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Occupy Wall Street Protests
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Post by
MyTie
I dare you both to respond in one paragraph a summary of your stances about capitalism and this 'occupy wallstreet' protest.
Pretend I'm a simpleton who could be swayed either way.
The OWS protest is a multi-location loose collection of a variety of people with a wide range of views, which seem to be centered on removing the ability to invest money in political campaigns and perhaps lobbying abilities. What this means is that OWS protests are against companies investing in politicians. While that may be all well and good, as an idea, it treads into some dangerous territory. Firstly, when government begins to determine who can run and who can't run based on their financial history, the government is saying "we have to power to determine who can run for government". It sets up a way for a party to gain total control, theoretically. Further, many (perhaps a majority) of the OWS protesters seem to be very bent against capitalism itself, and are in favor of further economic control by government. While I do believe that companies do need some regulatory fixtures in place, I believe that over regulation has stifled companies, and resulted in them shipping their business overseas, which has hurt the US economy drastically. I believe that both of these root issues is a balancing act between morality and economy. We cannot allow companies to do whatever they want to make money, but at the same time, too much government regulation will end in communism, or at the very best, a welfare state. Neither of those are historically sustainable. We must reign in government regulation of companies, and be very careful about giving government the power to regulate campaigns. To finalize my position: I am tentatively against the wal street protests, because although their end goal is admirable, the methods they want to achieve those goals will more than likely lead to disaster.
Post by
Heckler
I've been watching twitter and a few live feeds on and off all day. It sounds like there was between 10k and 20k people in Times Square today, didn't see any serious reports of violence on either side (police or protesters). Same can't be said for Rome or Berlin apparently -- I'll wait for clearer news reports on that though.
Here's a few links that I'm following atm if anyone is interested.
A liveblog from DailyKos from Washington Square park (NYC).
LiveStream from the same area (Washington Square Park)
Today in Seattle, between 3000 and 5000 people marched a loop downtown. They made a pile of burnt / cut-up Chase cards in front of one of the Chase branches and apparently closed accounts en masse. There was quite a few signs promoting
MoveYourMoneyProject.org
, which encourages people to pull their money out of national banks and put it instead in local small banks or credit unions. Personally, I do the largest chunk of my banking with a credit union, but I'll probably make that 100% this week -- I see no reason to keep my accounts at Chase or Wells Fargo any longer; my credit union is superior in every way.
OccupySeattle wanted tonight to be the "night of 500 tents," and it looks like they might get a decent number (120+). The police have been arresting people and clearing tents every night at 10pm, but there's been 5-10 tents, not 120. The current twitter / livefeed buzz is that the police in the area have told the occupiers that they have a standing order to make no arrests nor remove any tents as long as there is no violence. Here's their LiveStream if you're interested.
LiveStream from Westlake park in Seattle
I think I would call Oct 15th a success for the American occupy movements. It sounds like some of the European protests got ugly, but I haven't really seen anything about violence in any of the American movements, which is good. Not much coverage on the mainstream media, probably not much tomorrow either, which is unfortunate. As I've said in multiple posts before, if OWS can't stay in the headlines and won't take political action, they probably won't last long once Wall Street fills with snow. But it's become my opinion that regardless of the substantive issues that OWS is supporting, the actual purpose of their physical presence in the park is to spread awareness of those issues, and I think today was successful in that regard.
I also found a couple interesting sites that summarize OWS' issues, they are small summaries and therefore worth a quick look if you're still confused as to what OWS is.
From BusinessInsider:
Here are the Four Charts that explain what the Protesters are Angry about
From a random guy's Blog:
Demands, Version 1.0
(this isn't from a General Assembly or anything, this is just a list put up by some random guy that I thought was pretty well written and inclusive).
And I also found this article that I thought was interesting, from "The Reformed Broker" :
This is Why They Hate You and Want You to Die
(as harsh as that sounds, he's talking about the big Banks, not any person).
An excerpt:
You want to roll your eyes and make snide remarks about "dumb college kids" and "socialists"? Go ahead but you're missing the point. Because it is the small business owner who's really been wronged here, not the fringe elements you mockingly dismiss. The business owner whose losses are not socialized like yours, the business owner without the government in his pocket, the business owner who is forced to play by the rules that you have paid to have written. He's not a hippie, he's not a Marxist...but he's waking up, dummy.
