"six in 10 are against major cuts in military spending and 57 percent are opposed to major changes to such entitlement programs as Social Security and Medicare."
So the only thing the public actually agrees on is raising taxes on the rich, and there isn't enough revenue there (even if we take all their money) to handle the deficit. And the public doesn't want us to touch defense or entitlement spending. So maybe, just maybe, the opinion of the public isn't the best way to address this issue.
It kind of falls in nicely with the 1% vs. the rest of us issue that is pretty clearly established as our biggest political issue of this era.
So continues the vicious cycle of:
1) Rich people influence government
2) People demand bigger government
3) Degree of government influence increases
4) Goto step 1.
And sadly, people somehow think this cycle will magically disappear with more government regulation. I would say the biggest political issue of this era would be people recognizing that their government no longer works for them, rather than demonizing a bunch of rich people and solving nothing. Why isn't OWS calling for a 3rd party? Why do they emphatically support the Democratic party that has failed them? You think the Republicans were the ones that bailed out the banks with no stipulations? Look at the votes.
Clinton did.
Fantastic -- all we have to do now is make sure our economy is always operating in "boom times" mode -- deficit solved.
In fact, the math and the facts overwhelmingly demonstrate that Bush's tax cuts on the rich are the primary structural driver of our deficit.
Only if you choose to completely ignore the other trillion+ dollar expenses this country is engaged in (mandatory spending, I'm looking at you).
Social Security could be made solvent for another 75 years by simply raising the cap on taxes for those making more than 106k.
Or how about we do away with concept of a "separate tax" and just merge it with the rest of the budget where it belongs, instead of pretending it doesn't exist as an actual expense in the budget balancing debate? I could care less if it can "become solvent" via some separate tax scheme. When it comes down to it, it's costing us hundreds of billions a year, fast converging on a trillion+ -- that is money being spent inefficiently. Just because you can magic up the money by raising taxes doesn't mean that spending a trillion dollars a year in a poorly designed program that funnels money to the wealthy is a good thing.
. . . so you need to steal my Social Security benefits to pay off Bush's wars?
If I stole TWO YEARS of your Social Security benefits, it would pay off ELEVEN YEARS of Bush's TWO WARS. That is the magnitude difference here.
I EARNED MY MOTHERFUCKING SOCIAL SECURITY. That money IS MINE.
As did I, and I don't want it. I will GLADLY throw away every cent of the money I've paid the 10 years I've been working if it means I don't have to throw another cent at that program for the rest of my life. Especially considering I probably won't see a dime of it when I actual do retire.
I have come to a similar understanding. The Republicans are unwilling to accept any revenue increases while the Democrats are willing to accept cuts. The Republicans refuse to compromise. They are the issue.
That isn't fair -- Toomey's plan had revenue increases. The Dems rejected it in short order for not having enough (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/toomey-super-committee-democrats-rejected-compromise-demanded-1-trillion-tax-hike_610027.html). Like Toomey said: "although "several of our Democratic colleagues had repeatedly spoken about the virtues of tax simplification and tax reform," Toomey says, "they couldn't budge from the idea of a trillion dollar tax increase." The Democrats also "never once throughout the entire process were willing to propose or accept our proposals about any type of structural reforms to the big health care entitlement programs," according to Toomey.
"It's like they were very concerned about the Occupy Wall Street movement," he added. "They had to demonstrate that they were willing to soak the rich."
It's a matter of scale -- the Dems want way more revenue increases than the Republicans are willing to give and the Republicans want actual significant structural reform to entitlement when all the Dems are willing to provide are smaller budget cuts within the existing framework. At one point, Obama seemed receptive to means-tested Medicare -- what happened to that?
That's not fair at all.
republican want to end entitlements. They have been spreading lies about hem for decades.
And you consider that fair? "Tinfoil-hat-esque" claims of decades of lies with no proof or fact? Especially when Republicans have repeatedly offered not just proposals, but actual bills on means-testing both then (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/medicare/stories/med072297.htm) and now (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-soak-the-rich-gop-style/2011/09/28/gIQAn3Jk4K_story.html).
