There's a line that's being blurred here that determines who the 1% is and many are misrepresenting it on both sides of the argument and too many are focusing on it.
You're the biggest perpetuator of "line blurring" and 1% focus in this entire thread... You keep clinging to your "fraud! taxes! working man!" mantra in every post, responding with irrelevant shit about how "they" are cheating people of their hard work while continuing to refer to "them" as "top 1%" and not "wallstreet bankers"
Fixed it for you. Business owners are exploiting their workers when they keep excess value created. They don't deserve the vast majority of the profits. While Carmack and Jobs are indeed cases of brilliant minds, there are plenty of CEOs are just well connected business folks that schlubbed their way into the job (Meg Whitman anyone?). We the workers bust butt to make billion dollar profits and get a fraction of the profit, while the owners of the company who put in far less hours of labor than we do get paid 5-10x as much. I know plenty of people imagine that one day that will be them up there, so they have no problem with the system, but the vast majority of us will be laborers till the day we die and would benefit far more from being paid fairly for the product we generate. Not so some Publisher putz-faces can profit off our hard labor with an actual skillset and years of training the current developer most likely didn't pay for.
This is really the entire problem right here: Value judgement. Why is someone elses labor worth more? Should mowing lawns for 8 hours be worth the same as treating patients in a hospital for 8 hours? Is the value of both those skills equal? An investor doesn't work much at all, but they shoulder a lot of the financial risk. How much is that worth? Nothing because he's not working? Subjective....
Regardless of what you think of it, the reality here is that there is something happening, income inequality is widening. The question is why and how do you change it?
I genuinely do not think it is some kind of incredible coincidence that the widening gap in income basically coincides with the decline of labor unions in the United States. Furthermore the 18-24 year old age group, the group most likely to be in low paying jobs, are also the least likely to unionize by HALF of the next age group (5% vs. 10%)
There was a point when businesses gave people incentives to not unionize, they offered higher wages than their unionized counterparts which in addition to having lower wages, also had to pay union dues. Then states began passing Right to Work laws saying employers couldn't make agreements with unions making union membership a condition of employment.
So people happily opted to give away all of their bargaining power in exchange for a little more cash every month.
Now here we are 4 decades later, the labor market which was once banded together is now a total free for all where employees can't bargain with employers because they know there are 10 people lined up behind them willing to do their job for less. There's no incentive to pay non-union employees more, because people don't unionize anyway. So employers offer less, and employees work for less.
If people expect to have any leverage in getting what they think is "fair" pay, then they need to form unions, because employers are never going to pay more than what they think is "fair".
I agree with your first sentence, but not with the rest.
The deficit is a non-issue. Germany and Japan have far higher debt to GDP ratios than the US, and they don't have the benefit of being the world reserve currency. If a benevolent fascist unicorn ruler were to swoop down tomorrow (and that's what it would require to reverse this death spiral of capitalism) they could add more to the debt to fund public work programs to repair the crumbling infrastructure of the US, generating millions of jobs, which would in turn put cash into the hands of consumers.
The same Unicorn Ceasar could implement a debt forgiveness program, nationalize the banks, and quickly return the per person debt levels to near zero without resulting in a rash of homelessness and bankrupty, to only the detriment of the ludicrously wealthy owning these financial institutions.
They could kill NAFTA and use protectionist policies to make outsourcing near impossible so that anyone wanting to manufacture goods and sell them in the US would have to do it inside the US rather than using 3rd world child labor.
This rainbow-man-god would also end all foreign wars, sink 19 or so of the 45 battleships, stop making billion dollar f-22s that can't even fly in the rain, and reduce defense spending to a reasonable level rather than a greater sum than the other 195 countries in the world combined.
Oh and also a universal healthcare plan that removes profit from the equation so the US can join the developed world in medical care, infant mortality and average life spans (which even narrowed to the richest americans is still shorter than the average Canadian/Icelander/German)
Then with a healthy debt-free society of 320 million, they could easily pay off the debt within a decade or two. The problem is that the second this magic incorruptible deity were to pass away, if capitalism as a system were left in place, this utopia would be a shithole again within 100 years as a select few managed to accumulate all the marbles once again.
So uhh... what's the part you're disagreeing with me on? Sounds like we're on the same page.
Cause I think we both know the situation you described is just not gonna happen. It's gonna take some kind of rainbow robot angel for that to happen. Since we don't live in a world with awesome sci-fi mythological beings, we better come up with plan-B.
Which in my opinion should be a total reset. That $15trillion is owed to someone. And I sure as hell didn't borrow $15trillion. So I say we just declare the debt, together with the government that borrowed it, as null and void and move on with our lives.
This is really the entire problem right here: Value judgement. Why is someone elses labor worth more? Should mowing lawns for 8 hours be worth the same as treating patients in a hospital for 8 hours? Is the value of both those skills equal? An investor doesn't work much at all, but they shoulder a lot of the financial risk. How much is that worth? Nothing because he's not working? Subjective....
Watch that youtube I posted. First, most of the investors that have obscene wealth aren't risking anything, because they get bailed out when they fail, but keep their massive wealth when they succeed. Second, increased pay does not increase productivity above the baseline living wage in non-manual labor jobs. As soon as a person doesn't have to stress over money each month, more money will not secure you better workers. This is a proven fact, despite the "common knowledge" otherwise.
Plus this ignores the fact that the vast majority of businesses require capital and connections to start up. A well educated straight white man can secure a line of credit, but a hispanic high school drop out can't. But then when the first man makes 300k a year on their lawn care business while 30 hispanic day laborers do all the actual labor, we call that success because.... well just because we've been brainwashed to believe somehow he's worth that much more. It's almost like all the shit we've consumed from the day we could watch TV and magazines and movies was manufactured and paid for by people like him that benefit from "common knowledge" being that educated connected people "deserve" more money per hour than someone who works their fingers to the bone.
So I say we just declare the debt, together with the government that borrowed it, as null and void and move on with our lives.
Wait how is that more likely than my proposal? it's total fantasy. At very best, this OWS movement will generate some labor reforms, maybe some make work programs or a little bit better unemployment benefits or social services. At best. The likelihood it will grow to the point it disassembles the US government is just so low as to be incalculable.
Here's a short list of things I'd like to see come out of it:
Real universal healthcare
Cheaper college education and a interest free loan plan for students.
high-speed rail and similar projects to generate jobs for the large number of jobless construction workers
New lobbying laws and limit corporate donations
More limitations on banks and walstreet that protect the majority of Americans
end bush tax cuts
Its not like having that line of credit was all the white man needed. He needed to know how to run a business, manage employees, obtain clients. I love how you just shit on people with the knowledge to make this all happen, but you like to raise up a guy, who sits on a lawn mower all day, up on a pedestal like he did something great.
It's almost like university is rising drastically in cost, upwards of 100k for many of the best paying degrees... hmmm, who would have access to that in a system of inequality where a tiny (white) minority has all the wealth. It's almost like mostly kids of wealthy white men will end up with those expensive harvard business degress, and friends in the yacht club who will let them know of mergers and job positions.
You are the one implying that managing clients and employees (which is basically bookkeeping, which women have been doing for thousands of years for basically no pay) is somehow this titanic feat worth 30x what backbreaking manual labor is.
And what I find ironic is that you've been accusing people of strawmen while doing it yourself. I am not lifting the laborer on a pedestal, I am saying his labor is worth the value it creates. He deserves an equal share of the profits based on the hours put in. If anyone is putting someone on a pedestal, it's those claiming the system of one guy (and it's always a guy) deserves massive profits cause he managed to run this arbitrary gauntlet of higher education and loan acquisition that was already jury rigged to his benefit to begin with.
Also I find your implied assertion that non-white kids have the exact same education as white kids in the US to be laughably ignorant, yet again. Schools in the US gain the majority of their funding through the taxes of the surrounding property taxes, so SURPRISE! wealthy neighborhoods get well funded schools, and parents with enough free time to stay involved (and married, and out of prison cause why do petty crimes when you've got legal exploitation available), whereas schools in the inner cities have no money, and their parents have to work shitty minimum wage jobs and are arrested and sentenced more harshly than their white counterparts.
