Occupy Wall Street - Page 86

On October 19 2011 08:04 Myles wrote:

Just think about it. Nearly the entire continent of Africa is dirt poor. There's over 2 billion people in China and India that are lucky to make more then a few dollars a day. And there's a couple hundred developing countries where there only a smallest fraction of people make a decent living compared to the 42 developed counties where even there most people make well below 50k. I can't blame people for wanting to better their lives, but compared to the majority of the people on the planet, we're living like Gods here in the US.

On October 19 2011 07:38 Ghostcom wrote:


Yes it actually does. Because WHY do some people end up in the top 1 percentile? Because if they have worked for it - who are you to take it away from them because you failed at achieving what they did?

On October 19 2011 04:12 domovoi wrote:

I'm not telling people to stop protesting, I'm telling people to start protesting for something that will actually fix the problem. Not a single Republican feels threatened at all by the OWS movement, and that is just pathetic. This is in stark contrast with the Tea Party, who was able to shift the Republican party and Congress as a whole to the right. They had a simple message: object to anything that Obama supports. And the ramifications have been staggering.


It's paralyzed because of Republicans, who are empowered by the Tea Party. Not Americans in general, but a sizable, very vocal group.


It's better than the status quo, but a lot of the good features had to be taken out because of, yes, the Republicans! Even though THEY ONLY HAD 40 SENATORS.


Which again had to be reduced because of the Republicans. And need I remind you that theoretically, from 2008 until 2010, the Republicans should not have had any say in the manner?!


Are you telling me the OWS is against the jobs bill?


I'm not a fan of fiscal stimulus, but I think the government should at least give it a shot, because frankly you have to be a biased ideologue if you are utterly convinced it will or will not work. More importantly, I'm a big believer in monetary stimulus (as is basically every other credible economist), but the Republicans and the Tea Party have created a political environment that makes it impossible for the Fed to stimulate.

Why the hell should we worry about the debt right now? American debt has a negative interest rate! People want to PAY the US government to loan it money. Moreover, long-term, it is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who have offered serious solutions to the debt problem. A solution that doesn't even consider tax increases is not a serious solution.


No, the answer is simple. It has nothing to do with corporations. Why the fuck would corporations care about the budget, except to the extent that not fixing it will hurt the economy in the long-run and corporations hate it when the economy sucks? No, the culprit is the Tea Party and the Republican politicians they empower. They have absolutely zero interest in reducing the deficit. The only thing they are interested in is lowering taxes (especially for the rich) and reducing benefits for the poor. They have no interest in addressing the funding side of the equation. They pay lip service to "reducing spending." The last time we had a Republican-controlled government, they raised government spending.

On October 19 2011 06:26 Stirbend wrote:


This is like saying any solution to getting my credit card debt that doesn't include a pay raise isn't a serious solution. Raising taxes in a stressed economy is dumb. Raising taxes is also a very short sighted way to get money. And when we are talking about getting rid of debt on the massive scale we have to, raises taxes in general turns out to be just plain moronic because you're not getting rid of it anytime soon.

I also can't take seriously any financial solutions from a party that goes against what economists are saying somewhere between 90 and 100% of the time. As long as Democrats cling to keynesian economics, no one with a brain is going to take them seriously.

On October 19 2011 04:12 domovoi wrote:

I'm not telling people to stop protesting, I'm telling people to start protesting for something that will actually fix the problem. Not a single Republican feels threatened at all by the OWS movement, and that is just pathetic. This is in stark contrast with the Tea Party, who was able to shift the Republican party and Congress as a whole to the right. They had a simple message: object to anything that Obama supports. And the ramifications have been staggering.


It's paralyzed because of Republicans, who are empowered by the Tea Party. Not Americans in general, but a sizable, very vocal group.


It's better than the status quo, but a lot of the good features had to be taken out because of, yes, the Republicans! Even though THEY ONLY HAD 40 SENATORS.


Which again had to be reduced because of the Republicans. And need I remind you that theoretically, from 2008 until 2010, the Republicans should not have had any say in the manner?!


Are you telling me the OWS is against the jobs bill?

On October 19 2011 14:38 Suisen wrote:
Thanks for that post, TanGeng. Now I don't have to make it. Kind of get bored telling the same people the exact same thing while they keep ignoring it. Someone called Domovoi's post 'good'. To me he seems out of touch with reality. I can't see how he can say the things he does and be so wrong about them based on political differences.

This is a protest first and foremost against the democrats and Obama. A protest against all the compromises Obama tried to make vs the republicans when he didn't even have to. Obama used the republicans as an excuse to go against the people that put him into office and to give the business interests what they wanted.

Obama was elected to do certain things. He just outright refused to do them. He lost his mandate. If the protesters want to close the gap between the rich and the poor in the next presidency, they need to get rid of Obama because no current republican candidate will either.
Ron Paul's idea will give corporations free reign and dismantle democracy. Right now you can use your vote to restrain corporations. But maybe Ron Paul in office to destroy everything is better than the status quo. I am not sure. But I also think he's way too old ignoring everything else.