The tax on the rich is about removing the tax break that was supposed to be temporary. Of course they didn't live up to their side of the bargain.
You do realize the Dems could have made the Bush tax cuts go away simply by stonewalling the expiration? The Dems are trying to have their cake and eat it too (by demanding that Congress RETAIN the cuts on the lower brackets while only letting the tax cuts on the higher brackets expire).
There are 2 reasons we are short. War in the mideast, and the tax cuts to the rich.
Mideast wars 1.4 trillion, tax cuts for the rich 1.8 trillion 02-09
Convenient cherry-picking there excludes the 1 trillion+ per YEAR spent on entitlement program mandatory spending.
Education costs have skyrocketed over the last decade or two because the 1% were gaming the system.
Citation? Proof? Hell, if you should blame anyone, blame high school guidance counselors and/or parents. Attempting to blame corporations for that mess is confirmation bias at its finest. And you claim my argument is superficial?
Corps look to minimize their own costs - everybody else be damned.
No, they look to maximize profits, everyone else be damned. If there was money to be made, they would attempt to make it. Or are you going to tell me home builders aren't hiring because they want to cut costs and not because the market is saturated with inventory and no demand? (just to provide one example).
Please stick to the context, I was specifically talking about the "jobs for all" goal.
How do you figure? You said the OWS goal overall was to "return to the original design" -- as such, I would expect all of their demands to support that goal, rather than exceeding it.
we used to have a system where the big insurance corps weren't money-sucking leaches attached to all of us
You mean back when it was less regulated and patients paid their bills instead of insurance company proxies? I agree.
In short I find your arguments superficial
And I find you to be easily dismissive, argumentally selective, and biased to no end -- you've demonized "the 1%" so much that you see them as the fault for everything, even in the most marginal seriously reaching extremes. Your stance on student loan debt is proof of that.
You've already decided that OWS is something easily pigeonholed and instead of looking for truth and understanding all you do is look for a veneer of justification for your bias.
I don't look on OWS with bias. They had a good idea until they got co-opted by the Democratic party, same as the Tea Party with the Republicans. What had focus and purpose is now a hodgepodge of ludicrous self-serving demands. And the reason you fail to see that is because you happen to support most of those demands, partisan politics at its best.
Except that the difference between your tired old canard and their actual demands is significant..
Just for starters you betray significant bias when you declare "protection of the planet" and "jobs for all" as wealth redistribution.
So what of my other points? Student Loan freebies? Healthcare? Secondly, from the document, "protection of the planet" isn't just about making corporations play nice and not rape our earth. It clearly states "demand the immediate adoption of the most recent international protocols to reverse climate change, including the "Washington Declaration" and implementation of new and existing programs to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to reusable or carbon neutral sources of energy. " These are expenses, particularly the latter half. It isn't just "change your behavior" -- it's "give us a bunch of money to invest in a slew of potentially Solyndra-esque green energy ventures."
And the "jobs for all" thing is just stupid. If people (and by people, I mean corporations OR the government) could provide jobs for everyone, they would. You can't just act like the current recession isn't happening or that it's some kind of conspiracy to keep people unemployed.
these people aren't demanding handouts -- they are demanding that a system that has been co-opted by the 1% for their own benefit be returned to the original design.
"Healthcare for all"/single-payer is not the "original design". In fact, it's a brand new untested concept. Similarly, many of the other things on this list aren't a "return to before" -- many of these things aren't even checks on behavior or regulations to make sure corporations play nice. How can you say they aren't handouts? How can you say "pay off my student loan!" isn't a handout? No corporation sent you to college or forced you to take loans.
generally I think most people can agree with the basic facts that OWS are highlighting.
That depends on what you define as the "basic facts" -- and that's the problem. Quite a few people can get on board with financial system reform and political reform, or some payback for the bank bailouts. But the laundry list of demands from the OWS group goes well beyond those specific concerns: https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/
For example, have you noticed the intense anti-war protesting going on at the very same rallies?
