Occupy Wallstreet?

Opinions anyone? The more I hear about it the more I appreciate it. Yeah, sure it's like the tea partiers, except these people seem to be more invested and willing to stay to make a point. It's all Rush and Beck can whine about lately, and despite the few advocating anarchy and communism, the main message seems to be about releasing this country from the strangle hold that business and corporations have on government. It's been a long time coming...

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Permalink Reply by eric stone on October 19, 2011 at 10:19am

This is now how I reply to all ads I get online from any and all vendors.

 

If you really want us to buy your products, how about not contributing to the campaigns of budget-slashing politicians who are killing are economy and our jobs.  If you're not already, then maybe you can tell your business acquaintances who are.

 

Eric Stone

Permalink Reply by Jedi Wanderer on October 19, 2011 at 12:35pm
Not bad Eric. Change it to "our economy and our jobs", and it's a pretty good retort.
Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on October 24, 2011 at 5:33pm

Too long!  The trend of stagnated wages started showing up in U.S. Census about 1975 or '80.  I bought my first computer with a statistical analysis program that year and loaded in some data from the Colonial period to the then present.  If one looked at standards of living for those very early days, workers, widows, orphaned children, elderly, disabled physically and mentally had terrible living conditions.  Things started to improve for working people after the Civil War and then the numbers really jumped during and after the Johnson presidency to higher standards for those who had been disadvantaged ... except the Viet Nam war siphoned off much of the upward mobility until the war ended.  The Cold War changed, wages stagnated, the upper 10% began to grow, working class flattened out and continue to this day. Working people and those who were saving for retirement and college for their kids, had to scramble.  Sadly, many chose to borrow money, then use credit cards with heavier loads than they could afford.  Housing values rose creating a sense of confidence until the bubble burst.  Now, with heavy debts, houses worth less than their mortgages, losing jobs, jobs going overseas, the growing numbers of people becoming millionaires and falling numbers of people falling below the middle class line, the whole economy stagnates, even those countries who benefited by business moving there from the U.S.  

 

Austerity program???? Someone has got to be kidding!!!!  We are looking at the wrong end of the beast.  People who work for wages, who live on pensions, the handicapped physically and mentally, and now the growing numbers of war wounded becoming dependent on the public purse, have worsening conditions while some very selfish, irrational, greedy, human beings call on others to be more austere. I wish I could laugh ... but I know of the suffering people experience now.  

 

Get off your "assterity" rants and start thinking critically!

Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on October 24, 2011 at 6:30pm
I agree with their basic message that our system has become so lopsided that it is inherently unfair - the huge companies and banks take immense risks and dump the losses on us - that's cronyism not capitalism.
Permalink Reply by Lorryslorrys on October 24, 2011 at 7:22pm
Well it is unfortunate that the capitalist experiment has ended up with cronyism. But I'm sure that's not capitalism's fault and capitalism works... in theory anyway.
Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on November 25, 2011 at 8:04am

Thinking about 'capitalism works...in theory anyway', we wouldn't undergo surgery if our surgeon couldn't prove that it would help.  Similarly, there is evidence of capitalism's strength in lifting millions upon millions of people out of poverty - along with the immense social costs, such as pollution and inequality, which to me are unacceptable.  So my view is we need to rebalance things, not discard them.

 

Permalink Reply by Allena Weber on October 24, 2011 at 8:26pm
I think it's great.I really admire them for protesting.
Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on October 24, 2011 at 11:37pm

Of course there are a lot of college students in the streets, that is what college students do.  Remember the anti-Viet Nam marches, or Civil Rights protestors, or L.A. riots, or Kent State murders, we can track the resistance movements through our nation's history ... Young people learn about freedom and justice growing up and at college age they begin to experience loss of freedom and injustice.  Protest!  Rebel! Oppose!  Confront!  It is the nature of the animal. 

 

I was part of the 1960s marches, I am too old and tired now to go any farther than my rocking chair. 

Permalink Reply by Grace Fitzpatrick on October 25, 2011 at 4:28am
College students also have schedules that allow for it and normally, they don't have other people relying on them for care (ie children and older parents).  Also, older folks do protest, they just do it in different ways like letter writing.  Frankly, if seniors particularly weren't effective protesters, they'd have lost Medicare and Social Security a long time ago.  Also, on the weekends, many non college students are protesting.
Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on October 25, 2011 at 11:40am
I agree on both college students and seniors.  And yes, seniors can do things like gather information at the computer, relay the information to others who are able to be marching and protesting.  Seniors can also gather signatures and have an excellent history of that effort.
Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on October 25, 2011 at 7:51am
@Lorryslorrys:  Marx highlighted the employer-worker conflict of interest and the whole boom and bust aspect of capitalism.  See plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#3:  "Although Marx's economic analysis is based on the discredited labour theory of value, there are elements of his theory that remain of worth. The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson, in An Essay on Marxian Economics, picked out two aspects of particular note. First, Marx's refusal to accept that capitalism involves a harmony of interests between worker and capitalist, replacing this with a class based analysis of the worker's struggle for better wages and conditions of work, versus the capitalist's drive for ever greater profits. Second, Marx's denial that there is any long-run tendency to equilibrium in the market, and his descriptions of mechanisms which underlie the trade-cycle of boom and bust. Both provide a salutary corrective to aspects of orthodox economic theory"
Permalink Reply by Park Bierbower on October 25, 2011 at 8:31am
Bot only that, but communism, marxism, was developed pre democracy in europe. It doesnt have a strong system of checks and balances like the us republic, and quite simply the concept of "all or nothing"in terms of ownership for means of production, either communism or capitalism, is childish at best. Capitalism is equally flawed as communism. Answers are almost never found at the extremes- a good mix would be completely nationalized infrastructure (that including all necessary services) which would provide a built in safety net, and allowing a"free"market to develop around production of "luxury" items, or non essentials.

Thisgoes with out saying that a large part of the ussr's problem was an economy developed on military production and agriculture, combined with an economy controlled not representatively but by authoritarians, seeking to maintain power. Idk, when looking at the larger picture, our little "democracy" is just as fundamentally flawed as the communist experiments.....

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