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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."
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
This isnt about Assange and his glory seeking attempts.
This is about our parents, our grandparents, and our future. Our grandparents and parents because their retirement disappeared when bankers toying with other peoples money failed.
Us because, as it stands now...we have no guaranteed retirement plan. At any time any idiot can do the exact same thing and take away our retirement.
Companies are gouging the consumer, stealing from their employees, and then asking them to pay for their own expensive healthcare.
Not only that, but these same companies are claiming no one wants to work for them and asking for overseas employees.
This world that has been created by the Corporations has put enough pressure on the lower and middle class. It is time, once again, to tell them "we are tired and we aint gunna take it no more".
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.
you have to provide a solid alternative.
Get the corporate money and lobbyists out of Government. Return democracy to the 99%.
Stop the fear mongering. The protesters simply want to return to sanity. Between the New Deal and the beginning of Voodoo Economics capital was used to produce actual goods instead of financial bubbles. Why not simply return that? Other main concerns are the inefficient privatized health-care and education system. Changing to a european style public system would solve this. Finally, most of the American infrastructure is crumbling while people are unemployed, why not fix two problems at the same time?
A political system where corporations do not have a seat at the table? A justice system where we get to see the rich and powerful do the perp walk more often? A monetary system that doesn't foster bubbles?
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.
How abut charging bankers with the crimes they have committed.
I agree. This is Corporatism at work. But i am saddened to see that the worldview today is so straightforward and simple minded. Sure the Occupy crowd is right, but no one in it mentions that Corporatism can only be "installed" if the Government has no "UAC". We have a big and weak government (the worst kind actually), where legislation which creates Freddie and Fannie (inducting huge market distortions), Housing Acts etc, etc, which do more harm than good. And when the corporations mess up, they get bailed out whereas people have no jobs and no income. No wonder that the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street have more than 30% common variance. This is perceived unfairness. One wants the Government out, the other the corporations down. Both are right. And while I agree with you on each and single argument you have there, put one from me on that list: Screw the Government because it is the only one with legislative power and have done nothing but crap with it. Screw them because they have taken away our freedom in the name of defense. Screw them because they are in the same boat with corporations, who in my view want nothing to do a Free Market. All they want is Government protection and consumer gouging. In fact, screw them all.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
There might be some complaining, but nothing will happen.
Right now your troops are being sacfificed (and sacrificing thousands of civilians in the process) to keep the Job CReators profits flowing, where is the outrage there ?
Your healthcare system is a joke, yet the worlds most expensive, your educational system is collapsing and is rapidly approaching Third World outputs, yet where is the outrage ?
Your government is seizing up, you're not even going to have a Postal Service soon...so where is the outrage ?
The right wing consistantly proclaim their 'right to bear arms' as the refuge of the people against government that doesn't give a shit about them, except as cattle...and yet here we are.....where is the outrage ? Where is the militia marching upon Washington ?
The average US citizen has been neutered, their passions diverted off to silly by-ways like reality TV and the weak-wristed practice of american sports. Imbeciles like Glenn beck and Rush Limbaugh are actually given the time of day and the attainment of scholastic achievement is belittled.
Forgive me, this isn't a anti-us rant, but the system there is so fundamentally broken and yet there's no sign of it being fixed. Even the louder political groups, such as the Tea Party, are in reality simple folk bamboozled by the skilful words of the spin doctors to suit their Corporate masters agendas.
So when the Boomers wake up that their 401k's have been plundered, well, they should have realised that was taking place years beforehand and there won't be a thing they can do about it.
I mean, hasn't a bankrupt government, almost Third World educational and healthcare standards, a truly colossal debt and unemployment through the roof ( not forgetting that the average income in the US is woeful) made the penny drop yet ?
The time to fix this is NOW, not in 12 months..not in 2 years...now...it SHOULD have been 10 years ago.
But you will do nothing except complain about gas prices and why there are so many mexicans around these days.
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.
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
Isn't the point that they want the government to grow some balls and bring down actual justice to the economy sector? If we punished people in proportion to the damage they caused half of wall-street would have life sentences by now and the other half would probably think twice before they do stupid shit to get 0.5% more profit.
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.
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.
government backing allows people to go to college, which means more educated people and more higher paying jobs. Of course this leaves a lull in the service industry
In the UK, we have the opposite problem. We have scores of university graduates (the majority with 'proper' degrees, not just dross like 'hairdressing' and the like), and almost no white collar jobs outside the banking sector. When there are multiple university graduates competing for a part-time job at the local supermarket, something is horribly wrong.
