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Occupy Wall Street Protests Go Global
Hugh Pickens writes "Tens of thousands of people around the world took to the streets Saturday to reiterate their anger at the global financial system, corporate greed and government cutbacks, with rallies held in more than 900 cities in Europe, Africa and Asia. 'United in one voice, we will let politicians, and the financial elites they serve, know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future,' said organizers of the global demonstration. The demonstrations by the disaffected coincided with the Group of 20 meeting in Paris, where finance ministers and central bankers from major economies were holding talks on the debt and deficit crises afflicting many Western countries. Crowds around the world were largely peaceful, but the demonstration in Rome turned violent as clashes in the Italian capital left dozens injured, including several police officers. In London, WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange made a dramatic appearance, bursting through the police lines just after 2:30pm, accompanied by scores of supporters. He climbed the cathedral steps near St. Paul's to condemn 'greed' and 'corruption,' and attacked the City of London, accusing its financiers of money laundering and tax avoidance."
In other news, the greedy condemn Assange.
Global indeed
And it'll all get nowhere.......
I mean..the Europeans will probably stir things up a bit and might get a few changes in...mainly in the field of regulation of the markets..
The Americans are, unfortunately, too cowed to do anything as they were sold out decades ago and are pretty well blind to it still. Although they are demonstrating in Wall St it'll all be a memory in a month.
As the average middle class American is progressively dumbed dowm, impoverished and stripped of their protections I can only see a small monied ruling class presiding (ah ha...pun) over a large mass of minimum wage slave serfs....
Such a shame, they showed such promise.
Only around 20% of the population were sided against the king during the time America was being formed.
Why is that relevant? Well it just means that it takes a lot less people than you think to get things rolling.
After reading this article http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10 and seeing Inside Job http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk I am tempted to join them!
200,000 + people in page, 120 k+ are currently talking about it. its bigger than most politicians' pages. Support is really global, and there are people from all walks of life. Albeit, of course, people who have their dinners in monaco.
https://www.facebook.com/OccupyWallSt
Read radical news here
First hand reports of whats going on in London and some tactics used to snuff out demo
I'd love to see something better, but the rhetoric sounds a WHOLE lot like the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. How'd that work out?
In fact, as often as it's been tried, none of them have worked out.
Listen, I understand that you're mad, but you have to provide a solid alternative. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, and no matter how badly you want something to not be so, still it remains. These revolutions have a history of plunging their respective people into the dark ages.
I've seen it in cartoon form too: http://www.onenewsnow.com/uploadedImages/Cartoons/101011.jpg
It's still wrong though. I wouldn't even call it a bad argument, as that would mean admitting it's an argument. It's a good textbook of the ad hominium fallacy: "These people are hypocrites, therefore what they say is wrong."
Spanish protests go global. Spanished followed the Arab Srping, then there were protests in many cities in Europe, then Israel, then it was the US, and now the whole world. Don't be that stupid centered.
This isn't a political blog this is a technology blog - can we focus on that?
According to this map, they are scattered everywhere. I wonder how much more effective it'd be if the 99% really dropped in on Wall Street and got their money back?
I think 20 years of skewing the system to favor the wealthy while neglecting the majority is finally starting to sink in. It's not that people can't be rich, that there is anything wrong with being rich, or that there is something wrong with capitalism generally. In principle these things are all fine. It is the way that it has been twisted so that every time an economic issue comes up, the majority of people end up paying (bailouts, wage cuts, etc.) while the people at the top manage to skim off an ever-widening fraction. Regular wages barely keep up with inflation or even decline. We're told companies have to remain competitive, which is true, but if that's the case then why have CEO salaries climbed *far* in excess of inflation over the last 2 decades whether there's an upturn in the economy or a downturn? Meanwhile there is a race to the bottom in terms of corporate taxes world-wide, with countries like Ireland luring companies there with exceptionally low rates, then practically going bankrupt the moment there is an economic downturn. Personal taxes go down, but it's a game where the very wealthy get theirs reduced far more than the average Joe. Between corporate tax decreases and disproportionate tax cuts or tax systems that favor the wealthy (capital gains), the middle and lower class ends up shouldering an ever-larger fraction of the total tax burden to run government services, which get cut anyway. Everyone is expected to tolerate "austerity" measures due to a screwed-up financial system that wasn't their fault. Governments cut taxes before paying down debts when times are good (you're supposed to run a surplus in the good times to get rid of the debts so you are ready for the next economic cycle instead of hitting borrowing limits, and so you aren't stealing money from the next generation). The list of grievances is long.
Look, I like capitalism. Like democracy, it's the least-bad economic system that I think we have. But the simple fact is, this was a grand experiment in "trickle-down" economics. Early on, the results were kind of fuzzy, but the result is now becoming clear to everyone: you can't shaft the majority of workers for a generation and expect that things are going to be fine economically. You also can't say you are running a democracy while favoring the wealthy at every possible opportunity. You can't let money buy such strong influence in politics that ordinary people start believing their vote is worthless. You can't do these things for so long and expect that the system is going to remain sustainable.
Unless the rich and powerful eventually want to live in medieval-style castles to keep the common peasants out, they're going to have to realize that they need to pay more into the society that they live in, and focus a little less on their own individual wealth. They need to care more about the future of society as a whole, and bring things back to a more sustainable, balanced system like we used to have in western democracies and economies. This is the wake-up call. Heed it, like a democracy is supposed to do when its people speak up, and things will be okay. Ignore it at your peril.
What do the penguins know that the rest of us don't?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Are you kidding me? Just in Portugal were counted one hundred thousand people protesting. More like hundreds of thousands, if not more.
Anyone else reminded of Shay's Rebellion? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion
It might not technically be a valid form of argument; but this is forum were we are reacting to and pontificating on a protest movement. Its hardly an academic debate we are having here. So even if its not a valid argument form its still worth pointing out the hypocritical nature of some of what they are doing and asking for.
Generally in my practical experience when you find people preaching something other than what they practice one or both of the following is true. They are profoundly lacking in self awareness and understanding of their own situation, or they preaching something that is impractical and often impossible. They may or may not admit it.
I listened to NPR interviewing one of these protesters, he talked about no knowing how he was going to pay all the debt he had, yet called himself middle class. This is the United States, class here is supposed to be about what you have and what you do not what you are. If your net worth is negative, you are not middle class. That is called poor. Is it good to be poor, no, but it does not have to be a permanent condition. I can understand the desire to protest over the lack of mobility, even support it. I find it hard to take political prescriptions from someone who can't even admit or can't understand, perhaps both; his own situation though.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
There's plenty to gripe about, but I don't see anyone stepping forward to distill the message and create an agenda. Change won't happen without leadership and I don't see any at the protests.
pft in the famous words of Mister Burns "Release the hounds."
Showering will usually fix that.
I just pooped your party.
Now they're outsourcing the protesters! Preemptive apologies to rest of the world.
Since they're a movement and not an organisation, no they do not have any specific demands.
The core of the movement is the idea that the 1% should be forced to share their wealth with the other 99%, which will have to happen sooner or later, or we'll get another French revolution.