Oh, and this too. This is the flyer the OccupySeattle people are handing out to passers-by who ask what OccupySeattle is:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tzb41sblshgqonv/OS_facts-stats_101411.pdf
Post by
MyTie
The irony here is that if the protesters could do enough damage to a bank of that size (they can't), the liberals in government would step in and save the banks with tax dollars.
Heckler, I'd love to get your take on
this
article.
Post by
HoleofArt
Oh, and this too. This is the flyer the OccupySeattle people are handing out to passers-by who ask what OccupySeattle is:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tzb41sblshgqonv/OS_facts-stats_101411.pdf
I like that. I was attending a wedding today in Portland and it had its own protest march going on through main street, right by the church. We all stood on the steps and watched the procession go by. There was at least 400-500 people. I won't lie, it was pretty surreal to see it in person, and that was only a fraction of the size of the protests other cities had.
Post by
Heckler
The irony here is that if the protesters could do enough damage to a bank of that size (they can't), the liberals in government would step in and save the banks with tax dollars.
Liberals like George Bush, his cabinet, and a large chunk of the Republican Party again, right?
Heckler, I'd love to get your take on
this
article.
Meh, I read it earlier. I instantly put it in the "dismiss" category when I saw it was on Andrew Breitbart's site -- that guy has zero credibility (not because it's false or anything, but because its
intent
is to simply discredit, Breitbart's specialty). Nothing in the report surprises me though, I don't deny that there are extreme elements that have 'allied' themselves with OWS for their own purposes. If this article weeds them out, that will only make the 'mainstream' stronger -- the "bad stuff" detailed in the e-mails doesn't further any of OWS goals; and it just looks like more silly DDoS games from Anon (hardly worth recognizing as a threat IMO, as proven by the FAILED tags all over their 'plans' -- lol). The nice thing about having a General Assembly is it makes the fringe identifiable as the fringe, and I haven't seen any GA minutes accepting Anon's agenda as their own.
I predict it will be big news on Fox for a couple days, maybe James O'Keefe will pop up too, and ignored elsewhere. Just like the Tea Party, it won't be possible to discredit the entire OWS movement through cherry picked extremists; because the core message (completely unrelated to those extremists) carries too much widespread support. I don't think people are going to suddenly stop agreeing with OWS' general tone on Bankers and Taxation because a few Anon tried to DDoS a website.
The amount of effort the Right Wing is throwing into their attacks is humorous to me. In my opinion, OWS would doom itself much
faster
without the Right Wing keeping their name in the news (they don't even have an action agenda, they're literally just there for the sake of being there, to spread attention -- there's no such thing as bad publicity from that perspective). They really seem
afraid
of OWS, which is... I don't know, interesting at least. But the longer OWS is in the headlines, the more people will hear about the inequities they're talking about. And in my opinion, the more informed America gets on these issues, the more support OWS' ideas will receive.
A related article from Firedoglake:
Spinning Themselves into a Corner
And a video link found in the above article (I <3 Elizabeth Warren):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEs&t=51s
Post by
gamerunknown
Oh yeah, my friend said the border police can be pretty brutal. Even though it's officially incorporated into China, there's still an imposing fence on the mainland and none on the actual island. He also said that it's a definite advantage speaking English and joining the old boy English clubs there.
I told him he should boycott 'em (I honestly don't see the point of a cricket club), but he said it wouldn't be plausible.
Edit: reason they're scared is probably because they predict an Atlas Shrugged type event. Definitely saw echoes of it in Mrs. Warren's speech.
Post by
Patty
I lol'd.
Related because it was one of the protesters in London. >.>
Post by
531512
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
134377
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
134377
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Heckler
Krugman's blog today, with interesting links to read in it.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/sunday-ows-notes/
Post by
MyTie
Liberals like George Bush, his cabinet, and a large chunk of the Republican Party again, right?No. I was talking about Obama... ya know... cause he bailed out the banks.
The amount of effort the Right Wing is throwing into their attacks is humorous to me.Reminiscent of the Left Wing's attacks on the Tea Party? The difference being that when the right wing attacks OWS, it doesn't have to make stuff up.
Post by
HoleofArt
Reminiscent of the Left Wing's attacks on the Tea Party? The difference being that when the right wing attacks OWS, it doesn't have to make stuff up.
lol'd x3
Before you take it so personally, I am just poking fun, but honestly some of the things you say completely baffle me.
Post by
Squishalot
From BusinessInsider: Here are the Four Charts that explain what the Protesters are Angry about
Do you mind if I run through the four points?
1. Unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression (with the exception of a brief blip in the early 1980s).