No, Sarah Palin is about as far from Tea Party root principles as can be. She supported the bailouts which were the rallying point for the start of the Tea Party movement! She did, however, see that parade coming by, and jumped at the chance to hop on a bandwagon. So, now you've got a bunch of Palin supporters saying they're part of (or trying to take over) the Tea Party.
The Tea Party isn't organized, it's a true grass-roots movement. Hence, there's no one to really say exactly what it is. But this much is clear - it was named for it's root cause - excess spending/taxation with no effective representation of the people.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
Social Democracy works just great however. Pretending that there isn't a middle ground between Capitalism and Socialism is stupid.
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.
What does using an iPhone have to do with protesting inappropriate wages/bonuses/other exploitations?
They're protesting abuse, not the production of consumer goods o.O
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
If that's what you think, then you're packed full of shit and completely out of touch with reality.
The real reason there are no young EEs in the UK and America is because you older fools shipped off all of the entry-level jobs to India and China. Thus the students who do study EE in college and university graduate, but then find that they can't get any sort of a job in the UK or America because they need at least 5 years of on-the-job experience even to be considered for an interview. They don't even have the chance to gain that experience at all, even those who would gladly work 18 hours days for that whole period of time. So they move on to other endeavors, often in fields totally unrelated to EE.
You older guys can't have it both ways. You can't cut costs by handing off the simpler work to third-worlders, but still expect there to be American- and UK-born/trained EEs ready to take your places.
There's an easy way to prevent your retirement savings being destroyed: put them under your mattress, or in a low interest account. The fact of the matter is that if you want the highest return, you must take the highest risk. But it seems to me that what you are advocating here is a high return with a very low risk. I have absolutely no idea how this is to be achieved. If people weren't so greedy as to give all of their money to AIG for the 1% extra it guaranteed, and then see it all lost when the system collapses, then they would still have their retirement savings safe and sound. You cannot blame it all on the finance companies. At some point you, personally, have a responsibility to understand the risks when you are investing.
The only sound argument you can make is that these companies lied, with their AAA ratings and so on. This is almost certainly true, but I suppose this goes to the core of the concept of marketing products: how much of the bullshit the droids come out with is really true? Is this face cream really going to make me look younger? Will these vitamin pills really improve the functioning of my immune system? We are surrounded by bollocks. It isn't just the big corporations that engage in it. Even the guy at the market selling potatoes from the back of his van does it. We should always be on our guard to see through it. We should teach our children to see through it. Maybe if we did, we these things wouldn't happen quite so often.
This is not true. Here in my country the "Occupy .+ street" event was lead by the local communist party, and among the statements some participants said that that protest was organized because "capitalism was dead, and we are here to bury it". The protest isn't a big homogeneous mass, and there are established political organizations which are opportunistically trying to take advantage of this to impose their agenda. So, although it is in everyone's best interests to jumpstart some change, we should pay attention to what change some want to impose. After all, the change they are trying to impose may not be in our best interests.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
They are touting economic models that have failed in every single country they have been tried (communism, Marxism, socialism).
You don't even know what the terms communism, Marxism, and socialism mean, do you? Hint: The Occupy movement has nothing to do with them.
Fucking idiot.
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?
"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.
It's said that people are ultimately responsible for their actions, and I agree. Wholeheartedly... Because in the end, when someone if boned, it's their reality. Thankfully, we've got the division of labor thing going so people don't have to be lenders or real estate agents to get a home. Whose burden of responsibility is it to say "No, you can't have that home"? I keep hearing that it's government regulation with the Community Reinvestment Act that caused it, but the act was only compulsory to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which handled roughly 33% of the secondary loans to low income families. That left 66% loosening up their underwriting standards and giving loans to people that were guaranteed to not be able to afford them. The 66% were companies not covered under the CRA, which did not have to give out the loans. The only reason the loans were a good investment was because they could be repackaged into CDOs and sold off, leaving the risk with the last sucker holding the bag, which was not the underwriting firm. They didn't have a pound of flesh in the game after the securities were sold. The individuals who could not pay the mortgage lacked the sophistication to tell they couldn't afford it was only part of the problem. I know if Tyrone Biggums walked up to me asking me for a loan, while I knew he had no job and a $300/week crack habit, would make me the asshole for giving it to him. Sure, he shouldn't have asked for it, but that doesn't put that money back in my pocket. Maybe there should be a fiduciary duty in the housing and lending markets to ensure the loan meets the expectations.
tl;dr making bad loans was not compulsory to private lending instututions. They did it because they saw dollar signs instead of what it really was: a plan designed to fail for private institutions due to the inherent risk. Subprime means less than optimal. If you're putting your own money up, you're not going for subprime.
