The full impact of the greek default hasn't hit yet and it is not unreasonable to expect that Italy or Spain may default next. People have already started leaderless protests. Meanwhile - it's pretty easy to make money on the way down assuming you have it to begin with.
It is not hard to predict some pretty big changes in the next few years.
Italy and Spain are dangerously over-leveraged in a low growth environment and thus vulnerable to a speculative attack that pushes interest rates up long enough for them to go into default. It is not clear yet whether the European establishment will toe the line on not letting a sovereign default on its obligations, but if they fail to do so, then such an attack becomes much more likely.
Spain has a smaller debt 65% of GDP compared to most western countries, including the USA (92%) and Germany (83%). They do have huge economic problems. Right now the biggest danger is that outside trouble brings down their banks.
On the other hand, Italy is running a primary surplus, its families are among the less indebted in the Western world, and its banks have liquidity. To put it simply: if needed, it is still possible for the government to raise a lot of money, for example through a property tax - something that has already been done in the past and is being discussed now.
Spot on. And in 2007, the subprime housing crisis was "contained". Totally unreasonable to suspect that debt default contagion actually happens. Carry on, nothing to see here.
A wonderful article, though I think what's often unsaid in regards to the occupation is their commonality; they all feel that their voices, despite what it is that they're calling out for individually, are being ignored, despite being larger in number. Little is as frustrating as silence in the face of effort.
So they're frustrated that despite the fact that they've been whining for years that the world isn't perfect (where "perfect" means "precisely the way I want it to be), the world still isn't perfect?
They were sold security. Bow to authority, relinquish individual responsibility, receive a steady paycheck and a base standard of living. Here are your ethics: "Accept your place in life; don't fight for yourself: we'll fight for you. Turn on the TV and kick back. Be docile. We'll look after you."
Now they're still repeating their original mistake: they're asking others to fix their situation. But the game has changed while they had relinquished control: real economic damage has been caused (Tragedy of the Commons). Of course, as usual, now there is a call to arms and a protest at authority, but they still don't understand: instead of asking for handouts they should fix their situation by putting in effort, taking responsibility and standing up for themselves and each other.
instead of asking for handouts they should fix their situation by putting in effort, taking responsibility and standing up for themselves and each other.
Isn't that exactly what they're doing?
Taking responsibility can take many different forms. No, those people are not taking an individualist entrepreneur route that most here on this particular forum are probably more comfortable with. However, the individualist approach cannot solve every problem. Sometimes, a different route is needed.
The Occupy Wall Street protests are exactly the kind of process by which people are taking responsibility. Ideas are fermenting there, people are activated, becoming involved at whichever level (political or otherwise). This is not a uniform process - certainly, many people will just be there out of rage, not really becoming activated, but at the same time, many people undergo transformations, gaining knowledge, forming goals, talking about and then attempting concrete steps to get what they want.
This is hard to believe if you've never actually been in touch with a movement like this, mostly because it is impossible to see such developments from the outside. I've been personally involved in similar things when I was younger (though at a smaller, local scale), and even I can't see what's going on as an outsider. But believe me, if you think those people are all shouting for somebody else to fix everything for them, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
Okay, yes. In a way. But they're taking responsibility to try to get other people to do something for them. You're right, I do have an individualistic perspective on this. I don't think it works well. The only control they will get over the situation will be the control they're given by the government/big industry.
> But believe me, if you think those people are all shouting for somebody else to fix everything for them, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
I'll take the bait. What are they doing other than protesting for a government response/solution to their woes?
What are they doing other than protesting for a government response/solution to their woes?
First of all, I think we have to make sure we understand each other what the question is here.
Most of the griefs of the protestors, as far as I understand them, can almost by definition only be solved by a government solution. (Assuming you accept their claim that they are not protesting for their individual well-being, but are instead protesting against systemic issues in society.) Bank regulation comes to mind - obviously, banks cannot be regulated by individuals. The same thing applies to macroeconomic problems such as mass unemployment.
Once you recognize that a given problem can only be resolved by government changing its behavior, there remains the question of how you proceed. Do you simply shout about it on the street, or are you trying to do more?
It is this "more" that I was talking about, which usually happens in movements like this. Of course I cannot give you concrete examples since I am not involved in the whole Occupy Wall Street thing, and outside observers can only see them after the fact, if they have been successful.
It usually starts with people genuinely interested in learning. Groups form where people teach each other and become creative. People spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix the problems, and trying to reach out to those who are already in a position to implement their plans. Some may go on trying to run for office themselves. And so on.
This is often unsuccessful for obvious reasons - changing the behavior of government is extremely difficult. But it's not unsuccessful for a lack of trying. More often, the greatest problem is the fact that the people involved are simply inexperienced in dealing with those type of power structures, and therefore fail to acquire enough social influence to really effect a change.
What I wrote in the sibling reply still stands, but I should probably emphasize that how we interpret your question is really, really important. In particular, you wrote (emphasis mine):
> What are they doing other than protesting for a government response/solution to their woes?
There are two ways to read that "their":
A) Each person is protesting for a solution to his or her individual woes.
B) They are protesting for a solution to the woes of all of them.
The distinction is important because yes, if all you're protesting for is your own personal well-being, then I would agree that you should get off your sorry ass and just improve yourself.
However, if you are genuinely concerned about the well-being of society as a whole, things are suddenly very different.
I suspect that you are implicitly working off an A-type interpretation, while I am working off a B-type interpretation. That's a likely source of misunderstanding.
No. They are blaming everyone else for their problems and expecting everyone else to pick up their slack. That's not taking personal responsibility.
What they need to do is learn to spend responsibly - if they're in debt up to their eyeballs, who's fault is that other than their own for not planning ahead and spending responsibly? Learn the expression: "Save for a rainy day".
Learn how to shop around for jobs (sorry, but companys don't come knocking on the average recent college grad's doors begging him/her to work for them). I've been laid off twice in the past 4 years (once as recently as May) and I haven't had any problems finding a new job either time. Is that because I'm one of the "evil" 1% that is taking advantage of the poor helpless 99%? Fuck no, it's because I'm not a whiny little spoiled brat. It's because I take personal responsibility.
What these "99%" protestors really want is government handouts. But who pays for those handouts? People like me who take personal responsibility and save our money and work our asses off so we actually have jobs.
Money's gotta come from somewhere, folks, and that somewhere is the pockets of the people out there working at jobs they worked hard to get.
What these protestors fail to realize is that they are the very problem they are protesting against. They are the ones who voted for the politicians who forced the banks to provide subprime loans to home-buyers who were spending far beyond their means and gave promises to those banks that the government would bail them out if things ever went south (and duh, they did). They were the ones that put pressure on those politicians to put pressure on the banks to loan money to people who shouldn't be taking out loans they'd never be able to pay back. Then they voted for Obama who foolishly thought throwing money around would magically solve the situation. Duh, it didn't - it just made the middle class poorer.