I also think 'ultra-socialist' is unfounded.
Really? The very link you posted is like pages and pages of charts railing about one single thing: income inequality. Not to mention the aforementioned laundry list of demands. As I posted in another thread, what does "healthcare for all", "protection of the planet", "student loan forgiveness", "ending wars", etc, etc have anything at all to do with fixing corruption of or regulating the financial industry? How are student loans or wars even related to corporations? To me, that document reads like a mixed combination of good ideas and "demanded free handouts". It's the latter that people find fault with.
Progressive taxation, uncorrupted politics and the rule of law (for banks and individuals) are not radical - they're the way the system is actually supposed to work.
I would agree that these are noble and sensible goals. Sadly, OWS has demanded far, far more than just that. Hence, my original post comparing the Tea Party to OWS is very accurate. Both started with focused and sensible goals (the original Tea Party targets were the bailouts and stimulus spending whereas the original OWS targets were wall street fatcats/the financial industry/banks/the bailouts) - however the Tea Party and OWS have both since expanded to now encompass a wide swath of their related party's platform stances. That's why you see the attacks on defense spending, the demand for universal healthcare, and the green movement amidst the OWS demands.
Pull out the pork demands and I can get onboard with OWS. But if they continue to make generic ludicrous free lunch demands instead of remaining focused on a specific problem, I simply won't support it.
How about you try something that has at least some formal level of approval within the movement like The 99 Percent Declaration.
Very well, I'll use that
#6 Healthcare for All
#7 Protection of the Planet
#8 Debt Reduction
#9 Jobs for All Americans
#10 Student Loan Forgiveness
etc, etc, etc...
In totality, it's a laundry list of very expensive demands. Since the objective of the "99%" is to have the rich pay for all of this, the wealth distribution claim remains. Or are you honestly going to tell me they're willing to pay higher taxes themselves to pay for all these things? I certainly didn't see "raise our taxes!" as one of the bullet points in your document there ("since ALL pay fair share" from "fair tax demand #5" is synonymous with "rich people should pay more", as defined in the paragraph beneath it).
I'm sure lots of individual OWS protesters would benefit from some lifestyle coaching. On the other hand, if you look closely, you'll see that lots of people like lawyers, doctors, technology people have also been contributing time to the movement - it's not just a big party for unemployed people.
But that doesn't really address my point - the level of anger here at Slashdot has less to do with negative interaction with hippies, and more to do with the fact that they've struck a nerve. It's far easier to make fun of the pictures on Fox News than it is to sit down and consider what the real message is, and how it might relate to your own life and prospects.
The same basic "consider what the real message is" could apply to the Tea Party, who was mocked incessantly (with focus on "guns at rallies" and "racism" and similar nonsense). No one who disagreed with their general philosophy spent even a moment seeking "deeper meaning". Why do you think that people who disagree with the general mindset of the OWS protestor would be mocking out of anger rather than the fact that they simply disagree with their ultra-socialist tendencies? (just like the Dems decry the Tea Party's ultra-libertarian tendencies?). Neither movement (Tea Party or OWS) is one of "moderate sensibility" -- they're both extremist views.
OWS on the other hand is a genuine grass roots movement without any leadership, without media savvy, without spin doctors, without even self-policing to root out the hooligans and vandals who are attracted to any protest movement. Time will tell, which one is real and which one is astro-turf.
Anything that grows large enough to be powerful gets co-opted. The Tea Party started grass roots without media saavy as well. I bet you're see politicians picking up the OWS "platform" within a year. Michael Moore will probably get picked up as a "leader".
"Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality."
"Create a 5% annual wealth tax for the very rich."
"Institute a negative income tax, and tax the very rich at rates up to 90%."
"Immediate debt forgiveness for all."