Sig not found.
The problem that the top 10% pay 50% of income tax could easily be fixed by keeping their increase of income in line with the other 90%. This is the only group that has seen substantial income increases over the last decades so they also pay more taxes. Soon they'll make 99% of all income and pay 99% of all taxes. And they will complain about this "injustice..
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
I hope that more people identify the similarities between the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Both are capturing the frustration of the middle class that there appears to be no way for them to effect change on their government. The OWS crowd is choosing to direct their frustrations at a Wall Street that for far too long has reaped the benefit of politician's greed, and the Tea Party crowd chooses to direct their frustration at the government that is being purchased, but both are right.
While the OWS does tend to be more liberal in their proposed solutions (instituting a 'living wage', supporting public sector unions, opposing Citizens United) and the Tea Party tends to be more conservative (support for term limits, opposition to health care reform, etc), there is real value in the fact that everyone is recognizing that something really big is wrong - and now it's time to talk about how to fix it.
Do the Tea Party and OWS agree on the solutions? Probably not, but these two groups are the heart of America. This is the debate that we should be having. Instead, we have two parties pandering to the highest bidder. Stop letting the career politicians drive these groups apart. Instead, both should be rallying against the political class that rules them, convincing their fellow Americans that the system is broken, and coming together to discuss the solutions. We can be united in our cause and divided on the solution.
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
Straight from horse's mouth:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini.
As an example of how ball-less, consider the S&L crisis where 1000 FBI agents investigated white collar crime. About 1000 bankers went to jail. The S&L crisis was 1/40th the size of the current meltdown.
Instead of investigations, there ate 120 FBI agents spread out across the country (even Enron required 100 investigators and WA Mutual is even bigger). Obviously, not even a single indictment let alone a conviction, despite the problem being 40x bigger.
If the Executive branch wanted to do something about it, it could very easily just by hiring more investigators.
William Black, lead prosecutor in the S&L crisis, has been trying to get this point understood, but googling him in google news leads to a real dearth of results. This is a good interview transcript:
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/09/why-nobody-went-to-jail-during-the-credit-crisis.html
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Inflation is the hidden tax that robs mattress stuffers and enriches the financial elite because whenever the government decides to dilute the currency, those at the top get to use the money at the non-diluted value, while those who get it after trickle-down, get to use it at its deflated value. Rinse and repeat and the hard earned $1000 you put in a cookie jar in 1970, which would have paid rent for 10 months, will barely cover a month of rent in an extremely modest apartment, i.e., it's worth $555 in 2010. The mattress stuffer got robbed.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The problem with the Tea Party is it was coopted by people like Bachman, Palin and DeMint largely with the help of the main stream media and Republican establishment who wanted to gut the Tea Party's populist economic message and defend the status quo. They did a really great job at it too. They managed to turn the Tea Party image from economic populism in to right wing social conservatism. Social and racial issues have absolutely no place in the Tea Party. I really hope OWS saw what happened to the Tea Party and use their diffuse leadership structure to avoid being coopted. Unions and the Democratic party, in particular, will be pure poison to OWS if they manage to insert themselves in the spotlight. Unions are a nice idea in theory to counter corporate excess but in practice they've become just as bad, and corrupt, as corporations and just as much a part of the problem. They are a complete turn off to most American as a result. Its a total farce for Obama to think OWS is on his side, the second he hired Summers and Geitner to run the economy he proved he was part of the problem, not the solution, and "Change you can believe" was total bullshit.
@de_machina
While you're right about the origins and original anger of both...
Firstly, the Tea Party seems to had started in opposition to the bailouts. That is fine. I actually think the bailouts needed to happen...and all such receiptients should have been broken up afterward. But I understand the anger, and why people think they shouldn't have happened at all. (And since no one can change the past, it's a moot point. At this point, everyone can agree corporations that cannot fail should not even exist.)