Then to make matters worse, they pushed Obamacare on all of us. What's that going to cost middle-America? Last estimate I saw from the Democrats was 4 TRILLION which means it'll be more like 8 trillion all said and done (politicians are horrendously bad at simple math, ever notice that?). Nevermind the fact that if Democrats get their way, it'll mean more tax hikes (and not just for the wealthy for whom politicians always like to provide loopholes because they themselves dodge taxes like fiends - just take a look at Obama's cabinet - some of whom were caught not having paid taxes in decades).
So what has this extremely expensive Obamacare gotten for the average working-class American? Allow me to enumerate all that we got:
- trillions more debt to pay off
- higher taxes (gotta pay off that debt somehow and now we get to pay for healthcare for freeloaders as well, yippie!)
- longer lines at the clinics (did you really think providing people who didn't have healthcare before with free healthcare was going to make shorter lines? If so, I got a broken android phone to sell you).
- higher health insurance rates
- higher deductables (mine has gone up from $300 to $1000 and according to a news article I read the other day I'm not alone, something like 20% others got shafted the same, with the rest of the population sure to follow in the next year or two).
Oh, yea, let's all cheer for Obama care. [unenthusiastic cheer].
Seriously, people, use your brains and think for once. Instead of wasting everyone's time protesting, get off your asses and get a job so the rest of us can stop being forced to support you by paying higher taxes. You're only compounding the problem and dragging the rest of us down with you.
..and why is that? I want to see how many of these people protesting actually got kicked out of their homes and why.
"We are forced to choose between groceries and rent."
Do you have a cell phone? Do you have cable? Where do you live?
"We are denied quality medical care."
Interesting how this is somehow wall street's problems. Can I blame them for tax increases too?
"We are suffering from environmental pollution."
lol?
"We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we are working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything."
If you can't find a job..you need to ask yourself why. I lost my job a little over a year ago and then started my own company. Since then, I've had tons of recruiters and other companies emailing me because they want me to work for them. There are still plenty of jobs out there. You just need to bust your ass to get them. Most people aren't willing to put in the work.
I saw the start of this entitlement mentality with music and software piracy. Many people from this generation feel it's their "right" to be able to download these things for free. Now they are entitled to a home, a college education, and a job.
They want equality, but the problem isn't we aren't all equal. I work 12 hours a day. As a result, I have more money in the bank than someone that works part-time. Why should I be limited or penalized for this?
"So far, it's pick-your-own cause, with grievances ranging from bank bail-outs to animal testing, and yet what most of the mainstream media seems to have missed is the fact that the occupation itself is its own demand"
This is why I find the entire "occupation" to be a joke. Every left-wing asshole with a grievance against big business is out there protesting.
"But anyways. Like most of us, I am also very fortunate to be in tech, and have a passion for programming. But I do not pretend that my good fortune some how means I work or harder or am smarter than other people in our society.",
but then deleted their comment:
you really should repost it. it captures my feelings too and i wanted to thank you for putting them into words.
again and again, i encounter people in my circles of well-employed colleagues who do not realize how lucky they are to have interests coinciding with aptitudes coinciding with particular economic demands in their productive years.
and it makes them sickeningly self congratulatory.
again and again, i encounter people in my circles of well-employed colleagues who do not realize how lucky they are to have interests coinciding with aptitudes coinciding with particular economic demands in their productive years.
and it makes them sickeningly self congratulatory.
It's one of the things that delayed my entry into the technical profession. I grew up a passionate and involved hobbyist, but seeing this kind of self-aggrandising Randian narrative played out over and over in forums and bodies of knowledge that I considered proxies for the values of the profession (i.e. Slashdot) nauseated me. For a long time, I was determined not to go into tech out of loathing for the idea of working with such people.
Ultimately, I went anyway, and realised--as teenagers are wont to do once they grow up--that any world is more diverse than meets the eye. But I can definitely say that the mythos of the well-earning "self-made" IT man was a major blemish on the idea, not an asset.
I am fully aware that I'm "lucky" that I have an interest in computer programming -- a highly marketable skill. But when people harp on that fortune, it really comes across as trying to devalue the effort I put into developing those skills. Just as an idea has no value without execution, luck is worthless unless you put in the hard work to exercise it. People are emphasizing the former at the expense of the latter to make others feel guilty about their successes and obligated towards the "less fortunate," and that's why people push back.
I in part agree with the sentiment of good fortune. But only in part. I went into Engineering not out of passion, but out of economics. I knew it was safer than continuing with my first path in studying History.
And I know people who are at the protests. And I know many more who would be there if they could. And I try and ignore their pleas for economic help when they also demand that Walmart be shut down.
"But I do not pretend that my good fortune some how means I work or harder or am smarter than other people in our society"
What a defeatist attitude. I do work harder and smarter than other people in our society. My work and success reflects this.
"and it makes them sickeningly self congratulatory."
It's sickening that you would equate having a good job with mostly luck. Winning the lottery is pure luck.
I chose to get involved in the tech industry. If I would have been in any other time, I would have chosen a different industry and most likely been successful. Less than 1% of it has to do with luck. If I would have just sat here and done nothing, my career wouldn't have fallen into my lap and my skill set wouldn't have suddenly appeared.
You must be an odd person if you have equal aptitudes and passion for a huge range of things, and can choose them based solely on current economic demand. Few to no people I know in tech are like that, though. I'd be into hacker culture if the field was full of shit jobs; the way some people live and breathe music and can't imagine doing anything else, others can't imagine not doing something that involves hacking technology. It's just sugar on top that there's all this money floating around in the field too.
I mean, I got hooked on computers when I was 6 or 7, from Logo. I'm pretty sure I didn't get hooked due to my great foresight and economic responsibility. It was just interesting. Other people get hooked on other things, whether it's math or music. I'm fortunate that my thing pays well, but I don't think that makes me better than them. Makes my life easier, sure, but for exogenous reasons.
I don't think it's uncorrelated with merit, but I do think the correlation is very inconsistent. I know brilliant mathematicians with much poorer incomes, for example (pure math doesn't pay well... despite its long-term usefulness, it's hard to capture the value / monetize it).
I started programming because I was fascinated by computers. It wasn't until years later that I found out it was a lucrative job. It sounds like your recommendation would be for everyone to chase money regardless of their passions. You have to admit that people who are passionate about things that pay well get a better deal in that situation. There are a lot of things that are worthwhile that are not well rewarded economically. If all of the artists and idealists disappeared and we were only left with money-chasers, the world would be that much poorer.