Just to further, when in the US, white families posess 20x the net worth of black American families, there are literally only two choices of what's happening.
1. Black people are somehow inferior and this inferiority puts them at a disadvantage in a perfect system of personal worth/hard-work relating directly to personal wealth.
2. There is a systematic problem that puts black (and brown) Americans at a disadvantage at all stages of life development.
Since number one is a disgustingly racist view that only a human piece of garbage would hold, I would never in a million years ascribe it to one so intelligent as yourself, so that leaves number two.
Watch that youtube I posted. First, most of the investors that have obscene wealth aren't risking anything, because they get bailed out when they fail, but keep their massive wealth when they succeed. Second, increased pay does not increase productivity above the baseline living wage in non-manual labor jobs. As soon as a person doesn't have to stress over money each month, more money will not secure you better workers. This is a proven fact, despite the "common knowledge" otherwise.
Plus this ignores the fact that the vast majority of businesses require capital and connections to start up. A well educated straight white man can secure a line of credit, but a hispanic high school drop out can't. But then when the first man makes 300k a year on their lawn care business while 30 hispanic day laborers do all the actual labor, we call that success because.... well just because we've been brainwashed to believe somehow he's worth that much more. It's almost like all the shit we've consumed from the day we could watch TV and magazines and movies was manufactured and paid for by people like him that benefit from "common knowledge" being that educated connected people "deserve" more money per hour than someone who works their fingers to the bone.
Strawmanned so hard, I never made the argument that more money = better productivity. I also never argued that shit was perfectly fair. Furthermore it really doesn't matter. The point I was making which you conveniently cropped out was that people gave up all of their bargaining power to companies, and if they want it back they need to unionize.
Wait how is that more likely than my proposal? it's total fantasy. At very best, this OWS movement will generate some labor reforms, maybe some make work programs or a little bit better unemployment benefits or social services. At best. The likelihood it will grow to the point it disassembles the US government is just so low as to be incalculable.
Some people get together into a community and just ignore the government. Use your own currency, set up your own system.
That's what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed. All those previous satellite states became their own countries again. The US economy will collapse the same way. Then we can do our own thing.
Didn't you say you were Anarcho a few pages back? This is your chance.
Local economic growth is the way out... you could even have a sound economy with fiat money. Just letting people control the demand and supply of their local currencies thats how good and fair economies are established.
You guys are too caught up in policy. The writing's finally on the wall. It's this new global state of mind that will enact change. I'm incredibly optimistic at this point, I've never seen our public so rallied around true social progress as i have right now in my lifetime.
All the usual BS surrounding politics: political party, conservative vs. liberal, is all going out the window. There is sever economic trouble in this nation, mathematical indisputable issues that need to be reformed that we're finally waking up to as a whole and it's creating a great sense of unity and hope that things may get better.
The world and its ills is a complicated machine no one can fully understand or pretend to write an answer to in a forum post. But a great number of people are finally rallying and waking up to the problem all at once. Things very well could change. I just hope the movement isn't turned around with bullshit political jargon that happens so frequently. This is bigger than electing the right senators, the right president and so forth. To entertain the notion that we will change the nation with the same bullshit political practices of the past several decades is to perpetuate the very bullshit that got us here in the first place.
I sure as hell don't know how this will become resolved for the better, but there are millions rallied across the world worrying about the very same thing. Hopefully something will give.
Dude. The movement is called Occupy Wall Street because the 1% that exists on Wall Street perpetuated endemic fraud that caused the collapse of the global economy.
It's constantly called fraud because that's exactly what it was.
And the protests aren't taking place in Bentonville, where WalMart is headquartered. They started on Wall Street, because we're not pissed at how the 1% includes the Walton family. We're pissed at the execs who stole all of our money, literally by making fraudulent bets that they rigged.
Why even call them the top 1% if all you care about is the wallstreet bankers? As I've already said probably multiple times now, wallstreet bankers make up the minority of people in the top 1%. Continuously referring to them as "the top 1%" is blatantly misleading.
Furthermore my reply about fraud was directed at greevar and context specific.
I'm beginning to think no one in this thread actually reads posts or follows conversations, instead they spot a line in a post, prop up a strawman, and line up an easy rebuttal.
But then I guess after 19 pages why would anyone bother.
i agree with some that this "99% vs 1%" talking point in this whole movement has some technical flaws because it is too generalized and prejudiced. i think the phrase may have been coined to intimidate "some" of the 1%ers to show that there are very few of them and there are too many of us - like a scare tactic!
even if you want to talk about 0.01% who make more than 5mil in average you may be including people who have nothing to do with current economic situation.
are there there some good people in the top 1% or even 0.01% ? - YES
are there bad people in the 99% ? - YES
so the rhetoric focus should instead be more calculative and less emotional.
Ok, but the top .1% average 2,5 million a year and there are 130k of them, The top .01% average 17 million a year, and there are 15k of them. There are not that many captains of industry curing cancer and inventing hovercars. This doesn't even take into account that economists know, without a doubt, that in non-manual-labor jobs, more money actual creates worse performance, so this incentive bullshit is exactly that, bull and shit. Watch this very easy to understand Youtube if you were unaware of this basic fact of human psychology. RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us - YouTube
I ran this video in a preso to my team at work a few months back.
And with your second paragraph, you are trying to divorce two things that are impossible to separate. As long as individuals are allowed to accumulate obscene wealth, they will corrupt the system. That is how it works. That is why it's happening again, even though we as a society disassembled Feudalism hundreds of years ago. Capital seeks to entrench itself, no matter the barriers. So it does actually matter that there are single people earning millions of dollars (or euros), because what will always follow is those people using their money to corrupt the system. One or two will certainly maintain their morals in the face of corruption, but they are outliers, exceptions don't disprove a rule. That's *on top* of the fact that not a single person on earth generates millions of dollars of value through purely their own hard work and effort. Even the future inventor of the AIDS vaccine will be building on decades of medical research subsidized by the state and used tax-payer assets in building themselves as a person.
I won't delve into this too deeply, except to express my opinion on the dialogue. It really, really bothers me when a position takes a moral ground but follows with judging others' worth (or defining what they're allowed to have, etc.) Who is the impartial arbiter of what is an acceptable income someone is entitled to? I can't see any system of human society that would allow any individual or group the authority to decide what wealth others are allowed to earn and still be a moral system. Someone inevitably has power over someone else.
*edit* oh and if I worked for id or epic, I would absolutely accuse Carmack or Bleszinski of cheating me out of the fruits of my labor. Both of them put in a lot of effort, probably at least two, maybe three times as much as I would as a 3d artist, but their take home pay is many multiples of that, and the games are a product of the entire team. If they were by themselves in an office they'd have nothing.
Well, if I were to guess who here would take this position, I'd have picked you
Where you and I disagree is that you primarily value effort, regardless of type, where I value the scarcity of a specific effort. It's supply-and-demand economics. John Carmack may only work twice as hard as you in terms of labor, but you're easily replaced by hundreds, maybe thousands of similar talents and he's one of a small handful of people able to make his specific contribution. He's inherently more valuable to a project because his loss is vastly harder to replace.
If we don't value scarcity but just effort, then things really break down in the case of singular talents. John Carmack is nothing without a studio, sure, but JK Rowling is also nothing without a publisher. She is literally the single creative source of the Harry Potter series, but nonetheless relies on someone to edit her work, to print, etc. Should an editor assigned to her latest novel be entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for that work, because it's proportionate to the novel's profits, while an equally talented editor the next cube over makes a pittance doing a similar job on my latest novel entitled "Fun With Goats"? What about the bookbinders, the guys in the warehouse, the other manual laborers who have no creative contribution and get a hand in a Harry Potter novel via pure dumb luck?