Firstly: "with the exception of" removes most of the credibility of that statement.
Secondly: the world is in the greatest recession (or at least, period of financial turmoil) since the Great Depression, so it stands to reason that unemployment is at its highest level since then.
2. At the same time, corporate profits are at an all-time high, both in absolute dollars and as a share of the economy.
Don't mind the massive blip in 2010 as profits were completely and utterly smashed, down to record low levels when calculated on a real basis.
One of the problems with these graphs and their representations is that they're being displayed in absolute or nominal terms. The other problem is that corporate profits as percentage of GDP is a completely irrelevant metric. What they should be looking at is corporate profits per capita, if you want to assess whether the corporate world is screwing you over. What you might find is that it's not that corporate profits are abnormally high, but rather, that GDP is abnormally low, which is to be expected following a recession.
It also completely ignores the risk profile of industries. Considering that bigger profits are being made in risky industry areas (for example, anything dot-com related), the profits are there to offset the risk of losses.
3. Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. In other words, corporate profits are at an all-time high, in part, because corporations are paying less of their revenue to employees than they ever have. There are lots of reasons for this, many of which are not the fault of the corporations. (It's a global economy now, and 2-3 billion new low-cost employees in China, India, et al, have recently entered the global workforce. This is putting pressure on wages the world over.)
Or, alternatively, we're moving towards a more service-based society and outsourcing manufacturing. Service based companies (e.g. consulting firms) have higher margins over wages, because the revenue that they generate is not terribly labour intensive. This compares to manufacturing industries, which are highly labour intensive and therefore have higher wages-to-revenue ratios. Part of the reason we shift our manufacturing enterprises to China and India is because their labour is cheaper than ours, so it stands to reason that we move towards a more service-based product offering that we have a competitive advantage to provide.
4. Income and wealth inequality in the US economy is near an all-time high: The owners of the country's assets (capital) are winning, everyone else (labor) is losing.
There are three points associated with this:
The top earners are capturing a higher share of the national income than they have anytime since the 1920s
The graph shows that the top 10% earn around 42% of income, whereas it was as low as 33% throughout the 1940s-1980s. The question I would ask is, is the 40s-80s an abnormality, or was the 10s-40s and 90s-00s the abnormality? The difference between earning 42% of income and 33% of income is not terribly meaningful in the grand scheme of things, especially if income levels as a whole rose significantly. Which brings me to the next point:
After adjusting for inflation, average earnings haven't increased in 50 years.
Business Insider makes that out to be some sort of bad thing. Average earnings, adjusted for inflation, hasn't fallen, despite the outsourcing to cheap Chinese / Indian labour as globalisation increases. So considering that the average person is no worse off, what grounds are there for complaining that others are better off? Isn't that just stating the obvious; that the 2nd decile will gripe about the 1st decile, that the 3rd decile will gripe about the 2nd decile, etc.?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Finally, the last graph:
CEO pay and corporate profits have skyrocketed in the past 20 years, "production worker" pay has risen 4%.
I'm guessing that it's inflation adjusted, considering that the minimum wage has dropped 9%.
Again, in line with my previous point - what is fundamentally wrong with that? Corporate profits, despite what people think, go back into superannuation funds, insurance funds, share portfolios, bank investments; all walks of life.
Example: People fail to consider is that a reduction in corporate profits causes insurance premiums to go up. "Huh?" Insurers calculate their premiums based on getting a return on their investments. If they make less money on their investments, they're going to need to charge higher premiums to cover the shortfall for the risk.
Moral of the story: Corporate profits do a lot more than line the pockets of some guy living in a Manhattan penthouse. Some people lose sight of that, but worse still is that others never realise that at all.
Post by
Heckler
Reminiscent of the Left Wing's attacks on the Tea Party? The difference being that when the right wing attacks OWS, it doesn't have to make stuff up.
lol'd x3
Before you take it so personally, I am just poking fun, but honestly some of the things you say completely baffle me.
I'm going to have to agree, neither of your statements contain enough reality to warrant a response. I will say that the big difference is the Tea Party immediately received corporate support from Right Wing think tanks, and was largely an Anti-Obama / Anti-Democrat movement (whatever grassroots it had were quickly swallowed up by Rove n' friends). It immediately showed itself as a Right Wing entity, with powerful Corporate/PAC support -- the left wing had good reason to be scared.