Also, regarding success: hard work and intelligence matter a lot, but so does opportunity. Have a look at Gladwell's Outliers for an interesting analysis of this.
Plus, there's the negative effect of having our market flooded with people who go into programming "because that's where the money is".
I'm as critical as anyone when people decide to get liberal arts degrees without at least working on other skills on the side, but let's not be so naive to think that if a CS degree was the new liberal arts degree, that we wouldn't be having the same exact problem in society.
Only we (people on HN) would probably be making much less money.
I sometimes wonder what a bizarro-world hacker culture would be like. What if tech didn't pay well at all, and there was a lot of social pressure to get a "real job" and a "real degree", like Political Science or English Literature, instead of wasting your time getting a worthless CS degree?
It'd probably be less pleasant in a lot of ways, but the people still in tech would probably be an interesting group.
I agree with that as well. One subset of this is "The MBA Effect" where managers who are also engineers are replaced by profesional managers. This is what leads to things like trying to compete on lowest costs rather than building the best product. Steve Jobs was a great leader in the technology area, precisely because his vision wasn't about money. It was about excellence.
As for causes of economic distribution: liberals tends to emphasize the role of circumstances and conservatives tend to emphasize the role of individual effort. The error, however, is to become blinded to half the equation because it flatters the ego or is politically expedient. For instance, the successful who only see their own virtue at work (Wallstreet?), or the unsuccessful who only see the context and not their own failures (the "victim mentality").
"It sounds like your recommendation would be for everyone to chase money regardless of their passions."
If you don't think about the money at some point, then don't complain when you can't find a job. It's not your job to chase money and it's not society's job to pay you for something that's worthless.
"You have to admit that people who are passionate about things that pay well get a better deal in that situation."
You can make money with almost any passion, you just need to be smart enough to find the market. Most people want to be handed it...which just isn't going to happen.
"Also, regarding success: hard work and intelligence matter a lot, but so does opportunity. Have a look at Gladwell's Outliers for an interesting analysis of this."
I don't need to. I see opportunities every day that people in my exact same position at the exact time (at work for instance) miss. Why? Because I have the skills and experience and I know what I'm looking for. Without the skills, knowledge, and experience, the opportunity is worthless.
The more knowledge and skills you have, the more opportunities you will see and the better chance you have at becoming successful.
It's really sad to see so many people equating success with pure luck.
In some sense, I sympathize with you. I too have worked hard and been successful. I chose (out of passion, but I don't begrudge those who chose based on economics) to go into engineering while friends of mine went into less lucrative fields.
I myself was fortunate. Lucky, to be honest. My parents took advantage of things like student loans so that they could work hard and be successful. The result was that I didn't have to worry about student loans and graduated without debt. I worked hard to graduate, but I don't have illusions that my financial situation was anything other than luck on my part.
You may not call it luck, and I don't know your specific situation, but I'm going to hypothesize that you had some help along the way. How did you educate yourself? How did you pay for it? Did you go to a public school system? Was it better than the ones that exist now? Did you go to a private school? Did you pay for it yourself? My point is, we often take this sort of assistance for granted, and it is gratifying to credit ourselves with 100% of our success. Maybe you are 100% responsible for your own success. If that's the case, you're the first such person that I've ever met.
"You may not call it luck, and I don't know your specific situation, but I'm going to hypothesize that you had some help along the way. How did you educate yourself? "
We could go very far with attributing luck to success. Einstein must have been very lucky to come up with the theory of relativity.
In fact, everything we do must be due to luck because it's lucky our planet is in a position from the sun that's habitable.
"How did you educate yourself"
By going to the library in the beginning (which is free) and then later through the Internet (which is also now free at almost any library in the US). Most people in Highschool and in college are out partying every weekend with their friends..and then they wonder why they aren't successful when it comes to getting a job. I chose to sacrifice my time to learn things that I knew would help advance my career.
"How did you pay for it?" With a crappy retail job that didn't really have much to do with my career.
"Did you go to a public school system". Yes.
"My point is, we often take this sort of assistance for granted, and it is gratifying to credit ourselves with 100% of our success. Maybe you are 100% responsible for your own success. If that's the case, you're the first such person that I've ever met."
I'm still not sure what your point is. It seems to only be brought up when anyone successful achieves anything great or when someone wants an excuse as to why they can't succeed.
I also said luck has less than 1% to do with it. I know people that were in my exact same position at the exact same time. They chose to do things differently and now are working paycheck-to-paycheck. I saved my money (instead of buying the new $500 android phone when it came out) and now I don't have to worry about emergencies because I have enough money to pay for it.
I'm really just tired of people not taking personal responsibility for their actions.
You were lucky to have a quality library available to you. They aren't really free, and not everyone has the good fortune to grow up in a place that can afford one. You were lucky that your public school education was able to get you into a college. Not everyone has that opportunity, no matter how hard they work in school. You were lucky that you were able to find a crappy retail job to put yourself through college. Some people can't find jobs to do that, and not for lack of looking.
Libraries and public schools are excellent examples. While I can't speak for these protesters as I'm not there with them, a lot of the sentiment that people are expressing is a sense of fewer opportunities. Schools and libraries are getting their budgets slashed across the entire country. This due in large part to fiscal policy. Bad policy leads to lower tax revenues leads to cutting teachers and library resources. I don't have the solution, but I can see how it's related to the finance industry as a whole.
I agree with you that people should be responsible for making use of the opportunities that they have. Being offered a public education doesn't guarantee you anything, you have to actually take the time to learn from it. But that only works so long as we continue to offer quality public educations.
I'm really just tired of people saying "I made it, why can't everyone else?" without considering that their situation may be different.
I grew up in relatively poor small towns most of my life, where the town library was lucky if it had more than a thousand books. Certainly had no internet.
But you know what? I did the same thing rick888 did and I was at that library all the time learning, trying to make myself better.
I took advantage of every opportunity that came my way and I made the most of them.
I didn't have wealthy parents with connections like so many of the rich spoiled brats I see around me bitching about how "lucky" I am to have a good job, or moaning about how there's so many fewer opportunities around them.
Bullshit. Open your eyes. Stop making excuses.
If you want something bad enough, like I (and clearly rick888) did, you will be successful.
Do some people have more opportunities because of who their parents are and/or how much money they make? Sure, but so what? That's life.
I overcame. Rick888 overcame. So can everyone else.
Stop expecting things to just fall in your lap and complaining about how the world "isn't fair" and cast aside your damned entitlement complex.
The world doesn't owe you jack. You have to fight for everything you want. That's the reality, and nothing these protesters do will ever change that.