The specifics of -how- the 1% should be forced to share, and how their wealth should be distributed is not an area where there is any notable unity yet.
...know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future,' said organizers of the global demonstration.
If it were that easy to accomplish, it would have been corrected many, MANY years ago.
When you say "our parents" and "our grandparents", it's likely that you're talking about the so-called Baby Boomers. We shouldn't feel sorry for them at all. These people have fucked up everything they've gotten involved with, for decades now. Hell, they're largely responsible for the current situation.
They were born into one of the most, if not the most, prosperous times in the history of humanity. The foundation of this prosperity was planted by their hard-working ancestors, and they grew up in it and eventually inherited it, so they can't actually take any credit for it. In hindsight, this was the peak of middle-class America. Rather than trying to improve further on this already-amazing economic situation, many of them ended up becoming hippies fighting against the very system that provided them the best standard of living of all-time.
I'm not a conservative by any means, but neither can I respect those who grow up in a near-perfect environment, yet go ahead and do everything they can to trash this environment. But that's exactly what many Boomers did during the 1960s. They caused some damage, but thankfully were limited in their ability to cause real harm, and their movements fizzled out.
When the 1970s rolled around, some of them finally outgrew these youthful shenanigans. They got involved with corporate America and the American government, which up until that time actually did treat middle-class American workers extremely well. Even lower-middle-class workers could afford vehicles and homes without having to go into debt. But the Boomers would put an end to this as they started moving up the management ladder.
By the mid-1970s, the Boomers were starting to get into positions of corporate and government power. Given the huge amount of people around the same age, many of these Boomers tried to be as outrageous as possible to differentiate themselves from their peers, in order to further their careers. They would suggest courses of action that their parents or grandparents, the previous leaders of corporate America, would think of as being totally asinine and wrong-headed. One such concept that they embraced was outsourcing/offshoring.
They had unfortunately embedded themselves well within American corporations and government by the mid-1980s. They had become the leaders of business and society, and to put it bluntly, they fucked everything up. Every policy they made served to fuck over the American middle class. This is the very same American middle class that begat these Boomers!
The Boomer's precious offshoring, outsourcing and "free trade" destroyed the American manufacturing sector in the 1980s and 1990s. Although younger generations tried to negate some of this damage via the Internet boom, far too much damage had already been done. By the 2000s, the Boomers had started to offshore even the best-paying technical jobs.
As everyone today knows, the Boomers' policies have absolutely destroyed the American economy. They caused the very problems that have rendered many of them "poor" today. The only people they should hold accountable are themselves.
Few people are more shortsighted than those who believe that our current condition is fixable by a single solution. Sadly, people like you are extremely numerous. Almost as sad is that the solutions to the problem require far more that most people can understand.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Generally in my practical experience when you find people preaching something other than what they practice one or both of the following is true. They are profoundly lacking in self awareness and understanding of their own situation, or they preaching something that is impractical and often impossible. They may or may not admit it.
Another possible explanation for people who preach something other than what they practice is that they don't have the power to change it on their own, or they need support to create a movement. I can protest Apple using slave labour in China, and still buy Apple products. I can protest McDonalds destroying rain forest and still buy a Big Mac.
I'm not against big companies making great products. I'm against a financial market that has gone out of the roof without any regulation and without anyone - even themselves - knowing how it all works. And still I need a bank and a loan and a credit card and the whole system that is build around it. I need a consumer bank, and I need a business bank as well, not for me, but for the companies around me that support my life as it is. I suppose the gigantic economic boom we had in the past 30 years is for the most part a result of the same financial system that is now the problem, still it needs to be stopped and put down on earth in a way that is understandable and controllable.
Dude, if I could use an IKEA table-leg to defeat corruption, I wouldn't care what part of the Chinese underworld it was manufactured in; I'd Just Do It.
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made. - Otto von Bismarck
The rich have stolen democracy. Return democracy to the 99%
Really? No, from your perspective and those of the majority of the "protesters" the rich have stolen communism from you and won't give it back.
Slightly on topic: Does anyone here have any opinion over the Terra - a common world currency that is based on the top 10 or so produce of the world (gold, corn, oil etc.), and so is much more stable and less prone to inflation. I saw it a couple of days ago, and I can't help but feel it would save trillions in efficiency and help benefit the world.
Whitepaper here:
http://www.terratrc.org/PDF/Terra_WhitePaper_2.27.04.pdf
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I've been watching these protests, interested in seeing what might come out of them. Unfortunately, no one has stepped out and tried to distill all the chaos down to simple talking points that the masses can understand. Left-wing protestors have a much higher barrier to overcome to be taken seriously. The right wing pundits, Tea Party guys, etc. seem to understand this and keep their rantings simple. They appeal to a wide swath of the country by doing that -- it's easy to convince a plumber that the Evil Government is preventing them from becoming a hugely successful entrepreneur because they're "stealing" his tax dollars. That's where I think a lot of the non-rich right wingers have their thinking misplaced -- they're inadvertently supporting business owners who turn around and make average peoples' lives miserable.
My take on this whole thing is as follows. I don't want communism, anarchy or the guillotining of investment bankers. What I do want is the social contract that companies used to have with their workers put back in place. The world is going to get even more divisive as automation and cheap labor start taking away all those nice safe service jobs. I like the model of Germany and the Scandinavian countries. There are plenty of business owners in those countries who are successful and get rich, but they seem to have a perspective and deal with the burden of paying taxes to support the rest of society. This is similar to the 50s-style social contracts many employers had -- hard work and loyalty were rewarded with a commensurate income ladder, paid health insurance, and paid retirement.
Think about it this way -- you're probably well-educated, worked hard to get where you are, and most people have health insurance, a nice stable job, good income and a few possessions. What makes you think that businesses are always going to need network administrators, Java programmers and other IT people? We're already seeing evidence that businesses would rather deal with sub-par service and skeleton staffs...and most people are a couple of paychecks away from being totally broke short of their retirement funds.
I see why everyone's mad at Wall Street though -- a lot of the reason that social contract went away in the first place is a constant demand for corporate earnings regardless of economic conditions.
If I were leading this thing, I think my simple, Tea Party-style talking points would be as follows:
1. Make everyone pay their fair share of taxes. Don't fall for executives' scare tactics about moving to China -- they're going to do that anyway.
2. To ensure this tax money gets spent wisely, limit corporate influence on the political system. It's amazing how quickly universal health insurance could be funded once some of these tax loopholes are removed.
3. Reduce the hyper-focus on the financial markets. Get individual retirement investors out of the market and into something safer like a pension or annuity. Let average people have a stable retirement, but encourage investment on their own if they want. Let companies breathe for a couple of quarters so they can actually plow money back into things that will produce results further down the road.
These things would resonate with average Americans, and it would be very hard for the right wing pundits to call me a dirty hippie if I came to the table with a good set of arguments.