Maybe I'm misreading you, but I gather you think Rowling shouldn't be allowed to be a billionaire. I can't see any reason why she shouldn't.
I realize this is almost entirely unrelated to the Wall Street bond-trading fatcats that are the focus of everyone's ire. I like the Rowling comparison because she's a perfect example of talent and hard work earning a shitload of cash simply by selling people something they want. She's not a billionaire because she put in the effort of operating a word processor, but because she had a story to tell and people freely and happily paid to hear it. The value she provided for her readers was many times in excess the actual act of creating the physical work.
You have research scientists and doctors out there struggle to get grants and financing for research. Then at the same time, every NFL player and Hollywood celeb is making millions.
How irreplaceable and valuable are researchers and doctors? How about Football players? How valuable are the people who run the Haliburtons and Blackwaters of the world? What's Activision's CEO doing to deserve $15million?
You're the biggest perpetuator of "line blurring" and 1% focus in this entire thread... You keep clinging to your "fraud! taxes! working man!" mantra in every post, responding with irrelevant shit about how "they" are cheating people of their hard work while continuing to refer to "them" as "top 1%" and not "wallstreet bankers".
I do believe that I've explained and factually backed up my claims. The fact that you don't like what I said doesn't weaken the merit of my argument. In any case, I will explain again and I will not discuss it further. If you want evidence, you need only look through this thread and follow the linked information.
It is common knowledge that the richest people in the world pay very little of the taxes they are legally required to because they can afford the means to conceal and obfuscate the amount of money they have and where it came from to avoid as much of the tax burden as possible.
It is a fact that banks create money through loans --because they don't actually have that money-- that they are not legally permitted to issue (only the government is permitted to create money) and charge interest, leeching on the labor and property of people of all levels of means. This creates a form of slavery more insidious and covert than any empire that came before it. People are forced to work to pay off debts they have no choice but to accept in order to attain the things that are most basic to society (housing, transportation, education, etc.). It is the biggest fraud ever pulled-off in front of our eyes. There is no way a bank can operate at a profit without making loans with non-existent money. If the money supply was a fixed amount and they are taking interest as profit (which means they take more in than pay out), then it will all eventually be centralized to the bank and no one else. So in order to make a profit loaning money, they must, illegally, create the money out of nothing or literally nobody will have money to pay back loans.
That's one part of the fraud the banks commit. Then we have the fact that banks don't even loan you money, they trade your promise to pay back the loan with their promise to provide the money you request, never actually giving you any real money, only debt. They give you a hole to fill and charge you to fill it yourself. They have you put up things you don't own as collateral (i.e. car loan, home loan, etc.) and when the seller takes your check, the two banks involved don't even exchange money very often, usually just the difference in balance between the two amounts of reserve.
Then we get to the corporations that rape, pillage, and abuse the workers and the environment of all nations without pity or remorse. They have one goal in their existence and that is to create more and more profit for their shareholders with no regard for human rights. That is a fact; their number one priority which overrules all others is profit, even if it means criminal acts. To a corporation, legal and illegal are only different in how much they will cost the company, a business decision. They use their substantial power of capital to buy-off governments to give them tax money to expand their empires, displace smaller businesses, and replace jobs with lower-paying jobs with few or no benefits. They act in their own self-interest and care nothing for the good of the people they affect, only the next quarterly profits the satisfaction of their shareholders, stakeholders be damned.
You can pretend all you like that my complaints are irrelevant, because that's merely your opinion and it doesn't align with reality at all. We are cattle to them and they use our labor to pay loans that make the banks rich, produce products that make our employers rich, and pay taxes to make the military suppliers and the Federal Reserve Bank rich. We are cattle and Wall Street, including the corporations, are the farmers. They are farming us through our labor to create wealth and profit, for them. This dream of becoming one of the 1% is just that, a dream. They allow this myth to perpetuate because it makes it easier for people to accept the system as it is because they too can some day be filthy rich. If people think they can succeed in this system, why would they tear it down? They'd be killing their golden chance at wealth and independence, but we well know that it doesn't happen as often as people would like. That's good for the farmers, that leaves millions of people still at the bottom willing to toil away producing wealth for them day after day and fosters complacency all for the hope that they will move up.
Let's not mix morality and taxes, especially considering that what you quoted of Ben spoke nothing of morality. He made points that are easily observable
The basic point Ben was making is that when you give a few people a whole lot of money, they tend to want to protect it. It's as simple as that. The result is bought politicians and a dysfunctional, unsustainable society with increasingly stratified economic classes.
In my replies to Ben, we've been discussing income, not taxes. I do think the current US tax code is in dire need of reform; I don't think anyone's income should inherently be moderated when it reaches a certain amount.
Ben explicitly used the word "morals" in the segment I quoted. He said that he believes some among the rich may act morally with regards to their wealth, but the majority will use it corruptly. I don't like viewing these sorts of situations through a moral lens. To enforce the idea of people being "allowed" a specific income (also Ben's word), you only shift the power from the wealthy to those who govern the wealthy. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, etc.
Viewing the accumulation and application of wealth as a moral issue works fine on an individual level, but I'm uncomfortable with the topic in discussions on how to better society.
So you are not allowed to close your bank account now? ^^ The cops will lock you in the bank with force? Yay land of the free etc ^^ Scary amount of stuff you see now. This is ridiculous. :P
To be fair.. I also read that the protesters rushed the bank all at once and started chanting...it's not like they went in there one by one, stood in line, and asked for their accounts to be closed..so the bank asked them to leave. When they did not, the bank locked the doors and waited for the cops to show...
That part, I could accept. If you want to have people arrested for trespassing, that's one thing. But why did they drag that woman in there against her will? Because she was in there earlier? Well I guess they should start contacting everyone else that was in there that morning, and start arresting them too. That part was completely unacceptable, no matter what she did.
Well, that seems rather foolish to just march in to the bank chanting, but I wonder if they wouldn't have reacted the same when customer after customer demanded to close their account? The cops that grabbed that woman off the street and tossed her in there was not legal. They're just acting like thugs and they're loosing respect fast. Eventually, people are just going to ignore the cops and the situation will be out of their control. Authority only has control so long as people respect that authority. Once they lose respect, it's mob rule.
If we don't value scarcity but just effort, then things really break down in the case of singular talents. John Carmack is nothing without a studio, sure, but JK Rowling is also nothing without a publisher. She is literally the single creative source of the Harry Potter series, but nonetheless relies on someone to edit her work, to print, etc. Should an editor assigned to her latest novel be entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for that work, because it's proportionate to the novel's profits, while an equally talented editor the next cube over makes a pittance doing a similar job on my latest novel entitled "Fun With Goats"? What about the bookbinders, the guys in the warehouse, the other manual laborers who have no creative contribution and get a hand in a Harry Potter novel via pure dumb luck?
Maybe I'm misreading you, but I gather you think Rowling shouldn't be allowed to be a billionaire. I can't see any reason why she shouldn't.
So you are worried about this slippery slope of whatever theoretical system prevented the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few being nefarious, but the current system that Rowlings and Carmack aside, has scores more worthless dumbasses with Billions. How is that the Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Edward Koch and Meg Whitman aren't proof that this "valuing scarcity" system is completely fucked up.
No one is proposing that Carmack and Rowlings shouldn't be able to make a living off of what they love to do, in fact my argument is that *everyone* should have a chance to make a decent living from a craft they are passionate about. You just think that l33t programmer skills is enough to give one person 5 ferraris while there are people in his same city that sleep under bridges in cardboard boxes. I however think that's an abomination of a system, and instead the great programmer (or author) should get to spend their days doing what they love with a comfortable lifestyle, while everyone else is also taken care of. Even if this were a zero sum game, the current appropriation is completely inappropriate. Writing fantasy novels, as entertaining as they may be, does *not* deserve billions. The marginal utility every dollar over the first 100k is stupid. She does not need a new mink stole for each day of the week to be rewarded for her writing, and neither does Carmack need to be able to piddle with space travel to be rewarded for coding. Not when there are people starving to death, dying without basic medical care. And, like I've mentioned, these are unique outliers.