I'm so sick of people whining about how I'm "so lucky" to have my job. To hear these people talk about how lucky I am is a huge fucking insult because they act is if it just fell in my lap.
It didn't.
I worked my ass off for it, seemingly just like you did. I worked shitty part-time jobs to pay for my own college education. I worked one summer AS A VOLUNTEER (i.e. unpaid) in order to get noticed and it worked, too, because at the end of that summer the company offered me my first decent-paying job in the tech industry (well, it was only $10-something/hr, but it sure beat $5.25 that I was making before).
All this time I was working on contributing to Free Software projects - not just in the hopes of getting noticed, but in order to improve my skills.
After several years of this, I got noticed and got an internship at a start-up and I grabbed that opportunity and I've become very successful because of it.
Saying this was all "luck" is bullshit. I made my own luck. I worked my ass off for everything I got.
I had friends in college that came from much wealthier families than I came from (my family isn't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination) who had plenty of opportunities in their lives but didn't act on them. Where are they now? Probably at those protests whining that they didn't get a job handed to them just for being them.
I'm serious.
Someone I knew in college (studying anthropology iirc) was offered, through a friend, a job interview at the Smithsonian. He didn't take it. Why? Because it wasn't a "sure thing". He was upset that he'd actually have to (heaven forbid) interview.
Where's he now? Living with his parents because he hasn't been able to get a job in the past 8 years.
He had better opportunities than I did, but I made more out of mine than he did.
He's one of the people who tell me how "lucky" I am that I have such a good job.
Here's a question: Why was unemployment so much lower five years ago than now? Did people just get really lazy?
Every right wing asshole with a grievance against attacks on privilege is out there mocking these protests. Somehow they simultaneously deny that environmental pollution, restricted access to healthcare, and involuntary unemployment exist. But systemic issues do exist.
I don't know anyone who is denying that the economy sucks. The reason we make fun of these people is that they're protesting against the fact that the economy sucks. This is much like protesting against the weather. Nobody has a magic "make the economy work again" switch that they just need to be persuaded to flip.
They're silly because their world view is flawed in many ways. It's not just their ideology which is wacko, but their ontology. One of the chief problems which afflicts the left is their tendency to believe that "good intentions lead to good outcomes", which has the flipside "bad outcomes are caused by bad intentions". They therefore assume that since we're currently having bad outcomes they must have been cauesd by somebody's bad intentions, so they choose a scapegoat [I wrote spacegoat the first time, which is a much better mental image] and blame it until they're blue in the face. I feel sorry for all the workers on Wall Street who have been chosen as the scapegoat this time.
> This is much like protesting against the weather.
Perhaps this is where many people disagree. I don't think the 2008-present economic crisis was a random freak event, like a hurricane, or caused by immutable laws analogous to atmospheric convection. Instead, I would guess, there are definite structural causes, which should be understood, and to the extent some of them are mutable, either fixed or mitigated (the U.S.'s particular arrangement of financial infrastructure isn't a law of nature).
I do agree that there's too much focus on bad intentions. I think the problems are structural more than they are moral; it's not a matter of convincing a bunch of "greedy bankers" to be more egalitarian, but of addressing the causes of economic instability.
A good start would be understanding that it is the unholy alliance of government and big business that tends to be at the heart of many problems.
Government has taught big business that if they donate money to re-election campaigns, wine-and-dine legislators, and even ghostwrite legislation or regulations then the business is rewarded. Incentives like this only encourage more of the same.
Pointing at businesses and saying that they are greedy for grabbing at the billions that Congress and state legislatures dangle in front of them is missing the point.
It's not that the economy sucks. It's that institutions of power exist that are doing their damnedest to maintain their position of power. This has led to bad outcomes in this particular historical moment.
For my part, I feel that while financial institutions were complicit, one only has to look at the savings rate of the average US household pre-2008 to realize that there were systematic problems. Its not just Wall Street tycoons that failed -- people at every level did.
I always wonder about this argument. Wouldn't it be more about the VALUE of the minimum wage, and not the number associated with it? I mean, the minimum wage was far higher in value in 1968.
And don't some nations reevaluate the value of their minimum wage annually, adjusting for de/inflation? That seems reasonable to me. And stops the arguments over when/if to increase it. (Though of course many obviously believe we shouldn't have it, but that's a different conversation.)
Perhaps, but is minimum wage actually a living wage? Would the greater economy adjust to make that wage livable if it was removed? I really don't have the answer to these questions, but I think its important to remember that just because someone is employed doesn't mean that they are in a good position.
How I define a living wage: Enough income for a 1 BR apartment, 3 square meals a day (from a grocery store, not a resturaunt), and health care. Basically, the bare minimum.
I'm not skilled enough in economics to be sure whether removing minimum wage would benefit workers. My suspicion is that it would, and you have made a good argument to that affect. I just feel the need to play the devil's advocate.
Thanks for your input.
By the way, are you the same Uriel as the one on Reddit?
Glad that you are quite open minded and ready to listen to new points on this topic, most people seem to prefer to ignore logic and evidence and instead follow what feels good.
> How I define a living wage: Enough income for a 1 BR apartment, 3 square meals a day (from a grocery store, not a resturaunt), and health care. Basically, the bare minimum.
The "bare minimum" is quite different if for example you are a student living with your parents that is working to help pay for university, or if you have children, or a working spouse, or savings.
Not to mention the HUGE differences in cost for the things you mention in different locations within the same country or even state.
I could not upvote you enough. It's sickening what is happening in this country. I was born in Soviet Union, and the resemblence grows more and more every day. All the protesters are lacking is a charismatic leader who will promise to punish the evil bourgeouis and distribute their wealth to the poor.
What happened to entrepreneurship. What happened to taking control of your life. What happened to working hard and making things happen. These protests make me very sad, and go against every principle this country was founded on.
> These protests make me very sad, and go against every principle this country was founded on.
Given how enthusiastic the American founding fathers were for the French Revolution, which had a definite socialist and anti-elite flavor (not merely anti-monarchism), I'm not sure how true that is. Opinions varied, but many were of the view that a free society needs reasonable equality and can't coexist with large concentrations of economic resources.
Thomas Jefferson hoped (futilely) to achieve it by avoiding industrialization, remaining a nation of yeoman farmers and thereby avoiding what he saw as the ills of British industrial capitalism, with its predominance of wage labor, large factories, etc. (he didn't like either the industrialists or their trade-unionist counterparts). That, combined with robust public education.
Thomas Paine was a proto-socialist, traveling after the American Revolution to France to help with the revolution there, where his Rights Of Man: Part The Second was one of the first comprehensive proposals for what can now be seen as social democracy, with a progressive income tax and inheritance tax used to fund a social safety net.