Occupy Wall Street in the beginning was the globalization of European Protests... I mean, Greece and Spain were on fire, with people fighting the police on the streets, many months before anything in America.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Why is there no political system anywhere where the campaigns are funded by a flat levy, and ALL levels of government have equal elections where union and private donations, as well as politician's OWN FINANCES are banned from participating? Each politician gets a set amount equal to all the other candidates with which they can campaign with, and MANDATED/paid media time, and BAN private political advertising. Get rid of these douchebag interest groups from politics they have no place. Politicians shouldn't be allowed to pool their money together into party platforms either. If 50 people across electorates want to campaign for the same thing they should have to each spend out of their allowances individually to get their message out, so 50 conservative candidate ads, not 1 expensive ad running all the time for the conservative party. Anyone running against them should have the chance to do the same. This system that currently exists serves only the rich and powerful and the union bosses that are slaves to them. Kill the financial incentive to suck up to the big end of town and to businesses and make the bastards actually serve the public interest. Everyone knows this is the only way to go, it's high time people stood up for it and made it happen.
The US economy in recent years has followed Adam Smith about as much as the USSR followed Karl Marx. I agree with the GP that government is part of the problem, but that is largely due to the ever-increasing influence of "big money" in politics, culminating in the horrific Citizens United ruling a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, the only way to cut the octopus tentacles away is a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of their "personal" rights. Only then will our government be able to function properly to protect the people from "inhuman" corporate avarice.
As for how to protect us from the conglomerates, I suggest: 1. a STET tax; 2. get out of NAFTA, and reinstate reasonable tariffs as Adam Smith intended; 3. reinstate Glass-Steagall; 4. break up too-big-to-fail banks into smaller units; and 5. put some banksters in JAIL!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
They aren't hypocrites though, that's not what hypocrite means.
Being a hypocrite is a contradiction between what you say and what you do.
I'll show an example. If I like riding carousels, however I think they should be built from wood rather then steel. I'm not a hypocrite if I enjoy a ride in a steel carousel because I never said that I wouldn't.
My opposition was against building them in the first place, thus if I -built- a steel carousel, then I'd be a hypocrite.
The argument is built on the misguided notion that because you're against one aspect of something, you're against all aspects.
Another example, if I protest politicians pensions, it does not make me a hypocrite if I use government services. Because I'm protesting -one aspect- of the government, not its entirety.
These protesters are not protesting that the companies make hats/t-shirts/backpacks/pants/iPhones/food. They're protesting abuse and exploitation. They'd be perfectly happy if they'd continue making the products and stop the abuse.
Is the argument then supposed to be that the abuse is intrinsically linked to the products? I have a hard time imagining you'll be able to pull that argument off.
Do you realize what absurdity you are spouting? Democracy cannot be stolen from the majority. If the majority is not in control, you don't have democracy. If this statement confuses you because you think we used to have democracy, it's ok. Your lazy teachers didn't explain to you that our nation is NOT a democracy. We live in a republic. The majority DOES NOT RULE. We may democratically select our representatives, but we have no direct control over the laws of our country. If we did, our country would be a very different place.
That being said, what we have now is not a republic, nor a democracy. What we have now is defined as an oligarchy. You are upset at the rich, I am upset at the politicians. A lot of rich people have done horrible things and they deserve some blame. A lot of politicians are responsible as well. At the end of the day though, the rich would have no power over you if the politicians didn't give it to them. The government is responsible. Tell all the politicians to go home. Don't vote democrat. Don't vote republican. Vote 3rd party for EVERYTHING. If there is no 3rd party running, run for office yourself. If you don't succeed, tell your representative to support the CONSTITUTION, not some sort of bullshit called bi-partisan compromise. If the government follows the Constitution, all they can do is defend your rights... Nothing more. Of course realize that then they won't be able to violate anyone else's rights as well, so don't expect free stuff.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The middle class IS poor! Look at the mean net worth of the 25-50% (the lower half of middle class) is dangerously near $0. (Though actually I think net worth can be misleading... most people are stuck in a hand-to-mouth mentality that guarantees their net worth will never grow, even if their income was good and their standard of living was high).
But, secondly, if this guy is protesting, don't you think he KNOWS is situation is in jeapordy? That he might not be so "middle-class" after all? I think what he's saying is, "I have skills, I'm economically productive, yet I'm stuck scraping by. That can't be right."
The fact you think I'm a Marxist is pretty hilarious considering that it requires you to jump about 75% of the length of the political chart to get there from me.
Your post also made no sense. I made three statements.
1) The movement wants the 1% to share with the 99%
2) The movement does not specify how the 1% should share with the 99%
3) Once inequality goes beyond a certain point you get a revolution.
While 1) requires wealth redistribution, and thus some amount of socialism 2) means that its unspecified to which degree. It doesn't even imply that the underlying economic system needs to change. We already have wealth redistribution as is.
3) is a well established truth.
Wait are you saying that corporations are actually just a group of people, and that corporations don't screw you, actual people screw you? Amazing.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." --Mahatma Gandhi. I have never been more proud of my fellow Americans than I am now with the Occupy Wall Street movement. You people on Wall Street, you corporate shills, hedgefund kiddies--your days are numbered. You have been able to buy politicians and get legislation that benefits you and no one else. The US voting population understands that Congress itself is full of millionaires. Yes, last I checked, we do live in a democracy. Much as I despise the Tea Party, they are one type of attack on your right side. The Occupy Wall Street movement--which is spreading like wildfire across the entire world--is an attack from the left. You may think you can mock, ridicule and marginalize the OWS movement but I am not so sure. Go ahead and mock, insinuate that it's all Soros and all of your other techniques. Unfortunately for you, the rest of us also went to college and grad school. We too read constantly, get up early in the morning to study our battle plans and plot our strategy. At first I too saw the lack of common purpose as a weakness. I wrote pieces that explained what I saw as the grievances. Then I heard that fine American genius Matt Taibbi--who wrote that Goldman Sachs is a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money"--point out that the lack of a common articulated set of goals and a designated single leader is a point of genius. Just because the OWS movement does not articulate their goals does not mean they don't have goals and designs. And with no stated goals, they are a moving target with a thousand goals. With no central leader, there is no one for Wall Street to corrupt and co-opt. This is classic closed cell behavior as practiced by subversive groups for centuries. Wall Street always attacks like this with money. But without a leader to corrupt, without a single defined list of goals to refute, the OWS movement is a moving target, chimeric and powerful. Go on ridiculing them. We are not going away. If we find that our leaders, even our beloved President Obama, don't react to our wishes, they will be replaced. And I promise you, if we need to replace even President Obama, you will like his successor even less. You Republicans plan to nominate Mitt Romney, he of Bain Capital who slashed jobs, drained equity and walked off with millions? Bring it on! I relish the chance to attack that fat cat. Bring it on. Don't start anything you can't finish. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Bank of America and Citigroup--to say nothing of all the hedge funds with your poster boy Raj Rajaratnam--you started something you can't finish. You and your millions are no match for our power. We know where you live, we know where you work and where you play. We're coming for you. You had better be afraid, very afraid.
Oh, I thought this was a place to argue with nerds on the internet. Is there any news for nerds that doesn't revolve around phones and tablets anymore?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Of course you can. It makes you a hypocrite though. You don't have to buy an iPhone. You don't have to eat a Big Mac.