Go down to Wall Street or any of these other occupations and you will figure out the goals pretty quickly. Increase taxes on the wealthiest 1% and on major corporations (or at least close loopholes.) End the wars and bring our troops home. And end unlimited corporate campaign contributions (or possibly private campaign funding entirely.) Those are the goals.
End the wars? Wtf does that have to do with financial system corruption? Perhaps this right here is the exact reason many people can't "get on board" the OWS train. Because they claim to be specifically protesting financial corruption. But then when you look at their list of demands, it reads like a generic pork-laden "tax the rich and pay for all this free stuff I want" (healthcare, education, alternate energy, etc, etc). If they focused their concerns on addressing financial corruption instead of running on a "generic socialism" protest, maybe other people would get behind them.
eah? Can you link to anything, anywhere about the tea party that was posted before Obama was elected?
Technically, the first serious Tea Party protests were in direct response to TARP (Though they did happen after Bush left office, since he passed that law at the very end of his term). Obama's continued spending (in the form of the stimulus to follow) simply threw more fuel on the fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_protests
If was truly an "anti-Obama" movement, they wouldn't have reacted with hostility to TARP, passed by Bush.
Well, it'd be a worthy goal to pursue. I could get behind breaking up the monopoly sooner than more useless government regulation. Do whatever it takes to force competition (rather than trying to blacklist the "evil acts we can foresee monopolies doing" and letting them continue business as usual: namely, finding evil things we haven't thought of blacklisting). We play a losing game with regulation -- it's only as good as what we haven't thought of yet. And in the end, we're still dependent upon a relatively bloated, inefficient, corrupt government to enforce it. Competition can regulate itself much more efficiently and impartially if we let it (by creating/bolstering a competitive environment).
Electric companies are a rather poor example since they're a government-enforced monopoly. Induce competition and see how long it takes them to get your power back. Electric supplier competition here in Maryland has certainly driven down my electric bill. And I can bounce back and forth between whomever I wish.
"Bang for buck" is the focus. However, most fiscal conservatives have become serious cynics after a lifetime of the government inefficiently squandering money. As such, we've largely come to the conclusion that the government will never be the "proper vehicle" for "efficient spending to solve real problems". That's why there's a huge anti-government push right now. Because we all see it as an exercise in futility to give the government our money to try to accomplish just about anything. This is also why we have less of an objection to state funding where said spending has been far more efficient and effective (see police officers, firefighters, roads, etc etc). Federal spending on the other hand is a gigantic boondoggle of special interests and terrible dogmatic/partisan policy.
Those differences do matter, because certain systems simply don't scale. Communism for example has been shown to work fantastically (no sarcasm) on a small scale (such as in towns and rural communities). But when extrapolated to large scale, it fails miserably. I never said I had a perfect solution, but I'm not certain what works in Switzerland would work in the US. I feel similar about the healthcare debate. The whole belief of "implement what the Europeans have and all our problems go away" is a big red herring. Americans are fat and have a terrible exercise habit. These are significant contributing factors to our out-of-control healthcare costs. You can't just go "it works there, now do it here". Otherwise, we'd all have Autobahns with no speed limits.
But to get off that tangent, I still think governmental gridlock is a good thing. Our government was built to be slow and resistant to change -- that is a good thing. In fact, the best thing they could possibly do to fix government is to require a supermajority to get anything passed. This way all the fringe bullshit that swings back and forth would go away and only those laws that are direly necessary would get passed. Compromise would be forced and the focus would shift away from "refuse to bend at all to make our opponents look bad and regain majority control" to "it's nigh-impossible to gain supermajority control, so let's work together". That together with a change away from first-past-the-post voting would be the way I would go. If you wanted to get a little more extreme than that, I'd say implement a measure that allows someone to be ousted out of office by public vote mid-term. This would somewhat stimmy the case of people lying to get into office and then doing whatever the hell they want for 4 years after they get in.
With all due respect, you have less than 8 million people in your country, living within a relatively small area relative to each other (490 people per square mile). The US has over 300 million spread far less dense across a wide variety of living situations/environments (84 people per square mile). The comparison isn't exactly quite that simple. Total population size and density matter.