For every Carmack there is a dumbass publisher making the same amount or more who actively makes game developing worse through idiot-clown decisions. And there are other members just of ID and the Harry Potter franchise making just as much as Carmack and Rowlings, when they didn't author any of the content, but controlled the strings of production that allowed those two entry to begin with, thus securing their percentage of the profit pie without offering anything but an already full bank account.
You seem to somehow believe that capitalism can be fail-safed with progressive taxes and a social system, but the scene playing out in the EU and Scandinavia proves that false. It has been proven time and time again that when few are allowed to accumulate wealth, the system becomes corrupted. I'm not implying they hire backroom mustachioed super villains to plot the destruction of the Dept of education, but when they all work together to secure their wealth, the result ends up being the same.
cops gonna cop...the mindset of the Merican police force is that we're all criminals..their role is to protect the state..if the system shrugs off innocent citizens being put to death, it sure as hell not going to give 2 fucks about one of its thugs intimidating someone railing against it..Hell, they probably reward them for that shit. You want to see just how bad it is, check out http://www.copblock.org/
So you are not allowed to close your bank account now? ^^ The cops will lock you in the bank with force? Yay land of the free etc ^^ Scary amount of stuff you see now. This is ridiculous. :P
While I don't agree with what happened and I think everyone handled that situation badly. You have to understand that the inside of a bank is not a public place and its not a place where your first amendment rights apply. You don't have the right to get unruly in a bank, crazy shit happens.
Anyone else who gets disorderly on private property would be removed. Protestors don't get special rights to go ape shit and not suffer the consequences. Just like loud mouth hate mongers you have the right to speak your mind that doesn't absolve you of any consequences.
But yea I don't agree that protestors should be pulled inside... that's fuckin nuts.
If you're a protestor fine, be a protestor outside. If you want to be a bank customer and close your account, fine go do that. They have the right to make sure you do it in an orderly fashion and conduct yourself appropriately or they can kick you out. But locking people inside... that's crazy.
cops gonna cop...the mindset of the Merican police force is that we're all criminals..their role is to protect the state..if the system shrugs off innocent citizens being put to death, it sure as hell not going to give 2 fucks about one of its thugs intimidating someone railing against it..Hell, they probably reward them for that shit. You want to see just how bad it is, check out http://www.copblock.org/
That's something I try to instill in people whenever the subject of the police come up. That they aren't your friends. They're there to keep you in line and protect the interests of the state. That's it.
To enforce the idea of people being "allowed" a specific income (also Ben's word), you only shift the power from the wealthy to those who govern the wealthy. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, etc.
People always say, "communism works fine... in theory!" Ignoring the fact that Capitalism doesn't even work in theory. 3% growth forever is impossible.
Not that I'm implying I want a communist solution, which I'm grateful you didn't automatically ascribe to me as an anti-capitalist. I'm just so tired of people holding up failed communist states as proof that no government system could ever enforce equality, when we have basically every single capitalist nation on earth as proof that we will also get loads of squalor and a misappropriate of resources, but somehow that's just coincidence, not at all an indictment of capitalism as a failed system.
Back to your example of Carmack and Rowlings. America loves these feel good stories, but they're propaganda. That's why reality shows and talent shows are so popular, they perpetuate this idea that if you're skilled at something, you'll be rewarded, planting this seed of escapism in everyone's mind, that rather than hope for a life of basic diligent work being rewarded with food/housing/medical-care/retirement, they should instead pine for their lottery day in the sun where they will be rocketed from rags to riches, if only *their* skill would be recognized. AND the fact that the US has abysmal social mobility just proves these anecdotal totems are irrelevant. There is far more likelihood of moving between economic classes in developed countries that subscribe less to cut-throat capitalism.
I think my point is getting muddy but what im trying to say is that alot of responsibility should still go towards the individual. If you disagree then so be it, I'm not trying to change your mind.
You sure have a lot of opinions about something you've never faced a day in your life. How can you be so sure that were you born black you could have accomplished all that you have today? Your gut? Well that doesn't carry much weight in an age where we have scores of studies proving how much more difficult it is for certain groups. I used to be exactly like you, holding personal accountability over everything else. I even had this exact same argument (me with your opinion) against a black woman in university, she was incredibly patient with me, and didn't convince me of anything at the time, but sewed the seeds that took root as I became more educated with how fucked up the system is.
The reason I harp so much on discrimination is because the basic argument around OWS is thus:
Proponents: The system as is, is unfair, allocation of resources is not based on merit.
Opponents: Nope, the system works fine, and if you all would just work harder, you could succeed.
So when it's easily provable by decades of research that no, in fact the system is not a good allocation of wealth based on merit, that just being born female, or gay, or black can severely hinder your ground-school education, high school, first job, hiring likelihood, election potential, advancement options, loan interest rates, etc, it throws a giant wrench in the gears of this theory of the self correcting markets that is capitalism.
Capitalism doesn't even work in theory. 3% growth forever is impossible.
There is nothing in capitalist theory that requires growth. Like socialism, it is just a way to allocate scarce resources. It actually works pretty well "in theory", considering the alternatives. Socialism is predicated on a "post scarcity economy", which I think may be an oxymoron.
Growth in usable resources is tied to advances in technology and improving technology seems almost certain for the foreseeable future.
Also a few pages back Oxy mentioned reinstating the Glass Steagall act, rolling back the Citizens United ruling and I would add eliminating the current system of lobbyist. Corporations should not be allowed to right laws for dimwitted lawmakers who have no idea what the laws say and how they will be exploited.
I'm a bit confused by all the rancor about taxes. All of America needs to step up and help out not just the poor and middle class. The rich are in the best position possible and are not above civic responsibility.
There is nothing in capitalist theory that requires growth. Like socialism, it is just a way to allocate scarce resources. It actually works pretty well "in theory", considering the alternatives. Socialism is predicated on a "post scarcity economy", which I think may be an oxymoron.
Growth in usable resources is tied to advances in technology and improving technology seems almost certain for the foreseeable future.
Yes, actually, everything I've ever read about capitalism requires growth. Why are you under the assumption it doesn't?
And while it could be arguable in a perfect world that technology could help us deal with dwindling world resources, the current course the US and China are taking is absolutely going to create a huge problem as peak oil becomes more and more obvious(ly already happened).
all the most recent technological advances have been in titillation. Siri is great, but where are the real alternatives to oil based transportation, plastic manufacture, and fertilizers? Being able to drill 5 miles under the ocean is pretty cool, but where is the technology to clean it up when it goes wrong and destroys an entire chunk of our oceans?
There is nothing in capitalist theory that requires growth. Like socialism, it is just a way to allocate scarce resources. It actually works pretty well "in theory", considering the alternatives. Socialism is predicated on a "post scarcity economy", which I think may be an oxymoron.
Growth in usable resources is tied to advances in technology and improving technology seems almost certain for the foreseeable future.
Resources are finite, but not scarce. Air and water are both finite resources, but their constant recycling make them abundant. It's our wasteful capitalist society of single-use, throw-away products that causes scarcity. We waste so much that could be reused and re-purposed. The only real scarcity is our labor, our ability to make something into something else. If we worked with nature to provide us the renewable resources it affords us and we devise a renewable system for manufactured goods and eliminate all waste, we would be a lot better off. Growth is just a buzzword to get people excited about making money in a booming industry that has no accountability towards the future. Perpetual growth is impossible in a world of finite resources where there is constant waste.
Capitalism is just burning resources, we need to create a resource cycle that can sustain us before we burn up all of our resources. We should not be piling valuable resources in a heap out of the sight of society. We should be breaking down everything to their core materials and using it to make new products instead of digging up more minerals, petroleum, and ore every day.
I'm a bit confused by all the rancor about taxes. All of America needs to step up and help out not just the poor and middle class. The rich are in the best position possible and are not above civic responsibility.