Totally agree about the financial system though, it's tough to find alternatives in the US. Over here in Europe we have banks that are collective in nature, cooperatives instead of corporations. They have in general weathered the financial storm a lot better than the corporatist banks with their plummeting stock prices and big bonuses.
So 99%: why not start your own, cooperative bank? No one is holding you back, there are alternatives. I guess that's just too damn socialistic for the US.
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The title makes it sound as if the Occupy Wall Street was replicated around the world. The truth is, the US started after everyone had done something like that. We had our movement of "Indignados" in El Salvador about two months ago, so it's not as if the United States started with it, so it looks as if the editor didn't know about what was happening in the world by the time the movement started in the US.
The OWS crowd have deliberately avoided touting any specific economic models. The fact that you don't know that only shows how ignorant you are of the movement and renders the rest of your comment irrelevant. Yes, I have heard a few protesters condemn capitalism, but I've heard even more say that they simply want capitalism with fairness. They want justice for the crimes of the banksters and less "corporate capture" of government.
As for taxes, the ratios you cite are very similar to those in the USA. However, that's only for income tax revenue. If you include sales tax, property tax, and all the rest, the lower and middle classes pay a much higher percentage of their gross income to the government than the rich do.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Very true - it used to be the case that every corporation or company offered multiple career paths. You could either move into management, technical design, or research.
Then the smart-ass shareholders thought, we don't need one 50-year old guy designing stuff, when we can get a handful of 25 year-olds doing the same work for half the salary, so out went the technical design path. These older guys were lucky enough to have pensions and the option to take early retirement when cutbacks were introduced. Others became consultants. So out went the technical career path.
That wasn't enough, the same smart-ass shareholders then thought they could just buy in research from abroad or from the universities. So out went the research career path.
Another money grab was the skimming off of "pension fund surpluses". After reassuring the government that there were loads of money in the pension funds, and that nobody would notice the difference if they had a dip, the government decided to take a grab for themselves. What they didn't realize was that the pension fund surpluses were actually reinvested in the very same companies. As a consequence, company pension funds collapsed.
Even then the smart-ass shareholders weren't happy then. They thought companies should be working on bleeding-edge high-return products rather than safe low-return products that they had been able to maintain a dominant market-share for 30 years. So entire engineering teams were redeployed elsewhere. When those new markets didn't materialize, the staff were laid off, and the stock price went down to junk status.
The unemployment situation is so bad, that when the normal career path was to work as software engineer for a decade, a senior engineer for another five years, it has now been compressed into periods of six months each.
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Is the argument then supposed to be that the abuse is intrinsically linked to the products? I have a hard time imagining you'll be able to pull that argument off.
Well, that argument does exist, it's called TINA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Is_No_Alternative.
They are a movement alright...a long stinky one.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Outsourcing/offshoring was not a boomer idea, it was an integral part of Reaganomics. Up until the 70's, a third of government revenue came from import/export tariffs. So-called "free trade" had already been a longstanding desire of conservative business interests for many years, and Reagan started the process that culminated with NAFTA under Clinton.
I agree with the rest of your analysis, but the idea of "free trade" did not originate with the Boomer generation, it had been around for quite a while already.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Those banks that are "too big to fail" need to be split into smaller pieces that do not represent a systematic threat.
The government has split up AT&T in the 1970s, Standard Oil before that and had anti monopoly laws in place that should be used to prevent another bailout.
This is the first thing we need to fix. We have to stop treating Corporations as individuals with the same "rights" as real people. Only when we've done this can we undo the mess caused by Corporate greed and collusion with politicians. Then we can start treating the people who steer their corporations into criminal acts like the criminals they are.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Though Margaret used TINA when talking about the basic underlying system (Contrasting Liberalism against Protectionism and Communism). I don't think anyone has seriously tried to say that there are no alternatives within the implementation of a liberal economic system.
It's easy enough to say that Freeish Capitalism in the generalized sense has succeeded better then any other system, but it's pretty damn hard to make the case that the current implementation of it is the only one possible, especially since every country does it differently.
Crisis is causing protests around the globe, but they have different causes and goals.
Don't be a tard. The rich have co-opted socialism so that taxpayers cover their bonuses when they crash a business, but they get to keep all their profits when happenstance gives them a good year.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Certainly no "single" solution will suffice, but ending the Fed would be a damn good place to start. Debt is a huge piece of the puzzle, and our "money as debt" currency is basically a Ponzi scheme writ large. The Fed is a privately owned institution; it's only connection to government is that its board members are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. (And of course, all such candidates are picked from the population of elite bankers to begin with, so there's really no way for the elected government to influence the Fed's behavior.) Rather than printing our own money (a power which is specifically assigned to Congress in the constitution), we instead borrow our money supply from this private bank... at interest. How stupid is that?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I keep seeing the "Mortgage crisis was cause because Banks were forced to lend to poor people" meme too, but they never provide any numbers to support this. The Government didn't force banks to give people mortgages for amounts that were far greater than the value of the homes they were buying while simultaneously selling investors these mortgages as bundled securities while they were secretly betting everything they had on the failure of these same investments.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
You know, I see this and it makes me wonder... can you even buy some of the modern conveniences (much less necessities) that are made in America and not from exploitative work? (I'm disregarding food here - there's still local farms in every state as well as farmer's markets where you can buy local. This is one of the easiest things to "buy American" and even avoid buying from huge corporations, although it will obviously cost you more.)
Sure, it's possible to get clothes I'm sure. In the worst case scenario you can go to a skilled tailor and have them just outright make your clothes (although that would be an expensive option). I'm sure there's still t-shirts and other basic stuff still made in the USA, but what about socks? Underwear?
What about things that aren't exactly a "necessity" but very much a part of modern life? Can I get a computer that had absolutely 0 parts slapped together by some poor bastard in China? What about a cell phone, or television?
I think calling someone a hypocrite (or just implying that they're one) for something where they don't have the option to buy American or buy from a local store is going just a wee bit overboard in my book.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It's a bad idea. A currency should represent and serve a single culture/nation/society. When you implement a single currency across a range of disparate economies you end up with the "Euro crisis" presently unfolding before us.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Occupy is supposed to be about the will of the people, not a rally for any one political party Whichever Occupy groups you may be a member of, beware of those who are trying to co-opt the movement for their own agendas. Democracy not dictatorship!
My views are no more important than anyone elses. That's the beauty of Occupy. It looks like it may be the first truly democratic movement to ever wield the power of the internet. I've always believed that with the internet, we could achieve true democracy where people vote on Parliamentary/Senate/Congress issues DIRECTLY rather than through representatives. We're not there yet, but hopefully we will be soon.
While it's easy to set up some sort of system for voting, it'd be much harder to democratize the process of submitting legislation to be voted on.
The only thing I could suggest is something like the website the US government set up, where anyone can start a petitiion and any petition that collects a certain number of votes during a given time frame would be automatically tabled for voting by the general public.
I figure the same people who would be too apathetic to submit petitions, vote on them, or vote on the tabled legislation is also probably too apathetic to vote in our existing elections.
The Occupy groups are probably going to have to do something like that to narrow down the diversity of demands to a set that can actually be presented and acted upon. While reigning banks in may be a relatively clear goal in the US, the goals of the Occupy protests in the rest of the world are not so clear cut.