The difficulty with the Occupy movement as I see it is that it lacks cohesion and direction. I don't think anyone including the protesters know what it is about.
Very much like the Tea Party of the other side, it has been co-opted to represent a generic Democratic stance across the board (though they'll never admit it). This is why issues like the wars, the environment, or healthcare has even made an appearance in a protest that initially was supposed to be about corruption/bailouts in the financial sector.
They dehumanize the rich that they target/torment. Is it honestly any different to react in kind? Sure, they have some valid points, but they're interspersed amidst a torrent of general misdirected hate and rage at anyone who possesses more than they do. If this weren't true, their laundry list of complaints (http://www.opposingviews.com/i/money/occupy-wall-street-list-demands-shows-ignorance) would be more specific and directed rather than including issues entirely unrelated to the financial/banking sector (like the iraq/afghanistan war, single-payer health care, or any number of other issues that are 'generic democratic platform' stances)
he only thing that I think might work -- and no, I don't know how to get it instantiated -- is a meritocracy composed of the altruistic.
No human being is altruistic. And if they claim to be, it's only because they already have everything they want or need -- and in that case, they aren't truly sacrificing.
even if it means 1% lower GDP growth in the interim.
That kind of hand waving is a substantial part of the problem. By what studies/statistics/proof/facts do you come up with this 1% number? For self proclaimed scientists that live and die by their "factual numbers/statistics", they sure as hell hand wave the fact-finding on economic impact. Because by any and all proposed measures I've seen, to impact AGW in any substantial manner would require far, far more of an impact to the economy than 1% GDP. And as aforementioned, these kind of things are never discussed or even brought up by most AGW advocates when debating the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
The public are idiots. They want substantial cuts, yet they don't want to cut anything: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/11/21/Poll-Partisan-divide-on-taxes-spending/UPI-74281321927685/
"six in 10 are against major cuts in military spending and 57 percent are opposed to major changes to such entitlement programs as Social Security and Medicare."
So the only thing the public actually agrees on is raising taxes on the rich, and there isn't enough revenue there (even if we take all their money) to handle the deficit. And the public doesn't want us to touch defense or entitlement spending. So maybe, just maybe, the opinion of the public isn't the best way to address this issue.
So continues the vicious cycle of :
1) Rich people influence government
2) People demand bigger government
3) Degree of government influence increases
4) Goto step 1.
And sadly, people somehow think this cycle will magically disappear with more government regulation. I would say the biggest political issue of this era would be people recognizing that their government no longer works for them, rather than demonizing a bunch of rich people and solving nothing. Why isn't OWS calling for a 3rd party? Why do they emphatically support the Democratic party that has failed them? You think the Republicans were the ones that bailed out the banks with no stipulations? Look at the votes.
Fantastic -- all we have to do now is make sure our economy is always operating in "boom times" mode -- deficit solved.
Only if you choose to completely ignore the other trillion+ dollar expenses this country is engaged in (mandatory spending, I'm looking at you).
Or how about we do away with concept of a "separate tax" and just merge it with the rest of the budget where it belongs, instead of pretending it doesn't exist as an actual expense in the budget balancing debate? I could care less if it can "become solvent" via some separate tax scheme. When it comes down to it, it's costing us hundreds of billions a year, fast converging on a trillion+ -- that is money being spent inefficiently. Just because you can magic up the money by raising taxes doesn't mean that spending a trillion dollars a year in a poorly designed program that funnels money to the wealthy is a good thing.
If I stole TWO YEARS of your Social Security benefits, it would pay off ELEVEN YEARS of Bush's TWO WARS. That is the magnitude difference here.
As did I, and I don't want it. I will GLADLY throw away every cent of the money I've paid the 10 years I've been working if it means I don't have to throw another cent at that program for the rest of my life. Especially considering I probably won't see a dime of it when I actual do retire.