Mark, the problem about taxes is, that a vast majority of it isn't even going to public services and the operation of the government. It's going to pay for debt that the government creates every time they create new money because they keep borrowing from the Federal Reserve (a private bank, not a government office) with freaking more debt attached to each new dollar. And guess who owns these debts our taxes are paying for, the people running the Fed. The Rothschilds, Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc. The infamous "Money Trust" holds all the debts America owes, they are the same people not paying their fair share of the taxes because they created the tax system. You might think, "Hey, we owe a lot of debt to China though!" But the same people own all of the banks of the world.
We never even needed an income tax nor the Federal Reserve. In the years preceding 1913 and after Andrew Jackson killed the central bank in America, we were in the biggest economic prosperity we had ever seen (slavery had some to do with that though). Remember the roaring twenties? That was a boom the Money Trust created and the subsequent depression was their doing. The stock market crash was of little consequence on the economy (which served as a cover) as much as the banks contracting the money supply by drastic amounts by calling in old loans and denying new loans, thus giving them total control over our money. When you control the money you control the people.
So long story short, the tax system isn't for us, it's for the people we're in debt to and nothing more. They're so damn greedy and power hungry, they won't even support the system their elders created.
Mark, the problem about taxes is, that a vast majority of it isn't even going to public services and the operation of the government. It's going to pay for debt that the government creates every time they create new money because they keep borrowing from the Federal Reserve (a private bank, not a government office) with freaking more debt attached to each new dollar. And guess who owns these debts our taxes are paying for, the people running the Fed. The Rothschilds, Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc. The infamous "Money Trust" holds all the debts America owes, they are the same people not paying their fair share of the taxes because they created the tax system. You might think, "Hey, we owe a lot of debt to China though!" But the same people own all of the banks of the world.
agreed. it is a never ending loop and it keeps getting worse as FED creates more money out of thin air.
FED should not be private and they should not have the right to create money that they cannot back up with the exact amount of gold reserve. any money that is not backed up by alternate gold reserve is DEBT.
unfortunately, this country would not have become so "rich" if not for this fake money which is now debt.
agreed. it is a never ending loop and it keeps getting worse as FED creates more money out of thin air.
FED should not be private and they should not have the right to create money that they cannot back up with the exact amount of gold reserve. any money that is not backed up by alternate gold reserve is DEBT.
unfortunately, this country would not have become so "rich" if not for this fake money which is now debt.
There is no money backed by gold. The gold is gone, our money is backed by debt entirely. A fiat currency is fine so long as we issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers.
Yes, actually, everything I've ever read about capitalism requires growth. Why are you under the assumption it doesn't?
Capitalism is an economic system where people have private property, contracts, and are free to trade goods and services to each other if they feel like it.
He has scholarships, not everyone who goes to college can have one and that doesn't diffuse the ridiculous cost of college, even in public universities. Everyone else has to take out loans or go without. His situation is not a reasonable expectation of the norm.
"I expect nothing to be handed to me."
He has two scholarships. It's already been handed to him because someone believed he was worth it. Had he not been granted the scholarships, he'd have to take out loans like the rest of us or not go to college. He's not on any superior moral ground. This is a failed attempt to pile shame and guilt on those who protest against the system and a rather hypocritical one at that. This is just more dissenting rhetoric from those that haven't had to struggle without any help at all.
Capitalism is an economic system where people have private property, contracts, and are free to trade goods and services to each other if they feel like it.
What part of that requires growth?
No, the key part of capitalism is profits, which you (conveniently?) left out. That profit comes from extracting value from the person who did the labor for someone else to keep. With profit being extracted, EITHER everything grows infinitely forever (impossible) or a portion of the population gets screwed/exploited. (and I'll give you a hint, it's the latter which is happening)
Capitalism is an economic system where people have private property, contracts, and are free to trade goods and services to each other if they feel like it.
What part of that requires growth?
I believe you two are working under two different definitions.
You're thinking of capitalism in the sense of a Laissez-faire system, a free-market system.
He's thinking of it more in the sense of a system that's governed by capital accumulation.
Yours is more accurate in the classical sense, his is more accurate as far as what's actually going on today (and is called capitalism).
Unless I'm mistaken, and either of you actually uses a different definition.
I believe you two are working under two different definitions.
Well, he's positing the free choice of exchanging goods and services, which is in no way unique to capitalism (and takes the teeth out of the system). Barter based economies by definition also have this. The only thing that makes Capitalism unique as an economic system is profits, which is what having private property enables.
No, the key part of capitalism is profits, which you (conveniently?) left out. That profit comes from extracting value from the person who did the labor for someone else to keep. With profit being extracted, EITHER everything grows infinitely forever (impossible) or a portion of the population gets screwed/exploited. (and I'll give you a hint, it's the latter which is happening)
No, I didn't leave it out. You're just wrong. What you're talking about is not a core feature of capitalism. A person trying to maximize monetary income will seek a monetary profit, but capitalism doesn't define what people should want.
He has two scholarships. It's already been handed to him because someone believed he was worth it. Had he not been granted the scholarships, he'd have to take out loans like the rest of us or not go to college. He's not on any superior moral ground. This is a failed attempt to pile shame and guilt on those who protest against the system and a rather hypocritical one at that. This is just more dissenting rhetoric from those that haven't had to struggle without any help at all.
NO , never.
you are living in your illusion that having debt is a good choice.
Im living in a culture that knowing well debt is jinx and bad thing. so glad i never live like that.
better i live in street with zero debt.
Well, he's positing the free choice of exchanging goods and services, which is in no way unique to capitalism (and takes the teeth out of the system). Barter based economies by definition also have this. The only thing that makes Capitalism unique as an economic system is profits, which is what having private property enables.
In classical economics though, when people talk about capitalism they're talking about a system where money is the medium of exchange. The basic premise is that money does more than let you know how much you pay for stuff, it's a way for you to vote with your wallet. Money is an essential ingredient to capitalism, which puts barter out of the scope of it. I suppose it's true that a barter society could be free-market. But the point is free-market capitalism.
It necessarily (by the classical definition) involves money, but profit has nothing to do with it.
I'm just trying to lay out the two different definitions being used here. I believe both are appropriate, but it gets confusing.
it's amazing how people are equating the 99% to somehow being lazy slobs that want everything handed to them...
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― John Steinbeck
Clearly this person has an overly simplified view of what happened, how things are run and how things work. Lets check back in with this person when they've been looking for work for 6mo. Or they've wiped out their future plans because they became sick.
If you can't get half a dozen members of congress on the phone and get your personal agenda enacted into law by the end of the week then you are part of the 99% who have no voice in politics. You're part of the 99% who are dealt the most pain while other reap all the reward.
Just because you manage to scratch out a comfortable living doesn't mean the system is fair and balanced and working like it should. Personally I don't think you should have to get scholarships to cover 90% of the cost, or work 30hrs a week while in school. While there is some pride that can be taken in making the best of a bad situation that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to make it better.
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This is really the entire problem right here: Value judgement. Why is someone elses labor worth more? Should mowing lawns for 8 hours be worth the same as treating patients in a hospital for 8 hours? Is the value of both those skills equal? An investor doesn't work much at all, but they shoulder a lot of the financial risk. How much is that worth? Nothing because he's not working? Subjective....
Regardless of what you think of it, the reality here is that there is something happening, income inequality is widening. The question is why and how do you change it?
I genuinely do not think it is some kind of incredible coincidence that the widening gap in income basically coincides with the decline of labor unions in the United States. Furthermore the 18-24 year old age group, the group most likely to be in low paying jobs, are also the least likely to unionize by HALF of the next age group (5% vs. 10%)
There was a point when businesses gave people incentives to not unionize, they offered higher wages than their unionized counterparts which in addition to having lower wages, also had to pay union dues. Then states began passing Right to Work laws saying employers couldn't make agreements with unions making union membership a condition of employment.