The existence and independence of corporations was also a pretty active area of controversy until the 1850s or so. Before then, many of the founding generation were of the view that corporations were limited-time constructs under supervision of the state (which held visitation and dissolution rights), not fully independent entities, and were skeptical of corporations with a "life of their own", seen as a European pathology (the Dutch East India Company, etc.).
To use a Marxist term, what we're seeing here is a Social Democratic consciousness, not a push for centralized Communism. If you asked the protestors whether they wanted Russia in 1917 or Sweden in 2011, what do you really think they'd pick?
The American Dream is that everyone should be able to get a full-time job and that if you're willing to work a full-time job, you'll be able to pay your bills.
None of the bargain is that it will be interesting. None of the bargain is that it'll be glorified in media. But the bargain is that if you're looking for a job, there'll be one. And the job will be physically safe (unless extra-ordinarily compensated to make up for it), that you can get healthcare, and that you can go to sleep at night without wondering whether you'll be able to make rent the next month.
It's the dissolution of that bargain and that Dream that's driving OWS.
"The American Dream is that everyone should be able to get a full-time job and that if you're willing to work a full-time job, you'll be able to pay your bills."
If this is what people think, they have been misled. The american dream has always been that you have the ability to pursuit your dreams, not guaranteed a job. This means, you can start a business as someone who is poor and one day make enough to support your family and more. Right now, we still have this freedom.
With huge taxes and more government regulations and control, the dream will be dead. Then, the only entities left (because they can afford the taxes and regultions) will be big corporations.
"In the end, that's all most Americans are asking for. It's not a lot. You don't expect government to solve all your problems. You want to be self-reliant and independent. You want to be responsible for your own lives and take care of your own families. But what you do expect is a government that isn't run by the special interests. What you do expect is that if you're willing to work hard, you should be able to find a job that pays a decent wage, that you shouldn't go bankrupt when you get sick, that you should be able to send your children to college even if you're not rich, and that you should be able to retire with dignity and security." -Barack Obama
"Anyone who is honestly seeking a job and can't find it, deserves the attention of the United States government, and the people." -John F. Kennedy
"In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; . . ." -FDR
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." -TJ
"If a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists." -MLK Jr.
I'm not sure if it was the same way in the 60's and 70's, but every protest I saw in Chicago since 2003 always attracted a fair share of professional protestors. Your "Free Tibet"ers, environmentalists, and various others always seemed to show up for Iraq War protests and immigration protests. It's easy to ignore protesters when they are obviously doing it as lifestyle choice rather than out of honest indignation.
There's not much you can do about such people showing up, though, unless you have a very organized, centrally run protest with a gatekeeper for who's allowed to show up. People who have their pet issues will show up and attempt to use the platform if participation is open. I guess you'd just need enough new people to swamp the 'regulars'.
(These kinds of things are, incidentally, why Lenin-style communists argue for agitation to be tightly organized by a vanguard party, which keeps things on message and makes sure protests and other actions maximize tactical and strategic effectiveness, rather than becoming an incoherent free-for-all. But Leninist organization isn't too in favor on the contemporary left.)
Left-wingers got us into this mess in the first place by demanding that banks give out subprime loans to people who would never pay them back and Clinton promised these banks that the US Government would bail them out in return.
Now that same liberal left got bitten by their own ideology and who do they blame? The banks and Republicans, of course! Republicans bailed out the banks (because they were obligated to by Clinton) and the "greedy" banks loaned money to people who couldn't afford to pay them back!
If the liberal left used their brains for once they'd see that they caused these problems themselves. They have no one else to blame but themselves.
Instead, they blame everyone else for their problems.
It should be blatantly clear that the liberal left do not believe in taking personal responsibility nor do they believe in free will.
For if they believed in those things, then it's not the banks they'd be blaming at all. The banks didn't put guns to people's heads to take out loans that they couldn't afford to pay back. The banks didn't just wake up one day and decide to start giving out subprime loans. No, they were pressured into doing it by the liberal left's own greed.
They made their bed, now they can lay in it.
They better not come begging me for handouts. All they ever did for me was force my taxes to go up and try to drag me down with them. No thanks.
What we should do is gather up every single person in the protest and every single person who wishes they were but can't and send them over to Scandanavia/France/etc. Then they can participate in the kind of system they actually want and all that will be left in the US is people like you.
My mouth literally waters imagining what would happen when all the "hippies" and "losers" were gone and no one was left but self proclaimed "hard workers" and the mega rich. Listening to people like you try to rationalize the fact that, despite all your "hard work", your wealth was staying flat or decreasing (in relative terms if not literal) while the top 1% continued to capture more and more of all the created wealth would be pure bliss.
And I'm sure all the "99%", who would be enjoying systems with much healthier distributions of wealth would be enjoying the show as much as I was.
The question I can't find an answer to is, what do they actually want? I feel like "change" isn't specific enough. They need a single, obtainable goal, and focus on getting the media to say that goal with every report.
It's a loose coalition of people rather than a protest led by a political party with good message discipline, so what they want tends to vary. Depending on which people you ask, a few common goals: a Tobin tax, return of Glass-Steagall, increased progressivity of the tax code, abolition of the Federal Reserve, ending favorable tax treatment for capital-gains versus earned income, breakup of too-big-to-fail banks, freeze on foreclosure proceedings, etc.
I see it as somewhat similar to the Tea Party in that sense, which was an amorphous sense of dislike for "big government" and a feeling that something should be done about it (tax cuts, spending cuts, etc.); this is an amorphous sense of dislike for "big finance", and a feeling that something should be done about it.
It's a funny world. I'm not from United States, so I don't know the details of the situation there, but I guess the protesters are feeling the same kind of rage and frustration a lot of people in the rest of the world feel on the daily basis. I guess "change" is the best most of us can do to formulate what we want.
Imagine being a user of a set of a suite of applications (Democracy 12.5, Free Market 6.7, etc) that have been sold to you as The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread and The Solution To All Your Problems. Yet the applications are performing increasingly worse, they keep crashing and not doing what you need them to do.
You try to do something about it, but the customer service channels are horrible and even when you manage to log a bug, a complaint or any other feedback, the best you can hope for is that it's ignored; the worst you can hope for it that a patch comes out that doesn't really fix your problems and creates several new ones.
At this point, you start complaining loudly and publicly about it. What's the most infuriating reaction you can imagine? I don't know about you, but I've got one that's pretty close to the top of my list is "Well, how would you solve the problem, then?" Remember, we're talking about an average user, not a programmer. By all rights, the answer to such a question should be "How the fuck am I supposed to know that?"