I think it's telling that anyone who advocates change that threatens the profits of the status quo is automatically labelled socialist, communist, hippie, or worse by them. It just goes to show how indefensible the position of the status quo is when they can't come up with a better argument than name-calling and labelling to support their abusive behaviour.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The fact you think I'm a Marxist is pretty hilarious
Strictly speaking, (3) is indeed something Marx believed.
But that's because it's pretty much a fact. It's happened over and over throughout history. There is only so much the system can dump on the majority of the people before the people just start taking shit. There is only so long that you can pay some of the poor to hold the guns to keep the rest of the poor out. It really does result in revolution.
There are indeed idiots out there who think that mentioning this fact makes people a communist or a Marxist. Uh, no. That happened long before Marx, and it will happen long after.
Marx thought revolutions now would inevitably lead to communism, which was, frankly, rather silly on his part, because it never had managed to do that before. But he thought the industrial revolution had fundamentally changed the rules of how that worked. (Which, to be fair to him, it did, but not quite how he expected. For one thing, he missed the idea of offshoring, which changes a lot of facts about the power of 'the people' and what their labor is worth.)
So, hey, ironically, if anyone's been sucked in by Marxist thought, it's the fools who think the protestors are trying to lead people to communism. If Marx was here, he'd be nodding along with those fools, saying 'Of course this must lead to communism! The workers must seize the country!'. He'd be in favor, and the other fools would be against, and the protestors would just continue to ignore both of those fools and protest for, you know, laws they want passed that results in them actually being able to find employment and pay for the necessities of life.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I totally agree with stripping corporations of their 'personal rights'. And from a quick read, I also agree with the STET tax.
folks, just remember how republicans treat those on the downside. Never forget.
US Congress Whipsaws Stocks & Members Still Make Insider Trades
http://www.investoruprising.com/author.asp?section_id=1287&doc_id=231809
Slashdot = Sarcasm
Just out of curiosity... What's the third degree?
ics
It's of general interest to nerds as it dictates our future condition. Some nerds are in the 1%, but most are at best middle class and this directly affects us either way.
...is just a fashion choice.
Advice: on VPS providers
Occupy is supposed to be about the will of the people, not a rally for any one political party Whichever Occupy groups you may be a member of, beware of those who are trying to co-opt the movement for their own agendas. Democracy not dictatorship!
My views are no more important than anyone elses. That's the beauty of Occupy. It looks like it may be the first truly democratic movement to ever wield the power of the internet. I've always believed that with the internet, we could achieve true democracy where people vote on Parliamentary/Senate/Congress issues DIRECTLY rather than through representatives. We're not there yet, but hopefully we will be soon.
While it's easy to set up some sort of system for voting, it'd be much harder to democratize the process of submitting legislation to be voted on.
The only thing I could suggest is something like the website the US government set up, where anyone can start a petitiion and any petition that collects a certain number of votes during a given time frame would be automatically tabled for voting by the general public.
I figure the same people who would be too apathetic to submit petitions, vote on them, or vote on the tabled legislation is also probably too apathetic to vote in our existing elections.
The Occupy groups are probably going to have to do something like that to narrow down the diversity of demands to a set that can actually be presented and acted upon. While reigning banks in may be a relatively clear goal in the US, the goals of the Occupy protests in the rest of the world are not so clear cut.
I think it's telling that anyone who advocates change that threatens the profits of the status quo is automatically labelled socialist, communist, hippie, or worse by them. It just goes to show how indefensible the position of the status quo is when they can't come up with a better argument than name-calling and labelling to support their abusive behaviour.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The OWS movement is the outrage. And it's just getting warmed up.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
no one is out to destroy capitalism. i'm certain some crackpot in the occupy wall street crowd is, but most of them just want a job, and a secure middle class life. you get that by destroying CORPORATE socialism, which is the system we live under. no one wants people waiting in line to be handed toilet paper on alternate wednesdays, got it? we want capitalism, which is NOT the system we live under in the USA, if you have been paying any attention
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Which homepage are you talking about?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
In fact, some of that stupidity has shown up on OWS, like cries to 'audit the Fed'. Look, idiots, auditing the Fed isn't going to do anything. The Fed is doing nothing illegal.
Without an audit of the public-private beast that is the Federal Reserve System, how would you know whether they've done anything illegal or not? I don't know if the Ron Paul's version of the audit was ever passed, but Senator Sanders got an amendment inserted into some-bill-or-another. His office has this page:
"Audit the Fed" was Ron Paul's effort to hold the Federal Reserve accountable. It was a preliminary step to ending the system whereby "Wall Street" loans the economy its money supply. If you have a dollar bill in your pocket, it's only there because someone borrowed it from a banker - the bills are printed by the treasury and purchased by the Federal Reserve at cost [2 cents?]. If you have a quarter or a dime or a Susan B. Anthony dollar in your pocket, the Fed bought these from the Mint for face value.
The initial "Tea Party" rallies were held by Ron Paul's supporters in the 2008 presidential campaign, in response to the bailouts. Paul eventually dropped out of that race, but the "powers that be" thought the "tea party jingle" would be useful to perpetuate the concentration of power.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Spanish 'Indignados' Protests started a month before Occupy Wall Street ones.
But a Ron Paul audit is silly, if just because his stated objectives are silly: He believes in hard money, and hard money is not, in any way, shape or form, what we need.
Ask a market monetarist, and they'll say that the issue is not that the fed is doing too much, but that it's doing too little, and in the wrong direction. That what we need is higher inflation, not less. But if we give Paul more of a voice, We'll see ourselves with high unemployment for another couple of decades.
If Ron Paul's economic agenda wasn't batshit crazy, he'd at least get some sympathy from the left. But as it is, he'll never go anywhere. I keep wishing for someone to take his views on immigration and foreign affairs, but tied to some modern economic ideas instead.
Just because you can make a lot of money doing something doesn't mean a degree in it isn't a Mickey Mouse qualification.
I mean, if there was such a thing as a degree in kicking an inflated cow's stomach around for 90 minutes, would the existence of Wayne Rooney and David Beckham mean that said qualification was equivalent to a Master's in engineering from MIT?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Apologies for shooting from the hip, above. After skimming the PDF, I'm less skeptical. (I'll read it in detail later, when I'm not at work.) For example, I'm still skeptical of implementing a demurrage scheme that actually works on a global scale. But anything that gets us off the "money as debt" treadmill is definitely worth a look.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Of course you can (protest a company while buying the company's product). It makes you a hypocrite though. You don't have to buy an iPhone. You don't have to eat a Big Mac.
In no way does it make you a hypocrite. Saying, "You shouldn't use Apple products", then using Apple products makes you a hypocrite. Saying, "I like Apple and their products but wish they'd stop using slave labor" is logically no different than saying, "I like my wife but I wish she'd stop smoking.".
Aren't practically all higher level politicians rich in the US?
Anyhow your definitions are out of whack.
Republic and Democratic are not mutually exclusive. What you used to have is a Democratic Republic, what you have now is an Oligarchic Republic although I think you could make a good case for that you've -always- had an Oligarchic Republic. Notice how practically all the US presidents came from the same few families?