So people happily opted to give away all of their bargaining power in exchange for a little more cash every month.
Now here we are 4 decades later, the labor market which was once banded together is now a total free for all where employees can't bargain with employers because they know there are 10 people lined up behind them willing to do their job for less. There's no incentive to pay non-union employees more, because people don't unionize anyway. So employers offer less, and employees work for less.
If people expect to have any leverage in getting what they think is "fair" pay, then they need to form unions, because employers are never going to pay more than what they think is "fair".
So uhh... what's the part you're disagreeing with me on? Sounds like we're on the same page.
Cause I think we both know the situation you described is just not gonna happen. It's gonna take some kind of rainbow robot angel for that to happen. Since we don't live in a world with awesome sci-fi mythological beings, we better come up with plan-B.
Which in my opinion should be a total reset. That $15trillion is owed to someone. And I sure as hell didn't borrow $15trillion. So I say we just declare the debt, together with the government that borrowed it, as null and void and move on with our lives.
Watch that youtube I posted. First, most of the investors that have obscene wealth aren't risking anything, because they get bailed out when they fail, but keep their massive wealth when they succeed. Second, increased pay does not increase productivity above the baseline living wage in non-manual labor jobs. As soon as a person doesn't have to stress over money each month, more money will not secure you better workers. This is a proven fact, despite the "common knowledge" otherwise.
Plus this ignores the fact that the vast majority of businesses require capital and connections to start up. A well educated straight white man can secure a line of credit, but a hispanic high school drop out can't. But then when the first man makes 300k a year on their lawn care business while 30 hispanic day laborers do all the actual labor, we call that success because.... well just because we've been brainwashed to believe somehow he's worth that much more. It's almost like all the shit we've consumed from the day we could watch TV and magazines and movies was manufactured and paid for by people like him that benefit from "common knowledge" being that educated connected people "deserve" more money per hour than someone who works their fingers to the bone.
Wait how is that more likely than my proposal? it's total fantasy. At very best, this OWS movement will generate some labor reforms, maybe some make work programs or a little bit better unemployment benefits or social services. At best. The likelihood it will grow to the point it disassembles the US government is just so low as to be incalculable.
Real universal healthcare
Cheaper college education and a interest free loan plan for students.
high-speed rail and similar projects to generate jobs for the large number of jobless construction workers
New lobbying laws and limit corporate donations
More limitations on banks and walstreet that protect the majority of Americans
end bush tax cuts
It's almost like university is rising drastically in cost, upwards of 100k for many of the best paying degrees... hmmm, who would have access to that in a system of inequality where a tiny (white) minority has all the wealth. It's almost like mostly kids of wealthy white men will end up with those expensive harvard business degress, and friends in the yacht club who will let them know of mergers and job positions.
You are the one implying that managing clients and employees (which is basically bookkeeping, which women have been doing for thousands of years for basically no pay) is somehow this titanic feat worth 30x what backbreaking manual labor is.
And what I find ironic is that you've been accusing people of strawmen while doing it yourself. I am not lifting the laborer on a pedestal, I am saying his labor is worth the value it creates. He deserves an equal share of the profits based on the hours put in. If anyone is putting someone on a pedestal, it's those claiming the system of one guy (and it's always a guy) deserves massive profits cause he managed to run this arbitrary gauntlet of higher education and loan acquisition that was already jury rigged to his benefit to begin with.
Also I find your implied assertion that non-white kids have the exact same education as white kids in the US to be laughably ignorant, yet again. Schools in the US gain the majority of their funding through the taxes of the surrounding property taxes, so SURPRISE! wealthy neighborhoods get well funded schools, and parents with enough free time to stay involved (and married, and out of prison cause why do petty crimes when you've got legal exploitation available), whereas schools in the inner cities have no money, and their parents have to work shitty minimum wage jobs and are arrested and sentenced more harshly than their white counterparts.
1. Black people are somehow inferior and this inferiority puts them at a disadvantage in a perfect system of personal worth/hard-work relating directly to personal wealth.
2. There is a systematic problem that puts black (and brown) Americans at a disadvantage at all stages of life development.
Since number one is a disgustingly racist view that only a human piece of garbage would hold, I would never in a million years ascribe it to one so intelligent as yourself, so that leaves number two.
And here are your much desired links (which I am sure you will read and educate yourself) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#Wealth_Inequality_and_Race
http://www.timwise.org/2011/09/getting-what-we-deserve-wealth-race-and-entitlement-in-america/
Some people get together into a community and just ignore the government. Use your own currency, set up your own system.
That's what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed. All those previous satellite states became their own countries again. The US economy will collapse the same way. Then we can do our own thing.
Didn't you say you were Anarcho a few pages back? This is your chance.
All the usual BS surrounding politics: political party, conservative vs. liberal, is all going out the window. There is sever economic trouble in this nation, mathematical indisputable issues that need to be reformed that we're finally waking up to as a whole and it's creating a great sense of unity and hope that things may get better.
The world and its ills is a complicated machine no one can fully understand or pretend to write an answer to in a forum post. But a great number of people are finally rallying and waking up to the problem all at once. Things very well could change. I just hope the movement isn't turned around with bullshit political jargon that happens so frequently. This is bigger than electing the right senators, the right president and so forth. To entertain the notion that we will change the nation with the same bullshit political practices of the past several decades is to perpetuate the very bullshit that got us here in the first place.
I sure as hell don't know how this will become resolved for the better, but there are millions rallied across the world worrying about the very same thing. Hopefully something will give.
Yep, that was my source. Thanks for posting.
Furthermore my reply about fraud was directed at greevar and context specific.
I'm beginning to think no one in this thread actually reads posts or follows conversations, instead they spot a line in a post, prop up a strawman, and line up an easy rebuttal.
But then I guess after 19 pages why would anyone bother.
even if you want to talk about 0.01% who make more than 5mil in average you may be including people who have nothing to do with current economic situation.
are there there some good people in the top 1% or even 0.01% ? - YES
are there bad people in the 99% ? - YES
so the rhetoric focus should instead be more calculative and less emotional.
I ran this video in a preso to my team at work a few months back.
I won't delve into this too deeply, except to express my opinion on the dialogue. It really, really bothers me when a position takes a moral ground but follows with judging others' worth (or defining what they're allowed to have, etc.) Who is the impartial arbiter of what is an acceptable income someone is entitled to? I can't see any system of human society that would allow any individual or group the authority to decide what wealth others are allowed to earn and still be a moral system. Someone inevitably has power over someone else.
Well, if I were to guess who here would take this position, I'd have picked you
Where you and I disagree is that you primarily value effort, regardless of type, where I value the scarcity of a specific effort. It's supply-and-demand economics. John Carmack may only work twice as hard as you in terms of labor, but you're easily replaced by hundreds, maybe thousands of similar talents and he's one of a small handful of people able to make his specific contribution. He's inherently more valuable to a project because his loss is vastly harder to replace.
If we don't value scarcity but just effort, then things really break down in the case of singular talents. John Carmack is nothing without a studio, sure, but JK Rowling is also nothing without a publisher. She is literally the single creative source of the Harry Potter series, but nonetheless relies on someone to edit her work, to print, etc. Should an editor assigned to her latest novel be entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for that work, because it's proportionate to the novel's profits, while an equally talented editor the next cube over makes a pittance doing a similar job on my latest novel entitled "Fun With Goats"? What about the bookbinders, the guys in the warehouse, the other manual laborers who have no creative contribution and get a hand in a Harry Potter novel via pure dumb luck?
Maybe I'm misreading you, but I gather you think Rowling shouldn't be allowed to be a billionaire. I can't see any reason why she shouldn't.
I realize this is almost entirely unrelated to the Wall Street bond-trading fatcats that are the focus of everyone's ire. I like the Rowling comparison because she's a perfect example of talent and hard work earning a shitload of cash simply by selling people something they want. She's not a billionaire because she put in the effort of operating a word processor, but because she had a story to tell and people freely and happily paid to hear it. The value she provided for her readers was many times in excess the actual act of creating the physical work.