That was the one shining moment of sanity. And then the Koch brothers hijacked them into nonsense. They started complaining about utterly imaginary taxes they thinks were raised, when we're actually under some of the lowest taxes ever. And they seem to think the debt has something to do with their individual financial situation, and that the government should balance the budget, something which has absolutely no bearing at all on any individual. They also demand the government stop 'printing money' and causing inflation, apparently completely unaware that inflation has, for the last for years, utterly and completely stopped. (Because the superich keep sucking money out of the system faster than we print it.)
I'm sorry, but any movement that operates from such ignorance is not very useful, because the demands make no sense. But that was just random stupidity, and could be understood, at least. 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.
But that was ignorance, not malice. It happens in any actual grassroots protest movement.
But then the Tea Party was hijacked (1) to oppose government health care, which had nothing to do with their original complaints. In fact, the cost of health care is the major cause of bankrupcy, so at this point the Tea Party is literally facing backwards in trying to make things better for themselves. Thanks to that idiocrary, we ended up with a 'solution' that essentially let the insurance companies run it. Good work, Tea Party!
Then after that, more nonsense kept getting added. Oh, look, the Tea Party is now against abortion. Or whatever.
And, look, the Tea Party is now the Republican base.
I'm sure there are a lot of Tea Party members out there with basically the same complaints and near identical goals as OWS...and they need to look around at where they are standing, and then need to ask themselves what they actually want. And if, perhaps, they are standing in the wrong protest movement.
1) The 'Tea Party' was never really hijacked. Protests managed to exist outside corporate control for a few weeks. But the second it was given a name, it was in corporate control, it was the very first thing corporations did, making it about 'freedom from taxes' instead of 'freedom to not have our government hand shitloads of money to people who blew up the economy'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The problem here is most of the stuff the banks did, and that caused the crash, wasn't really illegal. It was immoral but not really illegal. You see, the banks have anough control over the Fed and the Congress that they can make whatever they want to do legal so they don't have to break the law. If there was illegality most of it was at the low level where loans were originated and the easiest people to nail are the people who lied on loan applications which is the wrong group of people to go after.
One place there was law breaking by the banks was robosigning and other foreclosure abuses but that was after the crash, not the cause of it, and chances are the banks will pay a hefty fine and walk away otherwise unscathed.
Much of the crisis was caused by repealing Glass Steagel. Why was this done? Because Citi and Travelers wanted to merge in to a giant mega corp offering all financial services. Glass Steagel made this illegal, so what did the do? Bob Rubin, Larry Summers and Phil Graham pushed a new law that that repealed Glass Steagel under Clinton. Bob Rubin then went to work for Citi, Graham went to work for UBS, to reap the benefits of what they had sowed. Summers was hired by Obama to run the economy despite being as much to blame as anyone.
The solution to the 2008 crisis is, unfortunately, not criminal prosecution. You need to prevent the Fed and Washington from being completely controlled by Wall Street, and making everything they do legal. Unfortunately this is a very difficult thing to accomplish, but it is exactly what OWS is all about.
@de_machina
The 66% were companies not covered under the CRA, which did not have to give out the loans. The only reason the loans were a good investment was because they could be repackaged into CDOs and sold off, leaving the risk with the last sucker holding the bag, which was not the underwriting firm.
The investment vehicles used were created to offload bad debt in the 80's, but rapidly became frowned upon because everyone who did it went belly-up and it simply didnt look like the government would tolerate it on a large scale..
It was only when the worst Fannie and Freddie loans started being packaged that way in the 90's that the rest of the market then saw an opportunity to also offloaded bad loans in the same way, with the idea that the government was now never going to crack down on the practice of rating worthless paper as AAA and further that paper wasnt so worthless if the government was guaranteeing at least some of it.
So it was indeed a market distortion caused by government influences.
The individuals who could not pay the mortgage lacked the sophistication to tell they couldn't afford it was only part of the problem.
This is bullshit that assumes that people that take loans that they cant afford simply don't know what they are doing. Poor people arent naive. Most of the time they know exactly what they are doing.
This idea that there is a large class of people too stupid to make decisions is fallacious.. in fact the idea that a lot of people need government to help them was the fucking problem to begin with. Families that bring home $35K/year know that they cannot afford a fucking $300,000 home. Don't let some twat trying to lay all the blame on the banks tell you differently.
"His name was James Damore."