Since you seem to be confused I'll explain what these words mean.
Democracy: Everyone has an equal vote
Oligarchy: Only a select few can hold political power
Republic: Offices are not inherited
Monarchy: Offices are inherited
I've been watching these protests, interested in seeing what might come out of them. Unfortunately, no one has stepped out and tried to distill all the chaos down to simple talking points that the masses can understand.
The Occupy Wall Street demands are starting to focus. They're all quite reasonable. This is a revolutionary movement that wants to pass HR 1489, the "Return to Prudent Banking Act". That's something that real conservatives ought to be supporting. It's about returning to the system that worked from 1933 to 1999, where banks had to stay out of the stock market and brokerages couldn't accept deposits. This separation prevented trouble on Wall Street from taking down banks.
The Occupy Wall Street movement wants the Department of Justice to get tough on crime on Wall Street. That, too, is completely in line with conservative tradition. They want a tougher Securities and Exchange Commission and restrictions on campaign spending. None of this is even slightly radical.
Everything on that list would have been supported by President Eisenhower, arguably the best Republican president in the last century. (Eisenhower delivered peace and prosperity while facing down the Soviet threat, which was quite real back then. He made it look easy; he'd often knock off around 3PM and go play golf. Of course, he'd already been in charge of winning WWII in Europe; compared to that, the presidency was a vacation. His greatest skill was that he could pick the right subordinate for the job and keep them on mission. He managed both Patton and Montgomery effectively during WWII.)
The Republicans have lost their way. (Look at the collection of losers and weirdos running for the Republican presidential nomination.) Republican moderates should be supporting Occupy Wall Street.
Actually, the demurrage scheme is what put me off a bit. It just seems to add a layer of complexity/admin that we don't need. Because the currency is intrinsically stable, do we need to start messing about with depreciation of the Terra whenever it is transmitted? Or maybe I haven't understood it properly...
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
In the era of post WWII prosperity progressives and socialists in Europe and the US thought that they could suck enough blood out of the economy to support unfunded retirements and myriad other social 'benefits' and that, thus harnessed, the semi-capitalism that was allowed to exist would fund their paradise forever. Now that the European and US economies have reached the limits such blood-letting, the looters and moocher are 'protesting' that their victims are 'greedy.' The demonstrators claim that capitalism has failed because it cannot continue to finance their social welfare schemes. Like vampires, the 'protesters' will not be satisfied until they have sucked every last drop out of their victims--the 'greedy' productive men and women of Europe and the US.
I left a comment that explains what the problem is, there is a link to the list of the demands there and my take on these demands.
let's put it this way - it's good for a 4-5 year old but simply embarrassing for somebody who has a college debt to come up with a list like that.
You can't handle the truth.
'Here in my country the "Occupy .+ street" event was lead by the local communist party`, GreatBunzinni
..
Would you please stop typing that kind of bullshit here on slashdot
This. Not to mention Lybia, Baharain, Iceland, Tunisia, Chile, etc... (in no particular order).
Anyways. No demerit to the people of US. It's only a label, after all.
Same story:
Many people, who are miserable because of poor life decisions, decide that it's not their fault and they will blame those in charge.
After all, it's not like no one forced them to buy those cheeseburgers, sign those ARMs, demand more expensive government programs and cheer on the expensive wars.
It's all bread and circuses, until the drones/proles get upset, and then it's revolution... and a long fall from being a superpower to being a nobody.
This message brought to you by France, Rome, Angkor Wat, Easter Island, Athens and Tenochtitlan.
Futurist Traditionalism
You are the tard actually. The "rich" would still be rich regardless of bailouts approved by the congress critters or not. Think deep. Why did the congress critters do this? Because to allow the large banks, etc to fail would do serious damage to whom? The f*ing unions that is who. Where do you think all that pension money is invested? In a mattress? Like it or not all those "99%"ers who pay jack in income taxes have their retirements (pensions or 401k) invested up the ying-yang in stocks and bonds of corporate Amerika with a heavy % in financials (banks, brokers, insurance, etc) And as to the dead beats protesting - get a job and stop saying there are none. There are plenty of jobs available, just not what you want to do. The days of Americans being paid a large multiple of workers in other countries is over. And as has been shown repeatedly in this downturn, when offered jobs which involve ..gasp.. manual labor the soft Americans quit the same week if not the same day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D2h_Uk9f0dQ
Read radical news here
for im also proud of americans this time. as a foreigner. for, THIS is 'the people' that we all actually are.
Read radical news here
Please danbert8, please explain to me what type of government I live in. In my country, we have a head of state, we address her as Her Majesty. We also have an elected house of representatives and a senate. Her Majesty has no political power whatsoever -- her job is purely ceremonial. She inherited the job from her mom. This obviously is not a democracy as -- per your assertion -- we do not have direct majority rule, but have representatives. It just as obviously is not a republic because we have a queen. It can't be a monarchy because the queen doesn't have any political power. What did your teachers teach you what this for of government is?
http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/polanyi/conf/pdf/Palacios.pdf
“For a century the dynamics of modern society was governed by a double movement: the market expanded continuously but this movement was met by a countermovement
checking the expansion in definite directions. Vital though such a countermovement was for the protection of society, in the last analysis it was incompatible with the selfregulation of the market, and thus with the market system itself.
“That system developed in leaps and bounds; it engulfed space and time, and by creating bank money it produced a dynamic hitherto unknown. By the time it reached its maximum extent, around 1914, every part of the globe, all its inhabitants and yet unborn generations, physical persons as well as huge fictitious bodies called corporations, were comprised in it. A new way of life spread over the planet with a claim to universality unparalleled since the age when Christianity started out on its career, only this time the movement was on a purely material level.
“Yet simultaneously a countermovement was on foot. This was more than the usual defensive behaviour of society faced with change; it was a reaction against a dislocation which attacked the fabric of society, and which would have destroyed the very organization of production that the market had called into being” (Polanyi, 1957: 130).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_(book)
The market, once it considers land, labor and money as "fictitious commodities" (fictitious because each possesses qualities that are not expressed in the formal rationality of the market) “subordinate[s] the substance of society itself to the laws of the market.”[1] This, he argues, results in massive social dislocation, and spontaneous moves by society to protect itself. In effect, Polanyi argues that once the free market attempts to separate itself from the fabric of society, social protectionism is society’s natural response; this he calls the ‘counter movement’. Polanyi did not see economics as a subject closed off from other fields of enquiry, indeed he saw economic and social problems as inherently linked. He ended his work with a prediction of a socialist society, noting, "after a century of blind 'improvement', man is restoring his 'habitation.'"
the only way to cut the octopus tentacles away is a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of their "personal" rights. Only then will our government be able to function properly
Well said.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Occupy Hollywood sounds good. Except make it a protest against the companies that make up the MAFIAA who are stealing all of our money.
Ironic statement considering the likely direction of the weather in the coming weeks.
Tens of thousands of immigrants come to the US every year. Many come at their extreme peril, often "illegally".
Why do they do it?
Because they know that if they work hard, they have a much better chance of success here than anywhere -- anywhere! -- else in the world.