You have research scientists and doctors out there struggle to get grants and financing for research. Then at the same time, every NFL player and Hollywood celeb is making millions.
How irreplaceable and valuable are researchers and doctors? How about Football players? How valuable are the people who run the Haliburtons and Blackwaters of the world? What's Activision's CEO doing to deserve $15million?
I do believe that I've explained and factually backed up my claims. The fact that you don't like what I said doesn't weaken the merit of my argument. In any case, I will explain again and I will not discuss it further. If you want evidence, you need only look through this thread and follow the linked information.
It is common knowledge that the richest people in the world pay very little of the taxes they are legally required to because they can afford the means to conceal and obfuscate the amount of money they have and where it came from to avoid as much of the tax burden as possible.
It is a fact that banks create money through loans --because they don't actually have that money-- that they are not legally permitted to issue (only the government is permitted to create money) and charge interest, leeching on the labor and property of people of all levels of means. This creates a form of slavery more insidious and covert than any empire that came before it. People are forced to work to pay off debts they have no choice but to accept in order to attain the things that are most basic to society (housing, transportation, education, etc.). It is the biggest fraud ever pulled-off in front of our eyes. There is no way a bank can operate at a profit without making loans with non-existent money. If the money supply was a fixed amount and they are taking interest as profit (which means they take more in than pay out), then it will all eventually be centralized to the bank and no one else. So in order to make a profit loaning money, they must, illegally, create the money out of nothing or literally nobody will have money to pay back loans.
That's one part of the fraud the banks commit. Then we have the fact that banks don't even loan you money, they trade your promise to pay back the loan with their promise to provide the money you request, never actually giving you any real money, only debt. They give you a hole to fill and charge you to fill it yourself. They have you put up things you don't own as collateral (i.e. car loan, home loan, etc.) and when the seller takes your check, the two banks involved don't even exchange money very often, usually just the difference in balance between the two amounts of reserve.
Then we get to the corporations that rape, pillage, and abuse the workers and the environment of all nations without pity or remorse. They have one goal in their existence and that is to create more and more profit for their shareholders with no regard for human rights. That is a fact; their number one priority which overrules all others is profit, even if it means criminal acts. To a corporation, legal and illegal are only different in how much they will cost the company, a business decision. They use their substantial power of capital to buy-off governments to give them tax money to expand their empires, displace smaller businesses, and replace jobs with lower-paying jobs with few or no benefits. They act in their own self-interest and care nothing for the good of the people they affect, only the next quarterly profits the satisfaction of their shareholders, stakeholders be damned.
You can pretend all you like that my complaints are irrelevant, because that's merely your opinion and it doesn't align with reality at all. We are cattle to them and they use our labor to pay loans that make the banks rich, produce products that make our employers rich, and pay taxes to make the military suppliers and the Federal Reserve Bank rich. We are cattle and Wall Street, including the corporations, are the farmers. They are farming us through our labor to create wealth and profit, for them. This dream of becoming one of the 1% is just that, a dream. They allow this myth to perpetuate because it makes it easier for people to accept the system as it is because they too can some day be filthy rich. If people think they can succeed in this system, why would they tear it down? They'd be killing their golden chance at wealth and independence, but we well know that it doesn't happen as often as people would like. That's good for the farmers, that leaves millions of people still at the bottom willing to toil away producing wealth for them day after day and fosters complacency all for the hope that they will move up.
In my replies to Ben, we've been discussing income, not taxes. I do think the current US tax code is in dire need of reform; I don't think anyone's income should inherently be moderated when it reaches a certain amount.
Ben explicitly used the word "morals" in the segment I quoted. He said that he believes some among the rich may act morally with regards to their wealth, but the majority will use it corruptly. I don't like viewing these sorts of situations through a moral lens. To enforce the idea of people being "allowed" a specific income (also Ben's word), you only shift the power from the wealthy to those who govern the wealthy. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, etc.
Viewing the accumulation and application of wealth as a moral issue works fine on an individual level, but I'm uncomfortable with the topic in discussions on how to better society.
So you are not allowed to close your bank account now? ^^ The cops will lock you in the bank with force? Yay land of the free etc ^^ Scary amount of stuff you see now. This is ridiculous. :P
To be fair.. I also read that the protesters rushed the bank all at once and started chanting...it's not like they went in there one by one, stood in line, and asked for their accounts to be closed..so the bank asked them to leave. When they did not, the bank locked the doors and waited for the cops to show...
So you are worried about this slippery slope of whatever theoretical system prevented the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few being nefarious, but the current system that Rowlings and Carmack aside, has scores more worthless dumbasses with Billions. How is that the Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Edward Koch and Meg Whitman aren't proof that this "valuing scarcity" system is completely fucked up.
No one is proposing that Carmack and Rowlings shouldn't be able to make a living off of what they love to do, in fact my argument is that *everyone* should have a chance to make a decent living from a craft they are passionate about. You just think that l33t programmer skills is enough to give one person 5 ferraris while there are people in his same city that sleep under bridges in cardboard boxes. I however think that's an abomination of a system, and instead the great programmer (or author) should get to spend their days doing what they love with a comfortable lifestyle, while everyone else is also taken care of. Even if this were a zero sum game, the current appropriation is completely inappropriate. Writing fantasy novels, as entertaining as they may be, does *not* deserve billions. The marginal utility every dollar over the first 100k is stupid. She does not need a new mink stole for each day of the week to be rewarded for her writing, and neither does Carmack need to be able to piddle with space travel to be rewarded for coding. Not when there are people starving to death, dying without basic medical care. And, like I've mentioned, these are unique outliers.
For every Carmack there is a dumbass publisher making the same amount or more who actively makes game developing worse through idiot-clown decisions. And there are other members just of ID and the Harry Potter franchise making just as much as Carmack and Rowlings, when they didn't author any of the content, but controlled the strings of production that allowed those two entry to begin with, thus securing their percentage of the profit pie without offering anything but an already full bank account.
You seem to somehow believe that capitalism can be fail-safed with progressive taxes and a social system, but the scene playing out in the EU and Scandinavia proves that false. It has been proven time and time again that when few are allowed to accumulate wealth, the system becomes corrupted. I'm not implying they hire backroom mustachioed super villains to plot the destruction of the Dept of education, but when they all work together to secure their wealth, the result ends up being the same.
Anyone else who gets disorderly on private property would be removed. Protestors don't get special rights to go ape shit and not suffer the consequences. Just like loud mouth hate mongers you have the right to speak your mind that doesn't absolve you of any consequences.
But yea I don't agree that protestors should be pulled inside... that's fuckin nuts.
If you're a protestor fine, be a protestor outside. If you want to be a bank customer and close your account, fine go do that. They have the right to make sure you do it in an orderly fashion and conduct yourself appropriately or they can kick you out. But locking people inside... that's crazy.
People always say, "communism works fine... in theory!" Ignoring the fact that Capitalism doesn't even work in theory. 3% growth forever is impossible.
Not that I'm implying I want a communist solution, which I'm grateful you didn't automatically ascribe to me as an anti-capitalist. I'm just so tired of people holding up failed communist states as proof that no government system could ever enforce equality, when we have basically every single capitalist nation on earth as proof that we will also get loads of squalor and a misappropriate of resources, but somehow that's just coincidence, not at all an indictment of capitalism as a failed system.
Back to your example of Carmack and Rowlings. America loves these feel good stories, but they're propaganda. That's why reality shows and talent shows are so popular, they perpetuate this idea that if you're skilled at something, you'll be rewarded, planting this seed of escapism in everyone's mind, that rather than hope for a life of basic diligent work being rewarded with food/housing/medical-care/retirement, they should instead pine for their lottery day in the sun where they will be rocketed from rags to riches, if only *their* skill would be recognized. AND the fact that the US has abysmal social mobility just proves these anecdotal totems are irrelevant. There is far more likelihood of moving between economic classes in developed countries that subscribe less to cut-throat capitalism.