The Tea Party embraced the label of "political movement" while OWS shuns it -- the Tea Party wholeheartedly endorsed candidates for office, while OWS has largely avoided their interaction. In my opinion, this will be the
downfall
of OWS, so I'm not saying "This is why OWS is better than the Tea Party, neener neener." But you can't draw comparisons between the Left's attacks on the Tea Party and the Right's attacks on OWS, because:
The Tea Party established itself against the Left, as its enemy.
The Right Wing has decided that OWS is its enemy after it was established non-politically.
In both cases, the origination of the attacks came from the Right. The situations are therefore fundamentally different. If your comparison holds any truth, it's that the Right Wing is terrified of OWS; just as the left was of the Tea Party. I would hardly call that a failure on OWS' part.
. . . . . .
Your analysis is reasonable, but even if all your points are exactly true, it would do nothing to stop the anger / pain being felt by the middle class. I don't want to respond to your post point by point, because I didn't write the post you're responding to, and I think even your interpretation can be summarized in a way that also demonstrates exactly what people are angry about.
First, your suggestion that the 40s-80s was the exception and not the norm: if this is true, then that also means that widespread public anger is the norm. Graphs like that don't make people happy, even if they are "normal" -- because we can look into our past and see 40 years where that wasn't the norm for the previous generation; which proves it doesn't
have to be
the norm for us. I don't think anyone would call the United States unsuccessful as a Nation from 1940 to 1980; and if we as a Nation want to move back into a policy framework closer to 1950, that is perfectly reasonable and possible through popular action.
Next, your idea that "transitioning to a service economy" is in any way in the best interest of the worker (or is inevitable) is wrong, in my opinion. I don't think the average American would like to hear that we're transitioning to a service economy -- we have an amazing amount of natural resources and labor here, the U.S.A. should most definitely be a manufacturing / exporting Nation. And you're saying the only reason we aren't is because labor is cheaper elsewhere -- that's a slap in the face to American workers. We have things like health and safety standards, minimum wages, and benefits -- these drive the cost of labor up compared to a Country where people live on less than $2 a day. We don't do this because we're spoiled, or lazy, or anything of the sort -- we do it because we consider these things to be important in the construction of the Life we think a human should have, and we know we can build an economy that functions for everyone, top and bottom.
While it's unfortunate that many people throughout the world are so disadvantaged that they are willing to work for pennies, it's completely hypocritical to allow American manufacturing to take advantage of something that would be illegal in their own Country, at the expense of their own labor base.
You act like this "transition to a service economy" is inevitable and unavoidable, and therefore the consequences aren't worth pointing out or fighting against. You act like this "global recession" should give the figures a pass without considering that the data and actions behind the figures may have
caused
the global recession in the first place. This idea that it's well and proper to put more and more money into the richest people's hands, because that money will support the economy eventually in some way -- I don't think that will carry much public support either; money that goes into the hands of labor does that too, in a much more direct sense.
Basically, if your line of reasoning is that "well you have no reason to be angry because what's happening is completely normal and proper and expected" -- I don't think America (or anyone else) is going to, or should, agree with you. If this is normal, then it's time to redefine normal (again).
Post by
gamerunknown
Another thing to think about is child labour laws. In civilised nations we think of "child abuse" as filthy old men defiling children, but I believe that denying a child an education and forcing them to work more hours than would be legally allowed in the developed world is another form of child abuse, especially when companies posting huge profits are employing them.
Corporate profits, despite what people think, go back into superannuation funds, insurance funds, share portfolios, bank investments; all walks of life.
See, the bank investments is the important part to highlight. Hazlitt brings this up in "Economics in One Lesson", pointing out that not all money is invested and that the person that stimulates luxury industries (aka spending only on fur coats and alcohol) will eventually be ruined. But that's not always the case. The argument against spending like that is that frivolity doesn't trickle down - it provides employment for the guys marketing the alcohol perhaps, or running casinos, but the effects on quality of life are proximal rather than lateral. On the other hand, the "magnanimous man" such as Warren Buffet can have a massive, far-reaching impact on the quality of lives of thousands of people, because instead of buying a $250k bottle of champagne he could literally feed thousands. The banks reinvesting thing also doesn't work when they use the money entrusted to them to gamble on the state of the market, then get paid by taxpayers money (money that could pay for impoverished people, scholarships, cancer treatment, you get the spiel) and use that money to give themselves bonuses. Which they then deposit in offshore accounts or untaxable funds so that the currency is stagnant.
