the 'Occupy' movement

Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/us/census-measures-those-not-quite-in-poverty-but-struggling.html?_r=2&hp

Market Pawn said:

stoicathos said:

stoicathos said: Real protesters stand for something. These guys are just standing against a system they don't understand.  

 Sto, that's a pretty definitive statement.  What makes you so sure they don't understand the system?  Are their tactics really so different from those of the Civil Rights protesters and the anti-Vietnam protesters of the 1960s.  I believe those folks understood what they were protesting, and, except for the fringe that these movements always draws out, these people also understand what they are protesting. 

At the same time, I agree with your point that part of their aim is to provoke an over-response on the part of authorities in order to portray those authorities in as poor a light as possible. 

These types of protests have long antecedents, including the Bonus Army of the early 1930s, who were driven across the Potomac by Douglas MacArthur and the draft riots in New York during the Civil War.

 You may not have been aware of this, but Sto is a follower of what I would call the Neo-"Federalist" movement, which is funded by the Koch brothers. (The Federalist Society, which has been recently courting Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Scalia)

The Federalists were quickly eradicated in the 1790's for the fact that they believed that corporate and wealthy interests had more rights than the people, Americans felt they too closely resembled the monarchy we'd just overthrown..

You'd be hard pressed to convince Sto that changing the Constitutions "3/5'" rule was the right thing to do, never mind civil rights.

Top Three Facts About the U.C. Davis Pepper Spray Incident:

3.  The chemical used was actually red wine from Oregon, not pepper spray.

2.  The incident could have been worse but most police officers in Northern California have had their weapons taken away since a BART transit officer shot a man to death and later claimed he believed he was using his taser.

1.  The event was actually a ritual during which the university informed the students that their tuition was going up again due to budget shortfalls.

Buffet,

Though I won't argue the well thought out merits of your argument, you might take a glance at a newspaper or watch the news every so often.

Unemployment is at 9%, (17% real unemployment), there are no jobs, this is not the "choice" these protesters have made, companies aren't hiring at a rate to surpass initial claims or population growth..

Meanwhile, corporate profits are at an all time historic high.

The problem isn't that "All the big businesses and jobs will move to other countries, inevitably leaving nothing but an impoverished economy.", the problem is that they've already done that.

A government provided college educated Chinese worker takes a salary of less than 1/20th that of an American college grad.

A large portion of the OWS protesters are college students & grads who cannot find a job that will at least pay their tuition because "All the big companies" have already sent the jobs off-shores on the cheap..when weighing the balance of consumer debt to wages... guess what?

We're already "impoverished".

I'm stuck waiting on my new account to link to my bank so I have time to kill reading posts like this and actually find it entertaining.

I myself am all for free speech and peaceful protest, right up until it interferes with the free speech of others or if the motivation to protest is false or those protesting are joined in just to be part of something or the majority do not know the true message. That seems to be the case in my neck of the woods.

Some chuckleheads occupied a bridge to delay traffic, police came out and directed traffic to go around and then the chief came out on camera and said (I'm paraphrasing) "you morons can sit out here and freeze tonight, we're not getting involved". After a few hours of boredom and no one listening to them, they considered it a success and marched to a nearby church. One of the 99 percenters was caught by a media crew later and he said "our goal was to be arrested on camera and that wasn't happenning so we moved on".

I find it strange how these movements started about the same time the President got his tax hikes mushed back in his face. Plus the protesters in my area were "folks out of work" yet they were all pretty much dressed nice, got bussed in from long distances away in $40K-$50K vans, had some pretty expensive flash lights and safety vests. They sure as heck didn't appear to be folks that were actually out of work, and I felt what they were doing was somehow being paid for or funded somewhere behind the scenes.

From my perspective, our economy has gown tremendously during the steel boom and then oil drilling and it would have almost zero growth since then if it were not for risk takers and entrepreneurs. We owe whatever growth we have in this country to them. I have no problem with the founders of such companies taking out gobs and gobs of cash. Our goverment already dictates what wages are fair and we have attorneys that are happy to file law suits against employers on the behalf of any part of the work force that has been mistreated. My only gripe would be against the fly by night CEO's that swoop in, do some job cuts, move some smoke and mirrors around and then pull a ginormous bonus. But that's the world we live in and I am willing to accept it since more companies are trending to better CEO practices.

Now if only we could start preventing kids from picking majors like horticulture, photography, literature, family studies, art history, English and animal science. The country would have far less unemployed.

Ploutos,

The only thing you state that I agree with is the futility of blocking a bridge, it serves no purpose when they should be occupying K street or outside a branch of a TBTF bank that caused all this.

On your "insights" about the way they dressed, are you saying they were dressed in Armani suits & designer shoes?

Or...are you saying that because they weren't wearing burlap bags they aren't in financial duress?

The premise for the entire movement has several causes, such as wealth disparity, which is an undisputed fact - while wages for the top 1% have tripled in the last thirty years, wages for the other 99% of the population have been flat and actually dropped 6% over the last decade.

Meanwhile, their taxes are at a fifty year low as the GOP discusses taking the loss in tax revenues out of medicare, social security or education, heating and food programs for the poor.

Costs of living have increased, especially in healthcare & education.

Globalization is the biggest contributor to this.

While an educated Chinese worker can live well on less than $15 a day, his healthcare and college education is provided to him by the government.

GE, CAT and thousands of other American multinational corporations can then save HUGE money by firing Americans and reopening shop in China, India and many other countries.

Meanwhile, the "free market" GOP absolutely refuses to allow our own government to intervene to even the slates, because our government is owned by the ones who have the money to buy them.

Ploutos, I think we can all agree on this -

Ploutos said:
It wouldn't matter what the argument is, it would all boil down to consumers not being able to do what they are supposed to do in this economic design.....consume. We're a country built on perpetual debt by design and there is no fix for it unless we all excercise the second ammendmant and make some serious changes in government. Afterall, the majority of our senate appear to either be the 1% or on their way to being the 1% and they in turn regulate the masses. Seems we need a "top down" approach here.

 I might suggest a FIRST amendment solution though, before we resort to the second amendment one (I know what you meant...couldn't resist)

On the FRE/FNM, CRA or GSE debate that borrowers caused the crisis, incorrect, if those loans alone had simply defaulted we'd have long since been through this.

The problem is the massive amount of fraudulent "triple A" rated assets that were pawned onto the market as a result of removing Glass-Steagall.

Please, read this article by Barry Ritholtz, it sheds light on my point and his research is thorough - http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/examining-the-big-lie-how-the-facts-of-the-economic-crisis-stack-up/

I might also suggest a quick look into what Fed chair through the Great Depression, Marriner Eccles once said in his memoirs - "Beckoning frontiers", regarding the way consumers are gradually forced into a dependency on debt to substitute a lack of wage growth, which he attributed to the root cause of the Depression - we're repeating this.

This brings me to the point on unions, unions have gradually become less and less present over the last 40 years, at the exact sae time middle class wages have fallen back to a growth rate of less than GDP.

Though I agree that a high school dropout shouldn't be making $75 an hour to work on a factory line (unless he'sa done extraordinary things to improve that line), I also think unions raise the bar for everyone.

FYI, I'm self employed, non-union my whole life, I'm also a Libertarian who believes personal freedom comes first, not corporate freedom or plutocracy.

Corporations are NOT people.

I keep forgetting how incredible my wisdom was when I was in my 20's, damn, I've gotten stupid.

Define "bling"?

You turned down 3 applicants, after offering them the opposrtunity to interview because you were unsatisfied with their degree's?

What's Your point?

so we have a treehumpster and a treeHampster....... weird.