There are terrific similarities between the two groups. They are both angry about the bank bailouts, but one focuses its rage on the government for providing the bailout and the other focuses its rage on Wall Street for taking it. In fact, the biggest difference between the two may be their demographic: Tea Party is mostly older and OWS mostly younger, making this a conflict of generations rather than classes. The problem is the manipulators are hard at work keeping people from finding any common ground by demonizing the other side instead of addressing their grievances.
The Tea Party got this treatment from the Huffington Post, who focused on the most racist signs from the protesters. Now we're seeing the same thing, with Andrew "we have the guns" Breitbart's photographer blatantly staging a photo of a protester supposedly defecating on a police car. Brietbart's previous credits include videos edited to make USDA employee Shirley Sherrod look like a racist and ACORN employees look like they were giving tax evasion advice on running child prostitution rings.
I sympathized with the early Tea Party. Now I sympathize with these protesters, and this constant demonization of them is so heartbreaking. For the first time in my life I'm confronting these people on Facebook, forcing them to support their statements with references or showing them how they are being manipulated (90% of the time by a story I can trace back to Breitbart). For a week they fought back, but then they toned down their attacks... Unfortunately, watching the new Facebook Ticker, I can see that they have merely taken their hatred to where they think I can't see it. Wonderful social experiment that new Facebook Ticker, see what you're "Friends" are saying about you behind your back and there's no way to turn it off.
All we can do is try to get people to see the human beings behind the villainous caricatures. When they try to connect the movement to the "sinister machinations of George Soros," I point out that Soros is a prolific philanthropist and humanitarian. When they call the protesters scum, slackers, and anarchists, I point them to the We are the 99% blog and ask them to justify their position with references from that site.
People in the Tea Party should be doing the same thing, putting a human face on their movement. We should be finding common ground. Keeping us fighting each other is exactly what the powers that be need to prevent any significant change.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
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
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."
Due to the failure of government to block an unending stream of bank mergers, leading to ever more greater concentrations of financial risk and power, that's true.
But it doesn't excuse the fact that a year later the banks turned obscene profits, offshored those profits, and paid virtually NOTHING in taxes. The bailouts should have been LOANS -- every single bank financial statement I've seen for the year shows they made enough money to pay back their bailout funds, but not ONE offered to do so.
One thing the TEA party and Occupy definitely seem to agree on is that corporate bailouts need to stop. No business should be allowed to grow so large and powerful that it's failure can bring down the economy of an entire nation. Allowing it to get to that point was insanity; government's refusal to correct the issue is criminal.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
Your accusations regarding the protesters' hygiene habits and the crass lack of consideration for others that you are exhibiting does absolutely nothing to refute the point which is being made by these protests. In fact, the only thing you are accomplishing is to portray yourself as a modern-day version of Archie Bunker, with all the considerations that goes for his intelligence and insight on social affairs.
Regarding your meaningless abuse of the worn-out cliché of "OMG THEY USE IPHONES!!1!1!ONE!", just because someone is against the racketeering and ponzi schemes that defines the financial institution, along with all the corruption and manipulation of the democratic process, it doesn't mean that everyone should suddenly avoid using any tool at their disposal, go Luddite and protest wearing nothing but something they built out of hemp and straw. the civil rights movement also wasn't a hypocrite for using the telephone system, no matter ho big Ma' Bell was.
So, your pathetic attacks on the protesters only goes to show how full of blind hate you have become, and how you are letting your stereotypical bigotry cloud your judgement.
Well, I can see how the government and corporations will do their best to derail this movement, but I seriously doubt that "the bulk of the populace will be against you". Only the useful idiots among us, which includes the little archie bunkers such as yourself, will believe that violent suppression of a political movement does anyone any good, let alone be compatible with a democratic system of government. But in order to do that, you first need to explicitly and blatantly violate your countrymen's rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and even freedom of petition. That means that in order to enact your "violent" opposition of a political movement you first will have to violate the very core of what defines your country. To put it in simple terms for you to understand, the actions you are suggesting are blatantly un-american, and against everything your country stands for.
So, guess who is screwing up your country, mr Bunker?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
"So wtf happens? Of course the banks do as required and make loans to people who really shouldn't be getting those loans, the government said they have to."
That's simply wrong. Nobody required banks to make bad loans. NOBODY. Government only required to use the same criteria for loans in 'bad' and 'good' areas.
And facts show that delinquency of loans in 'bad' areas is the same as for the loans in 'good' areas. So government had absolutely no part in it, apart from allowing banks to build CDO scams.