I completely agree that there are serious, serious problems with American society and the american economy. However, I have not yet heard a concise, understandable complaint from the "occupy" crew.
I am a self-made 9-percenter. I started from nothing. I ate government cheese as a kid (really!) I worked my ass off to get to have a 6-figure salary, a nice home in the suburbs, two fine Japanese automobiles, and a upper-middle-class lifestyle.
I wish the "occupiers" would learn and understand how we got here. I've got my own ideas, and I'm not going to use this forum to discuss them. However, I suggest a housecleaning in Washington is long overdue. Career politicians and their corporate PACs are (IMHO) a very large part of this problem.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Generally in my practical experience when you find people preaching something other than what they practice one or both of the following is true. They are profoundly lacking in self awareness and understanding of their own situation, or they preaching something that is impractical and often impossible.
One of the things that gets mentioned is using Facebook, when Facebook is a fairly iconic representation of the nouveau megacorp. I think in this case it is the latter of the two possibilities that you suggest; that it is impractical to use anything other than Facebook. Similarly, Apple is trying very hard, using the kleptocratic patent system, to make it impractical to use anything other than an iPad as a tablet computer.
So, yes, it is impractical to do otherwise. And it is that impracticality that is at the heart of what these people want fixed. Concentration of income/power/capital, with a fervently complicit and corrupt government chaperoning the process, is reflected in the rise of megacorps and low-order n-opolies. Low-order n-opolies result in markets with small numbers of alternatives, ie: impracticality of using an alternative. (they also result in shit-house GDP growth, due to lack of competition and innovation, but I digress)
When someone says, "And they're using iPhones to do it!!!", they are pointing out a symptom of the very problem that these people are reacting to.
BTW, this is not to say that the protestors understand all the mechanics above -- I think most of them do not -- but the above is the chain of events that results in a significant percentage of people having an emotional and poorly informed reaction to system bias.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
You are right, what we have is a democratic republic... Isn't that what I said? We democratically elect representatives of our government. That still doesn't mean everyone's vote is equal... It is not. Far from it. What do you think the electoral college is? Heck, senators used to not even be directly elected by the people. If we voted on every law, then we would have a democracy where everyone has an equal vote.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
It's the same democratic republic. They call it a Constitutional Monarchy, but that's a bullshit term used for a democratic republic with a ceremonial figurehead. Unfortunately (and I think ironically), our president has more power than your queen. Apparently the power to kill American citizens without trial or due process. Maybe we don't live in a democratic republic. Maybe we just live in a totalitarian government with a ceremonial voting process...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
They're not exactly basic stuff, but Wigwam socks are made in Wisconsin with mostly American-sourced wool. I think you're SOL for consumer electronics, unfortunately.
Because to allow the large banks, etc to fail would do serious damage to whom? The f*ing unions that is who
Like the Manager's Union at AIG?
There are plenty of jobs available, just not what you want to do.
Three million job openings are plenty. Thirteen million unemployed are plenty more.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
There are European electronics brands that are at least assembled in developed countries, not sure if you have them in the US.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
I believe what they are proposing is to make up a currency backed by physical assets. Not sure how this would help considering that our problem was a very similar one to the real estate crisis
In the real estate crisis, people started using their houses as a sort of currency. No money? No problem, tap the equity on the house and buy a car. And once the house prices started to fall, we realized that we had too many houses for the people we have in the country, most of the extra being built as "investment properties". And all through the boom, at least from what I saw in Spain, the people who need to buy them could not afford them. After the crash, no one has a job to buy them.
I am afraid we will end up with something similar might happen with Terra. The currency involves stockpiling commodities at high (3%-4%) costs. All that will do is to cause people to pile up commodities, pay for losses/theft etc. and then tap it out as need be. I am not sure how this would be any different from using CDOs on houses as currency, which the banks were doing during the boom times.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
None of that is even remotely politically feasible. You have to address the corporate media propaganda and campaign funding issue first.
Yes I'll just go to the generic supermarket and find that non-corporate branded sugar water they sell.
His lack of paragraphs can give the indication that he is not careful in his thinking, as well as his writing. It also makes it harder to read. The medium, to some extent, is the message.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
What is with all the corporate sheeple posting all the negative personal attacks against a worldwide movement of people? Front what I've seen these groups are far too diverse to be summed up so simplistically.
Capitalism should not be a religion but it sure has become one over the years. You can attack god more easily than the mighty mammon. Some of these TV bastards seem to have combined the two into 1 god.
Class warfare is something that never stopped and probably never will - anybody who acts like it isn't going on is either waging it or not competent enough to listen to. Many of these issues are the same age old ones just with newer details.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Food riots are coming. bad weather all over is causing food problems along with rising oil prices (since most the food production and distribution is HEAVILY oil based) are going to cause bad situations to get worse and likely worse than the places last time where riots broke out due to oil prices.
In the USA we merely are losing our middle class; which relative to each group is enough to spark some kind of actions - the starving may end up in riots and the middle class may not start riots until they lose their Cable TV. Its all relative thresholds.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You rightists are the best minions the Corporatists could ever have asked for. Even after all that has happened so far, your only concern is "how can we transfer even more political power to the largest corporations?" Can we deregulate them further? Can we cut their taxes more? Golly, transferring all that wealth and power to them over the last 30 years has been such a resounding success, we'd better do even more of it, eh?
Stuff yourself in the oven okay?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The OWS represent according to themselves 99% of the population, yet they are endorsed by Obama, Bernanke and Soros.
Is anybody fooled by that?
What a horrible troll. Not offensive to women or minorities, not funny, and not particularly biting. If all of your life's endeavours are this lame, do us all a favor and kill yourself. The sooner the better.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Yes, punish the thrifty and reward the feckless!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Royal Arch of the Grand Unicorn.
Umm, so I heard.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
My preference would be a fiat currency controlled by statute (to prevent political meddling), pegged to population growth. Print new dollars each year, based on the calculated population increase, then spend them into the economy to pay for infrastructure projects, etc.. (I don't favor returning to the gold standard, as Ron Paul proposes, because scarce commodities are too susceptible to speculation and monopolization.)
I would also prefer that each country have its own currency, since most countries have unique economic conditions. This is what I was getting at in my earlier comment... the E.U. tried to use its new currency as a way to bring these disparate economies into unity. Wrong tool for the job!! (And probably not a very useful project in the first place.)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Actually they're not annoyed at the system; they're just annoyed that it isn't them that's rich... Egotism at its finest.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Sorry if I was unclear, I meant that the constitutional amendment should be done first, because that would at least get corporate money out of politics (ie: reverse Citizens United). And that in turn would make the other steps more feasible.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Would you care to provide some links or citations? I've watched a lot of OWS footage from a variety of sources, and the only stuff that even came close to espousing Marxism was shown on FOX News, which has a clear bias against the OWS movement. Here's an example of how selective editing can be used to skew the protests however you want. Just speaking out against corporate greed is not the same thing as Marxism.
To be fair, I haven't seen much footage from around the world, mostly just the USA. (Seems to me the non-US protests just got started in the last week anyway, so maybe more will get shown soon.)