Post by
Heckler
The banks reinvesting thing also doesn't work when they use the money entrusted to them to gamble on the state of the market, then get paid by taxpayers money (money that could pay for impoverished people, scholarships, cancer treatment, you get the spiel) and use that money to give themselves bonuses. Which they then deposit in offshore accounts or untaxable funds so that the currency is stagnant.
Privatize the profit; Socialize the losses. The Banking way, same as it ever was.
Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!
Post by
MyTie
The Tea Party embraced the label of "political movement" while OWS shuns it -- the Tea Party wholeheartedly endorsed candidates for office, while OWS has largely avoided their interaction. In my opinion, this will be the
downfall
of OWS, so I'm not saying "This is why OWS is better than the Tea Party, neener neener." But you can't draw comparisons between the Left's attacks on the Tea Party and the Right's attacks on OWS, because:
The Tea Party established itself against the Left, as its enemy.
The Right Wing has decided that OWS is its enemy after it was established non-politically.
I lol'd. lol. I lol at you so much because this is so lol. It is so lol that it doesn't even deserve a response, however I will give a response because I'm above you, because you are pathetic. (is that how it is done... I mean... being so condescending that you sound like complete jerks?)
So, seriously, you're painfully wrong. No movement that wants to change politics is non political, I don't care what that movement says. OWS wants to change the structure of political finance, and at the same time say they are not political at all, and you buy it lock stock and barrel? I had more confidence in you than that.
And I don't understand the big problem with my earlier post. Obama did bail out that banks. That is pretty obvious. That happened while dems controlled both houses and the presidency. They don't seem to be able to pass much more spending while republicans have enough votes to stop them, thank goodness. As for the tea party getting made up criticism, well, do I really need to give examples? Racism was a huge made up factor. Look at that recent interview by Sean Penn on Piers Morgan. You think it is funny when the right throws criticism at a left wing movement, because it is "totally not political", and when I point out that the left makes up criticism for a right wing movement, you act like this doesn't make any sense at all.
What does OWS think about the fed, or the pols that bailed out the banks in the first place?
Post by
91278
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Heckler
So, seriously, you're painfully wrong. No movement that wants to change politics is non political, I don't care what that movement says. OWS wants to change the structure of political finance, and at the same time say they are not political at all, and you buy it lock stock and barrel? I had more confidence in you than that.
I actually agree with you, I think you're so convinced I'm an "OWS supporter" that you're not actually reading my words and looking for
meaning
. Whether OWS is or isn't a political movement isn't my point (as you said, they could easily be classified as one); my point is that they don't
consider themselves
a political movement, and are actually actively trying to avoid that title (they're not lobbying their representatives, they're not looking for support in Washington, they're not writing bills, they're not asking politically aligned special interest groups for help, they're not looking for voters). As I said, I think this will be their downfall. Whether they like it or not, they are a political movement by at least one definition -- the difference between them and the Tea Party is the Tea Party set out specifically to become a political force (and with help, succeeded); OWS did not (which will be a regretted decision in the long run, in my opinion). Your reply doesn't even address the reason I think the attacks from the Right are funny -- because its those very attacks that are giving OWS the momentum it has, in the form of media attention. If Fox News just blacked out OWS coverage, then OWS would be that much more likely to fade away; but I think they're so terrified that it won't just wither and die on its own that they convince themselves they have to destroy it by force, and that's hilarious to me, because literally all they're doing is standing in a park (and they don't really have plans to do more than that, ever).
Also, I'm not sure why you think finance reform is the
main
issue of OWS, it's far more than that, campaign finance is just a piece of the puzzle.
And I don't understand the big problem with my earlier post. Obama did bail out that banks. That is pretty obvious. That happened while dems controlled both houses and the presidency.
And there was no
problem
with your earlier post, it just wasn't concerned with reality, or furthering discussion in any way. It's also factually wrong, or at least factually vague without clarification. The major bank bailouts happened in late 2008, before Barack Obama was sworn in (or even elected -- remember John McCain suspending his campaign to go save the economy?). I'm relatively sure you already know this simple factual information; so I assume you're saying that President Obama's administration didn't immediately end TARP, but rather chose to continue it, and therefore it's on him (or some other strange spin). At the very least this requires qualification -- the bulk of the Bailout transfers happened under the guidance of George W. Bush and his Cabinet (namely Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke who doesn't really count as cabinet, and who Obama kept).
If you worded your attack right, you might even get me to agree. President Bush handled the problem poorly and President Obama continued the trend. But without elaboration, what you wrote above just makes you look ignorant to historical fact.
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