That isn't fair -- Toomey's plan had revenue increases. The Dems rejected it in short order for not having enough (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/toomey-super-committee-democrats-rejected-compromise-demanded-1-trillion-tax-hike_610027.html). Like Toomey said: "although "several of our Democratic colleagues had repeatedly spoken about the virtues of tax simplification and tax reform," Toomey says, "they couldn't budge from the idea of a trillion dollar tax increase." The Democrats also "never once throughout the entire process were willing to propose or accept our proposals about any type of structural reforms to the big health care entitlement programs," according to Toomey. "It's like they were very concerned about the Occupy Wall Street movement," he added. "They had to demonstrate that they were willing to soak the rich."
It's a matter of scale -- the Dems want way more revenue increases than the Republicans are willing to give and the Republicans want actual significant structural reform to entitlement when all the Dems are willing to provide are smaller budget cuts within the existing framework. At one point, Obama seemed receptive to means-tested Medicare -- what happened to that?
And you consider that fair? "Tinfoil-hat-esque" claims of decades of lies with no proof or fact? Especially when Republicans have repeatedly offered not just proposals, but actual bills on means-testing both then (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/medicare/stories/med072297.htm) and now (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-soak-the-rich-gop-style/2011/09/28/gIQAn3Jk4K_story.html).
You do realize the Dems could have made the Bush tax cuts go away simply by stonewalling the expiration? The Dems are trying to have their cake and eat it too (by demanding that Congress RETAIN the cuts on the lower brackets while only letting the tax cuts on the higher brackets expire).
Convenient cherry-picking there excludes the 1 trillion+ per YEAR spent on entitlement program mandatory spending.
Citation? Proof? Hell, if you should blame anyone, blame high school guidance counselors and/or parents. Attempting to blame corporations for that mess is confirmation bias at its finest. And you claim my argument is superficial?
No, they look to maximize profits, everyone else be damned. If there was money to be made, they would attempt to make it. Or are you going to tell me home builders aren't hiring because they want to cut costs and not because the market is saturated with inventory and no demand? (just to provide one example).
How do you figure? You said the OWS goal overall was to "return to the original design" -- as such, I would expect all of their demands to support that goal, rather than exceeding it.
You mean back when it was less regulated and patients paid their bills instead of insurance company proxies? I agree.
And I find you to be easily dismissive, argumentally selective, and biased to no end -- you've demonized "the 1%" so much that you see them as the fault for everything, even in the most marginal seriously reaching extremes. Your stance on student loan debt is proof of that.
I don't look on OWS with bias. They had a good idea until they got co-opted by the Democratic party, same as the Tea Party with the Republicans. What had focus and purpose is now a hodgepodge of ludicrous self-serving demands. And the reason you fail to see that is because you happen to support most of those demands, partisan politics at its best.
So what of my other points? Student Loan freebies? Healthcare? Secondly, from the document, "protection of the planet" isn't just about making corporations play nice and not rape our earth. It clearly states "demand the immediate adoption of the most recent international protocols to reverse climate change, including the "Washington Declaration" and implementation of new and existing programs to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to reusable or carbon neutral sources of energy. " These are expenses, particularly the latter half. It isn't just "change your behavior" -- it's "give us a bunch of money to invest in a slew of potentially Solyndra-esque green energy ventures."
And the "jobs for all" thing is just stupid. If people (and by people, I mean corporations OR the government) could provide jobs for everyone, they would. You can't just act like the current recession isn't happening or that it's some kind of conspiracy to keep people unemployed.
"Healthcare for all"/single-payer is not the "original design". In fact, it's a brand new untested concept. Similarly, many of the other things on this list aren't a "return to before" -- many of these things aren't even checks on behavior or regulations to make sure corporations play nice. How can you say they aren't handouts? How can you say "pay off my student loan!" isn't a handout? No corporation sent you to college or forced you to take loans.