You sure have a lot of opinions about something you've never faced a day in your life. How can you be so sure that were you born black you could have accomplished all that you have today? Your gut? Well that doesn't carry much weight in an age where we have scores of studies proving how much more difficult it is for certain groups. I used to be exactly like you, holding personal accountability over everything else. I even had this exact same argument (me with your opinion) against a black woman in university, she was incredibly patient with me, and didn't convince me of anything at the time, but sewed the seeds that took root as I became more educated with how fucked up the system is.
The reason I harp so much on discrimination is because the basic argument around OWS is thus:
Proponents: The system as is, is unfair, allocation of resources is not based on merit.
Opponents: Nope, the system works fine, and if you all would just work harder, you could succeed.
So when it's easily provable by decades of research that no, in fact the system is not a good allocation of wealth based on merit, that just being born female, or gay, or black can severely hinder your ground-school education, high school, first job, hiring likelihood, election potential, advancement options, loan interest rates, etc, it throws a giant wrench in the gears of this theory of the self correcting markets that is capitalism.
There is nothing in capitalist theory that requires growth. Like socialism, it is just a way to allocate scarce resources. It actually works pretty well "in theory", considering the alternatives. Socialism is predicated on a "post scarcity economy", which I think may be an oxymoron.
Growth in usable resources is tied to advances in technology and improving technology seems almost certain for the foreseeable future.
I'm a bit confused by all the rancor about taxes. All of America needs to step up and help out not just the poor and middle class. The rich are in the best position possible and are not above civic responsibility.
Yes, actually, everything I've ever read about capitalism requires growth. Why are you under the assumption it doesn't?
And while it could be arguable in a perfect world that technology could help us deal with dwindling world resources, the current course the US and China are taking is absolutely going to create a huge problem as peak oil becomes more and more obvious(ly already happened).
all the most recent technological advances have been in titillation. Siri is great, but where are the real alternatives to oil based transportation, plastic manufacture, and fertilizers? Being able to drill 5 miles under the ocean is pretty cool, but where is the technology to clean it up when it goes wrong and destroys an entire chunk of our oceans?
Resources are finite, but not scarce. Air and water are both finite resources, but their constant recycling make them abundant. It's our wasteful capitalist society of single-use, throw-away products that causes scarcity. We waste so much that could be reused and re-purposed. The only real scarcity is our labor, our ability to make something into something else. If we worked with nature to provide us the renewable resources it affords us and we devise a renewable system for manufactured goods and eliminate all waste, we would be a lot better off. Growth is just a buzzword to get people excited about making money in a booming industry that has no accountability towards the future. Perpetual growth is impossible in a world of finite resources where there is constant waste.
Capitalism is just burning resources, we need to create a resource cycle that can sustain us before we burn up all of our resources. We should not be piling valuable resources in a heap out of the sight of society. We should be breaking down everything to their core materials and using it to make new products instead of digging up more minerals, petroleum, and ore every day.
Mark, the problem about taxes is, that a vast majority of it isn't even going to public services and the operation of the government. It's going to pay for debt that the government creates every time they create new money because they keep borrowing from the Federal Reserve (a private bank, not a government office) with freaking more debt attached to each new dollar. And guess who owns these debts our taxes are paying for, the people running the Fed. The Rothschilds, Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc. The infamous "Money Trust" holds all the debts America owes, they are the same people not paying their fair share of the taxes because they created the tax system. You might think, "Hey, we owe a lot of debt to China though!" But the same people own all of the banks of the world.
We never even needed an income tax nor the Federal Reserve. In the years preceding 1913 and after Andrew Jackson killed the central bank in America, we were in the biggest economic prosperity we had ever seen (slavery had some to do with that though). Remember the roaring twenties? That was a boom the Money Trust created and the subsequent depression was their doing. The stock market crash was of little consequence on the economy (which served as a cover) as much as the banks contracting the money supply by drastic amounts by calling in old loans and denying new loans, thus giving them total control over our money. When you control the money you control the people.
So long story short, the tax system isn't for us, it's for the people we're in debt to and nothing more. They're so damn greedy and power hungry, they won't even support the system their elders created.
agreed. it is a never ending loop and it keeps getting worse as FED creates more money out of thin air.
FED should not be private and they should not have the right to create money that they cannot back up with the exact amount of gold reserve. any money that is not backed up by alternate gold reserve is DEBT.
unfortunately, this country would not have become so "rich" if not for this fake money which is now debt.
There is no money backed by gold. The gold is gone, our money is backed by debt entirely. A fiat currency is fine so long as we issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers.
Capitalism is an economic system where people have private property, contracts, and are free to trade goods and services to each other if they feel like it.
What part of that requires growth?
Response to the "Not the 99%" pic that gets posted once every 10 seconds
http://imgur.com/gallery/kamRX
He has scholarships, not everyone who goes to college can have one and that doesn't diffuse the ridiculous cost of college, even in public universities. Everyone else has to take out loans or go without. His situation is not a reasonable expectation of the norm.
"I expect nothing to be handed to me."
He has two scholarships. It's already been handed to him because someone believed he was worth it. Had he not been granted the scholarships, he'd have to take out loans like the rest of us or not go to college. He's not on any superior moral ground. This is a failed attempt to pile shame and guilt on those who protest against the system and a rather hypocritical one at that. This is just more dissenting rhetoric from those that haven't had to struggle without any help at all.
No, the key part of capitalism is profits, which you (conveniently?) left out. That profit comes from extracting value from the person who did the labor for someone else to keep. With profit being extracted, EITHER everything grows infinitely forever (impossible) or a portion of the population gets screwed/exploited. (and I'll give you a hint, it's the latter which is happening)
Is that your image? (of you I mean)
I believe you two are working under two different definitions.
You're thinking of capitalism in the sense of a Laissez-faire system, a free-market system.
He's thinking of it more in the sense of a system that's governed by capital accumulation.
Yours is more accurate in the classical sense, his is more accurate as far as what's actually going on today (and is called capitalism).
Unless I'm mistaken, and either of you actually uses a different definition.
Well, he's positing the free choice of exchanging goods and services, which is in no way unique to capitalism (and takes the teeth out of the system). Barter based economies by definition also have this. The only thing that makes Capitalism unique as an economic system is profits, which is what having private property enables.
I got 5 bucks that says he didn't have to go to public school...
No, I didn't leave it out. You're just wrong. What you're talking about is not a core feature of capitalism. A person trying to maximize monetary income will seek a monetary profit, but capitalism doesn't define what people should want.
NO , never.
you are living in your illusion that having debt is a good choice.
Im living in a culture that knowing well debt is jinx and bad thing. so glad i never live like that.
better i live in street with zero debt.
In classical economics though, when people talk about capitalism they're talking about a system where money is the medium of exchange. The basic premise is that money does more than let you know how much you pay for stuff, it's a way for you to vote with your wallet. Money is an essential ingredient to capitalism, which puts barter out of the scope of it. I suppose it's true that a barter society could be free-market. But the point is free-market capitalism.
It necessarily (by the classical definition) involves money, but profit has nothing to do with it.
I'm just trying to lay out the two different definitions being used here. I believe both are appropriate, but it gets confusing.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― John Steinbeck
Rage.
Clearly this person has an overly simplified view of what happened, how things are run and how things work. Lets check back in with this person when they've been looking for work for 6mo. Or they've wiped out their future plans because they became sick.
If you can't get half a dozen members of congress on the phone and get your personal agenda enacted into law by the end of the week then you are part of the 99% who have no voice in politics. You're part of the 99% who are dealt the most pain while other reap all the reward.
Just because you manage to scratch out a comfortable living doesn't mean the system is fair and balanced and working like it should. Personally I don't think you should have to get scholarships to cover 90% of the cost, or work 30hrs a week while in school. While there is some pride that can be taken in making the best of a bad situation that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to make it better.
Complacency and compliance are evil things...