Of course, what's going on in the world is a lot worse than this hypothetical situation. If you're using apps that don't work, you can "vote with your wallet" and use something else. If you're forced to use them at work as part of company policy, you can ultimately decide to change jobs, if you want to. But this? You have no choice but to go out and protest and ask for "change".
I'm not usually one for tech analogies in politics, and I'm not even sure I completely agree with it, but at the very least, this one made me smile. :)
Beyond the problem of "not everyone is there for the same exact reason", the problems facing our society and economy are far too complex to boil down to a specific list of bullet-points. [1] I'd frankly be more surprised, and suspicious, if they did have a cohesive list of solutions. [2]
Their current single obtainable goal, whether it's their intent or not, seems to be forcing the media to at least acknowledge that the economy really really sucks and the government has done basically nothing about it for the 99%, even if they dismiss the protestors as unserious hippies.
[1] Abstracting the arguments to an umbrella term or position makes it vague almost by definition. Would a cohesive chant against "regulatory capture" satisfy the morning news crowd? It's somewhat more precise, but I get this feeling that it wouldn't change the press perception.
[2] The common defense of the fractured nature of Tea Party groups was that a lack of cohesive voice was seen as a sign of authenticity amongst grass-roots movements. And that does honestly ring quite true to me.
People asked, well the media asked, what do the Egyptians want, or the Tunisians, when the protests first started there. Of course, we all found out what they wanted.
Egyptians and Tunisians knew very well what they wanted.
What do these people want is indeed unclear to me.
Abolish the banks and give all the money to them?
Hang all the rich people? Equality of the income? How would that look like?
And how many of them are just too lazy to do something and would prefer not to do anything but will still be entitled to some benefits? A lot of those "99%" posters can be summarized by "I took a bunch of dumb decisions, then I took some credit for stuff I did not need, and now I am screwed". Who knew!
It's very easy to point to a dictator and lay the blame on him. The violence and injustice perpetrated by a dictator is easy to identify.
If you have a complex system where injustice is not generated by a single individual, but rather by the interplay of many different actions, or even generated by the structure of the system itself, this is much harder to identify.
You'll note that people in Egypt got rid of Mubarak, but they're not entirely happy about the current state of affairs either.
The problem with economic violence is that while the issues are understandable and can be explained, they are hard to boil down to a short slogan.
The hardest thing with the united states is we've built a system that is complex and there is no one person who screwed everything up.
Example:
People have high student loans
because college is expensive
because more people want to go
and can get loans from the government
so colleges can charge higher prices
The greatest thing with the United States is we've built a system that is complex and there is no one way things have to be done.
Example: free Ivy-League education available at http://ocw.mit.edu for the self-motivated.
My wife & I have 5 nontrivial degrees between us, at a cost of under $100k and no debt. A little creativity and flexibility got us a long way.
Supply and demand. People are willing to pay high prices for education in exchange for credit-card-easy access, so colleges are willing to charge it. Dig & negotiate a bit, be flexible, and the price comes in a lot lower.
Its about the fact that many decent jobs won't accept any applicants without a degree. Yes you can get all of that knowledge but what proof do you have?
By the way im a CS grad with a job
Im just saying this as someone who is frustrated with people all ways using the strawmen of free online education which only recently became prevalent and the fact that they fell into circumstances that allowed them to either not need college or go for cheap.
The story my generation was sold as kids is that you go to college and then you get a good job.
Somewhere along the way that contract was broken... that is part of what this protest is about
There was no contract. There was prosperity, which comes in cycles. Status quo is not a guarantee. Welcome to the real world, kid - there's no Tooth Fairy either.
You can get the education, or at least well under way with it, for free before committing to an expensive certification process. I had the basics of computer engineering down (and that long before free online education - get thee hence to the library!) before shelling out lots of cash for certification. Lacking certification, you can create proof via a portfolio. Lacking openings, you can create one (this IS the reason for ycombinator.com, ya know).
And no, getting the degree isn't assurance of work. When I came out with a respectable CE degree, the market was way down and I had to do tech support for 1.5 years, and got that gig much because my personal education efforts gave me a foot in the door pre-graduation.
This protest is indeed about something broken: the failure of education to tell kids that nobody owes you anything (despite the demands for free food/clothing/shelter/education/debt/entertainment), that having a degree doesn't guarantee a job (improves odds, but no assurance), and that living wages cannot be just legislated/declared into existence. Sorry, not everyone is going to tell you everything you need to know, including how harsh the real world can be. Nobody said there was a "get degree = get job" contract.
If those protesters would quit yelling at strawmen and decided to pool their talents and technology (enough laptops & smartphones to do it) to create marketable goods/services, they'd have the jobs they're demanding. They sure have the time & opportunity & resources right now.
The protesters know very well what they want also. It is only the media who is unclear for very understandable reasons because this has only started. They are not asking to abolish the banks, but the Glass ceiling to be re-instated, they are asking for more equality of course, the graph for example that was posted here on HN a while ago showed clearly that while the country grew, wages did not, after 1970s, or, after the Regan Thatcer market prevails let the jungle rule.
I do not know how many of them are lazy. I would not think many since it takes quite a lot of work to organize what they have and keep pushing forward. Many of them simply can not find a job and find themselves in a spiral without any help because of temporary difficulties. We have had plenty of posts here on HN just how poor people are trapped into poverty. Banks get money, little people get kicked out.
Anyway, maybe you should visit their websites and read what they want.
>Anyway, maybe you should visit their websites and read what they want.
From what I've seen from the posts all over the internet, it runs the entire political spectrum from the very progressive liberal/socialist(tax the rich, end wars, socialized medicine) to the very libertarian(end the federal reserve, go back to the gold standard). There is also a lot of anti-globalization stuff in there, as well. That's on top of the anti-corporate greed goals(which are what I assume the entire thing started about, but quite frankly, I'm not sure anymore).
The problem for me, even as a liberal, is that a lot of the demands are either impossible(removing the fed) or so unspecific(there is a lot of talk about "personal liberty") that they could mean anything to everyone that it's hard to state that I support them or am against them.
I see those attractive young people protesting, and I can't help but wish for equality of appearance. Why should I be stuck with this body, when all of those people flaunt -- or worse, ignore -- their beauty?
Seriously, it's ironic that the same set of people who claim that "material possessions aren't important, it's the people that matter" are the ones who find money so important that they've got to redistribute what others have earned. But they don't give attention to the myriad other ways in which some people are better-advantaged than others.
