitimate protest that's going on. Send them home. Or burn their Priuses. Depends on what you mean by "career with reasonable expectations." I am of the opinion that a wide swath of the people posting on that Tumblr blog have wildly unrealistic expectations. Unfortunately for people, what they want to do and what the world needs are mismatched. They want to be paleobotanists and the world needs plumbers. I will concede that the 1% has shifted capital around to the point where it is even hard to afford plumbers, which doesn't help. But which would you rather have, 100 broke plumbers with no debt or 100 broke paleobotanists with $100K of debt each? This may be inevitable; polarization of those who can optimize the system vs. those who can't is sort of built into the system. Has their situation really changed that much? Is this what the movement is about - the people in extreme poverty? I don't see too much #occupywestvirginia. Is that what's happening? Really? Where is your evidence that the protestors understand the plight of the (real) working poor in the country better than anybody else? Yep. I've read Ehrenreich. I've read Bageant. The working poor have been in the same silent plight for 30 years. These Tumblr people are not the working poor. Not yet. Have you considered the fact that we don't actually need that many people in the "creative class" and that it might be unrealistic to expect to ever make a living doing that? When you have an abundance of supply and a dearth of demand, prices go down. We are accumulating human capital. Like, say, India. I am told by Indian folks I know that if I were doing my job in that country, I would have six or seven servants at my disposal. I cringe at the thought because, you know, I really don't like the idea of "servants," but that's the consequence of excess human capital in a society. Yep. Welcome to capitalism, the great race to the bottom. (Hint: try to LOSE that race.) When did everyone in the country forget that life is a competition, and that not everybody is going to get a medal at the end? I guess when we sold the future to pay for extra medals for everybody in the 70s-00s. Well, the future we sold is here now. The medals are getting scarce. I am not writing this off or saying it's entirely unjustified. I'm trying to look at it from a systems perspective instead of from the perspective of someone involved in the codependent relationship. The most counter-intuitive thing in the world for an enabler to understand is that the addict is only half the problem. Despite being helpful, conscientious, successful, and stable, the enabler is the other half of the problem. And the solution is not to fix the addict, it's to redefine boundaries.
Re: Occupy America Founder and stockholder. CEO salary wouldn't be where his wealth is being drawn from, so, no, a CEO salary that's only 20x, 40x, 100x average employee wage would be OK for him. It seems a lot of people are arguing that the poor need to accept austerity measures for a balanced budget. Where are the austerity measures for the rich? Why do they get to keep their financial protections, bonuses, tax breaks, and subsidies? The protesters don't want to sacrifice anything because they have practically nothing left to sacrifice. They want the 1% to start carrying as much of the load as they historically have. The rich have never had it better in the United States, and yet half the population acts as though any talk of the rich paying a little bit more money to the USA is class warfare, or unpatriotic. Agreed. West Virginia is not known for its financial centers, news cameras, or (recently) political acitivity. New York is. It's a better place to protest.
Re: Occupy America I hate BOA. I don't like their corporate practices and other fees. Years ago in Georgia, my local branches were C&S Bank that eventually were bought, merged, absorbed into what is now BOA. I had a passbook savings account to put my Grandma's-ten-dollar-birthday money in as a kid with C&S. I stayed with them into my early adulthood, even after they became BOA. But, eventually, moved to a local bank, because I hated some of the things BOA did. However, that Reuters article also points out BOA was not the first one to start adding fees as a way to make up that revenue. They just publicized it more (in part, to make a statement against the new law, IMO). So, the Government passed a law that specifically reduces a corporation's revenue, and that Corporation is supposed to just say, "Oh well, I guess our revenue will just go down." You didn't think that your local harware store and McDonald's starting accepting debit cards out of the goodness of their heart, did you? No, they want your payment to be easier and faster. The banks and machine companies charge fees for that convenience. Now, instead of letting the market determine what a reasonable fee for that is, there is an artificial hard cap on that. Even if you think they should do it, why would a corporation just take that without trying to find another way to recoup that lost revenue? Last year, BOA had a certain amount of expenses to do what they do, and they received a certain amount of revenue for that. This year, their customers expect the same service, yet one of the revenue sources has been cut in half. Why would they not try and replace that revenue? So, what was this posted earlier? I don't mean that sarcastically. Is that not their official declaration? Or, did you mean that people supporting OWS aren't aware of the specified demands?
Re: Occupy America I love everything about protests, except the protesters. My main issue with the protests is that there are some real idiots out there that substantially dilute the cause. I feel lucky that I've never been laid off. I feel lucky that I did have a job waiting for me when I graduated college. I feel lucky that I never had to foreclose on a home or file for bankruptcy. BUT IF I DID, rather than aimlessly looking for somebody to blame, I'd do something about it. One of my best friends lost his trading job about a year ago. Rather than file for unemployment, he got a job at Whole Foods. He still works there, and I'm pretty god damn sure he's not downtown protesting right now. And no, he's not independently wealthy. This has nothing to do with civil rights. This has been said before, but this comes down to a huge entitlement complex that we've created and enjoyed in our society. Seriously, fucking students and CHILDREN protesting. Give me a break.
Re: Occupy America My main issue with these protests is the targeting of individuals and the scapegoating going on. Just because some of these Wall Street executives were crooked and ran firms into the ground doesn't mean all were. And just because some of the 1% are terrible greedy people doesn't mean all rich people need to be vilified. I mean, this recent branch of the protest where they are marching and protesting outside of people's houses, the "Millionaire's March". Its ridiculous. The people they are protesting? Jamie Dimon, who arguably was the most admirable of the bank CEOs during the crisis and who was one of them who didn't fuck shit up. Chase didn't want TARP funds but basically was forced to accept them by the government so that it didn't seem that funds were being selectively distributed. Then Chase used those funds to expand their business and they were among the first to pay the funds back. But sure, lets vilify him John Paulson? The man runs a brilliant hedge fund and made money during the crisis cause he wasn't an idiot. He was one of the few people not involved in the subprime mess, but yes, lets hate on him. And fucking Rupert Murdoch? I mean, he's kind of a douche, but a misguided target during this whole mess. Bottom line, alot of rich people, the 1% if you will, are paying the taxes they are and doing what the will because the government allows it. Bitch about the government, the tax structure, the wasted spending, but don't boil this down to a personal level where there is animosity for people just because they have money and are successful. Now the majority of the people on this board don't have that mentality cause this discussion has been for the most pair level headed and commendable from both sides. But so many of these Occupy Wall Street morons, especially the younger patchouli smelling idiots and students, have this Eat the Rich mindset where simply having a large bank account makes you a deplorable personal and a dishonest bastard. That mode of thinking disgusts me.