And considering how assassinating American citizens based on a decree is surely an impeachable offense, I suggest the American people use that as an excuse to get rid of him.

Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).

On October 19 2011 15:45 Velr wrote:


Did i see this right?
These are "extreme"-leftist demands in the US?

Most of the western world probably calls this stuff "basic rights".... Fun stuff when something like this comes from your "leftist"-party...

On October 19 2011 15:58 Ryuu314 wrote:
As for corporations, I just think is disgusting that the bigwigs of the financial sector got nothing but slaps on the wrists for bombing the economy when they knew their actions were irresponsible and would explode the economy.

On October 19 2011 16:14 Keone wrote:
Quotes like this make me disgusted. Sure there are idiots in the financial sector who need to get kicked the hell out, but everyone's so fixated on Wall Street that it's just sad.

Ask someone who really knows finance and has been there. It isn't Wall Street that's the real problem. It's the regulators. AKA the idiots in Politics who know JACK SHIT about Finance, but make stupid bills and movements with stupid ideologies when in fact every single thing they do messes up the economy.

On October 19 2011 16:14 Keone wrote:


Quotes like this make me disgusted. Sure there are idiots in the financial sector who need to get kicked the hell out, but everyone's so fixated on Wall Street that it's just sad.

Ask someone who really knows finance and has been there. It isn't Wall Street that's the real problem. It's the regulators. AKA the idiots in Politics who know JACK SHIT about Finance, but make stupid bills and movements with stupid ideologies when in fact every single thing they do messes up the economy.

Fourth, corporations aren't democratic entities. This IS a problem.

Thirdly, the big banks did break the law. Also, insider trading is huge. Almost everyone that wins at this casino that is wall street, has insider information. And this is just one example of illegal activities. Betting against your clients and tricking them into losing money is surely illegal. This kind of fraud was not only widespread but not even seen as fraud even after the events. The financial sector is not only broken and immoral. It is corrupt to the core.

Don't give me the argument that not all corporations are bad, that some do good things, that we need corporations. This is besides the point. You can have benevolent and wise kings. That's no argument for monarchy. We also need things like corporations. We need these kinds of organizations of people doing business.
The point is they need to be democratic. How to do that is another question. But the realization is that the current system of corporations need to be changed. This besides the whole bank/financial sector thing.

Fifth, free markets don't provide social justice.Free markets are very good at what they do. And what they do is create profit. And yes, we need profit. We need greedy people. In fact, we will always have greedy people. But we also need social justice. We need a rich and healthy society. We don't need one that's just very very rich.
We need a system that can provide this, is democratic and is fool proof and can't have big dramatic failures.
The free market can't provide us this. We need to do other things to make sure of this. And these things will make markets less free and they will make us generate less profit. But that's what we want.

I think you miss the point. This isn't personal for all of Wall Street. One point is that the whole financial sector, the whole of Wall Street, is just damaging period even in the best case. They don't produce any products. They just gamble on random numbers. Imagine if poker players loaned all the money of all people, businesses and countries and did nothing but play poker games with the money. Because that's exactly what it is. What does that produce or gain anyone? Nothing. In the best case it is a huge brain drain.

Many smart people work in the financial sector. Many talented people want to get degrees in economics or finances rather than physics or engineering. It's a big cancer for the whole economy.

Sixth, there's too many people in the world. We are consuming the earth right now free of cost. We are consuming at a fraction of the true cost. This means economic growth is actually bad on the long term. The bigger the economy, the bigger the damage.You can say that you don't like this all day long, but you will have to accept. We are on a free lunch right now. We may be the richest generation in world history. Generations after us may be the firs generation that have it worse than their parents
The idea that we can have continuous economic growth is silly and impossible and we need to accept that. People in India and China will want to eat meat, travel across the world, drive cars, etc.
We are close to 7 billion people right now. Talking about reducing population growth has been a big taboo so far. Governments that propose policies that implement population control provoke anger. And in a sense rightly so as they almost always infringe human rights I would strongly support.
So since we can't expect growth to stop anytime soon, we even more so have to look at reducing the demand we put on the limited resources we have.

We have G8s and G20s where world leaders talk. But none of them even dare to propose visionary plans for the future. Nothing changed since the financial crisis. Nothing really is done about climate change. No one has proposed a modern vision on the banks. Or on new regulations. Let alone forcing corporations by law to be democratic.

Hey, financial sector! Hey, you guys earn a lot of money, drive fancy cars, live in expensive houses. And what do you do for it? Yeah I don't know, sounds like you're getting paid too much for doing nothing! Spread the wealth around or I'm not gonna stop protesting here. People before dollars, dude!

On October 19 2011 17:59 Pillage wrote:


You've gotta be kidding me. Most people simply just don't have the knowledge to make the decisions to guide a multinational corporation. You may not like this fact, but its true, and that's why the people up top call the shots. Do you really want the inefficiency of Democracy to take root in businesses whose purpose is to make money and pay your salary? The entire method of business ownership + advancement through merit would fall apart if this was enacted. It would be, in short, disastrous for the private sector, as well as the public sectors who take their cut of the cash through taxes.