> Forced redistribution of money to equalize incomes would be an unmitigated disaster
Not really. A different balance of taxation would be a form of redistribution of income (and indeed would be interpreted as 'forced' by some). Would that be an unmitigated disaster? Well, it needs checking in the detail, but one suspects that such different tax profiles and hence 'redistribution' existed at various times in the USA's past: the 1960s probably, for example. That is unlikely to be called a period of disaster: it was one of growth and creativity, was it not? If all that happened was going to the moon and inventing the internet, you would have to call it pretty good.
you don't understand that the very definition of a tax incorporates the idea of 'force' (hint if it is optional, it isn't a tax)
you are confusiong redistribution and/or progressive tax structure with 'equal incomes'
you claim without any evidence that the 1960s represented a time when this redistribution was implemented
My comment was about the ambiguity of 'equality' without any clarification or context and about the dangers of promulgating 'equal incomes' via forced redistribution.
I do not want to live in a world where any individual effort made to raise my income above the average results in the government grabbing my wallet and giving it to someone making no effort at all.
Thanks for the reply. I must admit, I am not from the USA so I did not follow all this really closely, but if there was a clear representation of the demands, I surely missed it.
Well, when you're raised and told you HAVE to go to college, a lot of will she loans for it. Or they'll assume they'll have their job for a long time, and buy a car/house, or have a kid. A bunch of dumb decisions? Not necessarily. Sometimes life just happens.
As for what they want, they want to feel like they have opportunities. I genuinely do think it's a discontent that's risen from feeling like their voice carries little/no weight in society, politics included, and that the control is in the hands of those with wealth. It's your garden variety populist uprising, only from the American middle class, so expect to see less blood and more coffee.
Oh absolutely! And I'm sure many are the lazy freeloaders that are easily imagined. But I think honest mistakes count for much of it. Of course, that could well be wishful thinking!
> A bunch of dumb decisions? Not necessarily. Sometimes life just happens.
"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT." — Frank Zappa
From what I've heard from them, I think "better safeguards against regulatory capture" would cover a lot of it, though I have yet to hear that term specifically.
Thank's for introducing "regulatory capture" to my vocabulary. It does seem to capture much of what people are angry about (bailouts, etc.). I'm guessing you haven't heard it used by the protesters, it's because it sounds so academic. If they read the definition, though, I expect many would agree.
For the lazy:
"when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating" (Wikipedia)
They just want the world to be filled with a billion less people, first starting with people who are useless to society such as anyone associated with Wall Street. Of course, none of them will say this, and none of them know they want this, so you get all this incoherent blabber.
Megaphone: What do we want?
Crowd: We're not really sure!
Megaphone: When do we want it?
Crowd: Now!
Like most Americans, the economic collapse has left me with the sour taste of injustice. But the OWS protesters seem like a disparate bunch of interest groups with no unified purpose.
watch some of them squirm through their cognitive dissonance. If you are protesting wall street then how the hell do you support Obama when his presidential campaign was bankrolled by Goldman Sachs? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFVR9Nv43J4&feature=share
They are in fact also protesting against the merger of big business and politics. They are thus demanding an end to big money like the example you gave into politics.
I do not think this is necessarily a democrat's protest. This is a people's protest, the 99%.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Yet now they are being co-opted by a larger group, which many of us watching this unfold fully expected to happen. What makes it more galling is that many of those from the unions are in no shape or form middle class with very high incomes and high retirement payouts.
The protesters we see now will have a difficult time not getting pushed aside by the machine. What the unions/DNC could not create they certainly can take.
funny thing is that the same thing happened to the Tea Party, who got taken over by RNC community organisers. So out whet the pro-drugs, pro-immagration and pro-choice, and in comes the Christian Taliban under a new banner.
It wasn't. The "tea party" was kicked off inadvertently by Rick Santelli on CNBC, of all places. He never intended it, but it was his words that got the ball rolling.
I don't recall the 2008 election being between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. We had two sucky choices, and people on either side voted for what they thought was the lessor evil, relative to their particular value weightings.
Part of the problem is that we do not have instant runoff elections, so big money need only promote 4 candidates for each position, and FUD all of the others. That way, one of their 4 is almost always chosen (2 "sides" in each D/R primary). Barring instant runoff, perhaps we would be better off with proportional representation in Congress: if Green or Libertarian parties received 10% of the vote each, at least they would have some members present.
I seem to remember voting for Ron Paul in the 2008 primaries. And for the general election, there were more choices than the two you mention.
Instant runoffs are only marginally better than the American "first-past-the-post" system. In particular, they suffer from the perverse effect where voting for your favorite candidate can actually cause him to lose.
There's a mathematical proof (Ken Arrows, maybe? I'm getting forgetful) showing that it's impossible for any voting system to have all the handful of qualities one wants in a democratic process. This is actually a pretty decent branch of mathematics. There exist better options, but none that are perfect.
But consider that the GM/Chrysler bailouts almost included a gutting of the UAW. (They had to fight to retain their collective bargaining power in the deal) And you may have noticed the spate of anti-union legislation proposed, and in some cases passed, across the nation.
The unions have (rightly) seen any benefit they did get as incidental and temporary at best.
And perceiving a movement through possible positions of a minority is a pretty intellectually dishonest way to tar the group. It's as disappointing as dismissing the concerns of the Tea Party for their racists.
Go skim the calendar on OccupyWallStreet.org. The movement may well have started without the unions, but they've been pretty much co-opted by now. In that sense, unions are more like the Sarah Palin of OWS.
> [UAW] had to fight to retain their collective bargaining power in the deal.
A deal which, had it not been struck, had meant their total annihilation.
> The unions have (rightly) seen any benefit they did get as incidental and temporary at best.
Unions, like banks, don't have an inherent right to exist. They are clinging to political favors to keep boyant.
> "A deal which, had it not been struck, had meant their total annihilation."
It would have meant GM and Chrysler's annihilation, along with many UAW members losing their jobs. But every other car maker in North America has union plants. The UAW itself wasn't going anywhere if GM and Chrysler failed.
> "Unions, like banks, don't have an inherent right to exist."
A specific union or bank doesn't. But the right to form a union or bank does. And the very right to organize is what union struggles are increasingly about. Just look to Ohio and Wisconsin.
> And? Sarah Palin didn't invalidate the Tea Party.
No, but her co-opting the movement for her own political ambitions diluted the message and removed focus from the original grievances.
> It would have meant GM and Chrysler's annihilation, along with many UAW members losing their jobs. But every other car maker in North America has union plants. The UAW itself wasn't going anywhere if GM and Chrysler failed.
My impression was that GM and Chrysler was UAWs last stronghold and that all the foreign car makers had set up shop in right-to-work states exactly to avoid UAW influence. But the point was, you make it sound like they generously made a concession, when they in reality took government money to arrive at a better result than the starting point (bankruptcy).
> But the right to form a union or bank does.