Also, there is no intrinsic link between dictatorship and any particular economic theory. Authoritarians will happily adopt any ideology that suits their needs, because they don't care about ideology, they only care about power. At the moment, our American authoritarians are twisting "free market" ideology to increase their control of the government. That is what the OWS folks are protesting.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I'll take European over Chinese any day if I can... could you throw some examples my way?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It's easy to say this, but inflation actually plays a vital role in the economy because of how prices change. For the economy to work well, prices need to reflect the real costs of producing stuff, and how that stuff is valued by consumers. Now if the real value that some item should have decreases, then without inflation, its nominal price would have to decrease as well. But prices are sticky: it is quite easy for vendors to keep them at the same level.
Inflation helps this process, because when the general price level rises, the real price of individual items decrease as long as their nominal price stays constant. So for sellers and employees to maintain the same level of real income, they somehow need to justify nominal price rises. You could think of it as the Red Queen hypothesis applied to economics.
And, just to put things into perspective, the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s saw inflation around 4% and higher in most Western economies, with nobody (at least not the 99%) complaining about inflation, whereas recently, inflation has crept around the 2% level. That should provide some food for thought as well.
All the newspapers and TV news is showing this protest as if people do not know what they are protesting! Watch out the government owns the news and is trying to squash with miss-information. I say grow the protest! If you can not be there sponsor someone who can, They took America away from us, They spy on us constantly, Revolt and put them back in their place as servants to the people not dictators.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2000#Florida_recount
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Election_Solutions#Diebold_and_Kenneth_Blackwell.27s_conflict_of_interest
NYTimes has a piece about the lack of specific policy goals:
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
But go ahead and bury any reports of election fraud, it's been working pretty well so far apparently.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, I didn't realize they were All-American until recently either. I'm not a big guy and I only wear wool socks seasonally, but I have two pairs from nearly 10 years ago that are still whole. They've worn a bit too thin for hiking boots, but they're still fine with sneakers.
Same as the Old Boss... We won't get fooled again... yeah... right...
yes you persuaded me. now i think there is nothing wrong with a system in which top 5% holds 72% of everything and bottom 85% has only 15%. its ok.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
take your shilling elsewhere.
Read radical news here
The Oven Stuffing Comment was in reference to Nazi Germany, where "blame the Jews" turned into the Holocaust. The fact that you didn't get the reference says a great deal about how educated you are.
As for the Talmud, it says a lot of things, much of it contradictory to itself. And if you're not familiar with how Jews use the Talmud, then you have no idea that taking one line out of context is completely inappropriate. Again, showing your complete ignorance of the fact that context is king.
And I wonder how the Talmud has anything to do with OWS, the protesters chanting "blame the Jews", because I rather doubt those chanting know anything of the Talmud, let alone being able to take it out of context, like what was done here.
The question is nothing but a Red Herring, sorry if I didn't let it distract me. Now I know why you posted AC, because you don't want people to realize how stupid and racist you really are.
And no, I'm not a Jew. I just find group politics completely and totally distasteful because it always leads to totalitarianism.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"Because to allow the large banks, etc to fail would do serious damage to whom?"
The banks? The people profiting enormously from them?
I suspect you land on "unions" because it fits your political worldview. Unions are not the only entities with pensions or other monies at risk.
emt 377 emt 4
Sorry, you're right, I "skimmed" over that bit. The "free trade" movement started under Nixon and was continued by Carter. (After all, it was Nixon who closed the gold window.) But it only started to accelerate under Reagan.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
FYI, you would be a lot more convincing if you stopped just linking to things that you've said already. I tried to follow your argument, but I kept on seeing you do some of your own analysis of situations, then link to your analyses as fact.
You may have some very good points, but you are so deep in your own layers of thinking that it is hard to believe anything you say and I don't personally feel that it is worthwhile to spend long hours digesting every little point that some dude posted on the internet.
Same questions are raised, there is no reason to rewrite everything, that's what HTML is for and all the anchor tags, isn't it?
You can't handle the truth.
This is called the lump of labour fallacy. It's fallacious.
Garbage. The real shortage is in the middle - skilled tradesmen like plumbers, mechanics and electricians.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Inflation helps this process, because when the general price level rises, the real price of individual items decrease as long as their nominal price stays constant. So for sellers and employees to maintain the same level of real income, they somehow need to justify nominal price rises. You could think of it as the Red Queen hypothesis applied to economics.
Heh, the problem there is that wages are sticky also, at least in a job market like we have.
But generally you're right.
And, just to put things into perspective, the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s saw inflation around 4% and higher in most Western economies, with nobody (at least not the 99%) complaining about inflation, whereas recently, inflation has crept around the 2% level. That should provide some food for thought as well.
It's too hard to explain any of this to people, because people are idiots, and end up repeating nonsense that's true for the rich, but not for anyone else. Although inflation doesn't hurt 'the rich' per se, who do not have their money in 'money'. It hurts retail stores, who have to constantly deal with being a step behind.
Probably half the people out there complaining about 'inflation' have more debt than cash on hand. Like, oh, anyone who has a mortgage, at all. Which means inflation is helping them, by definition. But they wander around yammering about 'inflation', because they've been told it's bad and told it's happening.
Basically, if people actually wish to understand this and stop repeating weird 'inflation=bad' nonsense, the issue with inflation is not so much as what it does to 'money' that people already have. Almost no actual human beings have enough actual money to worry about that.
The issue with inflation, and deflation, is the lag as the value of money changes in different places at different times. Usually wages vs. prices. Inflation makes the lag go in a direction that is useful to people who buy things in stores.
Also people should understand that having exactly no inflation or deflation is impossible, unless the government can magically predict exactly how much new wealth is being generated and how much old wealth is being destroyed next month, and produce economic policies that create exactly the monetary supply to mimic that. Barring the success of those two independently impossible feats, you're going to get inflation or deflation.
So you're going to get one or the other, and for quite some time, the policy has been 'minimum amount of inflation, but not let it fall into deflation'. (Although deflation did happen in 2009.) I live in constant fear of the day a politician campaigns on 'I will reverse inflation! I will give us 10% negative inflation!', and anti-inflation idiots vote for him.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It's a bad idea. A currency should represent and serve a single culture/nation/society. When you implement a single currency across a range of disparate economies you end up with the "Euro crisis" presently unfolding before us.
This is a really stupid statement, equal to saying that the United States should get rid of the dollar because it's a bad idea because of all of the disparate economies of the states.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
My pessimistside: They already try to manifest against the war in Iraq... It changes nothing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War It would be more useful to stop buying stuff or watching television and get out with your friends.
My optimist side: Maybe they learn something from Bug's Life movie. (The ants colony fight back the grasshoppers). The problem is that every revolution has it own risk. But when there is 30 millions without jobs it become serious.
Index linked shares? Ask your daddy's trust fund manager where I can get some of those!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are a voice of reason in a sea of inflation insanity.
Sorry, nice try, but flat out wrong. I live in what is called a constitutional monarchy, not a democratic republic (and certainly not a people's republic). Both are representative democracies, as these are the words we use to describe the types of governments that we have in the first world.