That depends on what you define as the "basic facts" -- and that's the problem. Quite a few people can get on board with financial system reform and political reform, or some payback for the bank bailouts. But the laundry list of demands from the OWS group goes well beyond those specific concerns: https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/
For example, have you noticed the intense anti-war protesting going on at the very same rallies?
Really? The very link you posted is like pages and pages of charts railing about one single thing: income inequality. Not to mention the aforementioned laundry list of demands. As I posted in another thread, what does "healthcare for all", "protection of the planet", "student loan forgiveness", "ending wars", etc, etc have anything at all to do with fixing corruption of or regulating the financial industry? How are student loans or wars even related to corporations? To me, that document reads like a mixed combination of good ideas and "demanded free handouts". It's the latter that people find fault with.
I would agree that these are noble and sensible goals. Sadly, OWS has demanded far, far more than just that. Hence, my original post comparing the Tea Party to OWS is very accurate. Both started with focused and sensible goals (the original Tea Party targets were the bailouts and stimulus spending whereas the original OWS targets were wall street fatcats/the financial industry/banks/the bailouts) - however the Tea Party and OWS have both since expanded to now encompass a wide swath of their related party's platform stances. That's why you see the attacks on defense spending, the demand for universal healthcare, and the green movement amidst the OWS demands.
Pull out the pork demands and I can get onboard with OWS. But if they continue to make generic ludicrous free lunch demands instead of remaining focused on a specific problem, I simply won't support it.
Very well, I'll use that
#6 Healthcare for All
#7 Protection of the Planet
#8 Debt Reduction
#9 Jobs for All Americans
#10 Student Loan Forgiveness
etc, etc, etc...
In totality, it's a laundry list of very expensive demands. Since the objective of the "99%" is to have the rich pay for all of this, the wealth distribution claim remains. Or are you honestly going to tell me they're willing to pay higher taxes themselves to pay for all these things? I certainly didn't see "raise our taxes!" as one of the bullet points in your document there ("since ALL pay fair share" from "fair tax demand #5" is synonymous with "rich people should pay more", as defined in the paragraph beneath it).
Step 2) Don't be white
Step 3) Don't be male
Step 4) Don't have rich parents
Welcome to the program.
The same basic "consider what the real message is" could apply to the Tea Party, who was mocked incessantly (with focus on "guns at rallies" and "racism" and similar nonsense). No one who disagreed with their general philosophy spent even a moment seeking "deeper meaning". Why do you think that people who disagree with the general mindset of the OWS protestor would be mocking out of anger rather than the fact that they simply disagree with their ultra-socialist tendencies? (just like the Dems decry the Tea Party's ultra-libertarian tendencies?). Neither movement (Tea Party or OWS) is one of "moderate sensibility" -- they're both extremist views.
Anything that grows large enough to be powerful gets co-opted. The Tea Party started grass roots without media saavy as well. I bet you're see politicians picking up the OWS "platform" within a year. Michael Moore will probably get picked up as a "leader".
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-ows-demands/
"Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality."
"Create a 5% annual wealth tax for the very rich."
"Institute a negative income tax, and tax the very rich at rates up to 90%."
"Immediate debt forgiveness for all."
Are you daft or just ignorant?
End the wars? Wtf does that have to do with financial system corruption? Perhaps this right here is the exact reason many people can't "get on board" the OWS train. Because they claim to be specifically protesting financial corruption. But then when you look at their list of demands, it reads like a generic pork-laden "tax the rich and pay for all this free stuff I want" (healthcare, education, alternate energy, etc, etc). If they focused their concerns on addressing financial corruption instead of running on a "generic socialism" protest, maybe other people would get behind them.
Technically, the first serious Tea Party protests were in direct response to TARP (Though they did happen after Bush left office, since he passed that law at the very end of his term). Obama's continued spending (in the form of the stimulus to follow) simply threw more fuel on the fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_protests
If was truly an "anti-Obama" movement, they wouldn't have reacted with hostility to TARP, passed by Bush.