You can form all the unions you want, but if you use government power to inject yourself between the employer and the employee, you're just as bad as a rent-seeking corporation using government regulation to give your company an advantage.
> And the very right to organize is what union struggles are increasingly about. Just look to Ohio and Wisconsin.
OWS has been firmly grounded in financial issues as the name suggests. Union rights don't seem to be at the front of the agenda, although I have no doubts the unions would like to change that.
I'm not sure they've been co-opted; unions still seem outnumbered by people who I'd place closer a to university-activist or counterculture-oriented scene. If anything it seems like a cautious alliance between those groups. Strategically that's probably a good idea; one of the main cultural problems of the left has been decades-long mutual distaste between union members and people they perceive as more middle-class hippie or student-activist types.
perceiving a movement through possible positions of a minority is a pretty intellectually dishonest way to tar the group
You'll note that I did say "at least some of these protesters". With those qualifiers, you'd be right.
I'm not trying to tar the whole ... event (I hesitate to call it a "movement", since I haven't seen any cohesive set of ideals coming forth) ... but some portion, of indeterminate size, of the group.
consider that the GM/Chrysler bailouts almost included a gutting of the UAW... The unions have (rightly) seen any benefit they did get as incidental and temporary at best.
First, it's my understanding that the settlement that UAW got in the GM bankruptcy was pretty clearly outside of the way bankruptcy laws specify that the debts are to be discharged. They got a big-time sweetheart deal -- not a one-time "temporary" pile of money, but a good-sized ownership stake.
In any case, I'm sure that the banks who were bailed out would say something similar: "it's just this once, and bailing us out really benefited the economy of the whole country". The thing is, this is (a) self-serving, and (b) pretty impossible for them to say objectively, given the complexity of the economy.
Then what's your point in bringing it up? You could say the same of any political group.
> "They got a big-time sweetheart deal"
I don't think that's a fair characterization, but it's neither here nor there to my point. My point is that they bargained for what they got using collective bargaining power that many were trying to outright strip from them.
And "temporary" was to refer to the point that without continuing political action they almost certainly would/will lose their bargaining power, making any current union deal more of a silver parachute for current membership as the union itself faded into history.
This whole 99% vs 1% BS is just getting ridiculous.
Maybe they should be happy they're not the 99% of the world who die of starvation and preventable diseases instead of whining that it's so unfair.
The protestors ARE in the 1%. It's depressing to see their open greed and belief they are entitled to more.
Maybe if they applied all that energy toward creating wealth instead of protesting, they would be in a better situation. Or better yet, try and help the 99% of the world that's worse off than them.
I'm reminded of people who argue against high-paid athletes going on strike for being greedy, despite the institution owners pulling in far larger portions of the wealth. "They're paid millions to throw a ball around! They should be happy with a fraction of the wealth they generate!"
Which is, of course, the underlying point. Who is really "creating" the wealth? That's a matter of perspective. I'm sure the self-described "99 percenters" feel they're the ones who "created" much of the wealth the "1%" has.
the "too big to fail" situation is dangerous. the banks are _correctly_ making big bets because they know it's impossible to default since the government HAS to bail them out to prevent contagion.
It's (sometimes) useful for providing perspective. The linked article thankfully avoids it, and kudos for that, but I've seen many mentions of protesters self-identifying with the Arab spring. In that perspective it seems reasonable to point out the vast difference in the scale of abuse rendered to the protesters.
That was, oddly enough, used against the Egyptian protestors also--- many of them were comparatively well off, educated Egyptians, who were accused of ignoring how good their lives were in comparison to the lives of the average Arab, and of prioritizing middle-class issues like newspaper freedom over economic issues more important to the poor masses.
Can you give some concrete examples of why things are currently stacked in the favor of a 1% and against the 99%?
If such things exist, what would your solution be to make things "fairer"?
IMHO, things ARE pretty fair, and these protests are just basically "We don't know how to make money, we messed up buying crap we didn't need, but you lot are rich. therefore it's not fair and you must have some unfair advantage"
Another thing that's important to keep in mind is that some of the biggest crimes against humanity has happened when the perpetrators claimed to represent the interests of "the 99%" (or "the people" or similar). In reality, they represented what they thought the 99% should want (marxists call it "false consciousness"), and the same is the case here. I'm not saying these protesters have the means or the will to actually go perpetrate serious crimes, but some humility would suit them.
If the 99% (or even 50%) really sympathized, there is no point in camping in a park, just run some candidates for office and take over government. The large sums floating around in politics can possibly swing a margin across the middle, but there's no way it can shut up 99%.
I'd offer some of them a job...but then again I don't think they want one.
Nor are they willing to take any sort of personal responsibility for the "mess" they are in. You didn't necessarily get screwed, you probably screwed yourself. And if you are complaining about tuition costs go protest at the universities, not Wall Street. How dumb can some people be?
Certain financial institutions may certainly be at fault to a degree, but so is Washington and Congress and YOU. Take responsibility and do something positive for the country. This is a joke.
Erm. These are people who are going far out of their way to draw attention to what they believe are serious problems and try to build momentum for broad action to resolve those problems.
If you think that's a "joke", not really sure what I can say to you.
Similarly, if you think the appropriate response to this is to hand-wave into trying to blame the people who are protesting for the results of, let's face it, massive fraud perpetrated on the world by "certain financial institutions", I have a hard time even beginning to comprehend your worldview.
At least people are trying... The focus may not be clear and the participants may not be the most informed but don't underestimate the potential of this movement. Think of all of the recent injustices that no one has responded to. This is potentially the start of something big, I think we just need some intelligent leaders to provide some direction.
Absolutely! But people need to vote at every single level from city council to the Presidency, not just once every 4 years for whoever your favorite news stations tells you to.
I personally don't feel bad for or listen to those who refuse to vote.
>Absolutely! But people need to vote at every single level from city council to the Presidency, not just once every 4 years for whoever your favorite news stations tells you to.
On the one hand I absolutely agree with you, but on the other hand, corporations vote with their dollars every single day.
True, but who else votes with their dollars every day? American citizens. Perhaps some should pay more attention to what they are voting for with their wallets.
Yea, what a great idea. Why did no one think of this? Oh, wait. They did. They voted in Obama to make a statement against Bush's policies. What did they get? More of Bush's policies.
The US is a two party system where both parties get the majority of all their funding from big business. Why would they care what individual citizens have to say? Elections are won with campaign money.
The full impact of the greek default hasn't hit yet and it is not unreasonable to expect that Italy or Spain may default next. People have already started leaderless protests. Meanwhile - it's pretty easy to make money on the way down assuming you have it to begin with.
It is not hard to predict some pretty big changes in the next few years.