Well, it'd be a worthy goal to pursue. I could get behind breaking up the monopoly sooner than more useless government regulation. Do whatever it takes to force competition (rather than trying to blacklist the "evil acts we can foresee monopolies doing" and letting them continue business as usual: namely, finding evil things we haven't thought of blacklisting). We play a losing game with regulation -- it's only as good as what we haven't thought of yet. And in the end, we're still dependent upon a relatively bloated, inefficient, corrupt government to enforce it. Competition can regulate itself much more efficiently and impartially if we let it (by creating/bolstering a competitive environment).
Electric companies are a rather poor example since they're a government-enforced monopoly. Induce competition and see how long it takes them to get your power back. Electric supplier competition here in Maryland has certainly driven down my electric bill. And I can bounce back and forth between whomever I wish.
Umm, most of them? The Republicans were anti-bailout, anti-spending, and anti-Fed-meddling. They opposed QE as well, or at least QE2:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-37540815/gop-vs-qe2-republicans-warn-bernanke-about-bubbles/?tag=mwuser
Mod Up
"Bang for buck" is the focus. However, most fiscal conservatives have become serious cynics after a lifetime of the government inefficiently squandering money. As such, we've largely come to the conclusion that the government will never be the "proper vehicle" for "efficient spending to solve real problems". That's why there's a huge anti-government push right now. Because we all see it as an exercise in futility to give the government our money to try to accomplish just about anything. This is also why we have less of an objection to state funding where said spending has been far more efficient and effective (see police officers, firefighters, roads, etc etc). Federal spending on the other hand is a gigantic boondoggle of special interests and terrible dogmatic/partisan policy.
But to get off that tangent, I still think governmental gridlock is a good thing. Our government was built to be slow and resistant to change -- that is a good thing. In fact, the best thing they could possibly do to fix government is to require a supermajority to get anything passed. This way all the fringe bullshit that swings back and forth would go away and only those laws that are direly necessary would get passed. Compromise would be forced and the focus would shift away from "refuse to bend at all to make our opponents look bad and regain majority control" to "it's nigh-impossible to gain supermajority control, so let's work together". That together with a change away from first-past-the-post voting would be the way I would go. If you wanted to get a little more extreme than that, I'd say implement a measure that allows someone to be ousted out of office by public vote mid-term. This would somewhat stimmy the case of people lying to get into office and then doing whatever the hell they want for 4 years after they get in.
With all due respect, you have less than 8 million people in your country, living within a relatively small area relative to each other (490 people per square mile). The US has over 300 million spread far less dense across a wide variety of living situations/environments (84 people per square mile). The comparison isn't exactly quite that simple. Total population size and density matter.
Very much like the Tea Party of the other side, it has been co-opted to represent a generic Democratic stance across the board (though they'll never admit it). This is why issues like the wars, the environment, or healthcare has even made an appearance in a protest that initially was supposed to be about corruption/bailouts in the financial sector.
They dehumanize the rich that they target/torment. Is it honestly any different to react in kind? Sure, they have some valid points, but they're interspersed amidst a torrent of general misdirected hate and rage at anyone who possesses more than they do. If this weren't true, their laundry list of complaints (http://www.opposingviews.com/i/money/occupy-wall-street-list-demands-shows-ignorance) would be more specific and directed rather than including issues entirely unrelated to the financial/banking sector (like the iraq/afghanistan war, single-payer health care, or any number of other issues that are 'generic democratic platform' stances)
No human being is altruistic. And if they claim to be, it's only because they already have everything they want or need -- and in that case, they aren't truly sacrificing.
That kind of hand waving is a substantial part of the problem. By what studies/statistics/proof/facts do you come up with this 1% number? For self proclaimed scientists that live and die by their "factual numbers/statistics", they sure as hell hand wave the fact-finding on economic impact. Because by any and all proposed measures I've seen, to impact AGW in any substantial manner would require far, far more of an impact to the economy than 1% GDP. And as aforementioned, these kind of things are never discussed or even brought up by most AGW advocates when debating the issue.
Mod Up