Arguably it's arrogant for those people to pretend to speak for 99% of the Americans, too.Originally Posted by GGT
Arguably it's arrogant for those people to pretend to speak for 99% of the Americans, too.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Technically, 99% of Americans means the voice of almost everyone. That's why the protesters don't have just one message.
So, technically, the top 1% could also 'speak for' 99% of the peopleAnd I could speak for the entire world.
Your point makes no sense.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Of course they wouldn't support it; as evidenced by the recent GOP and Teaper debates, the public, the people, support executing people and letting 30-year-old mothers to die in their hospital beds. Sorry, to be dragged out of said beds to die on the street, but you get the general gist of it. What means do we have available to have a rational discourse with people bent on muddying up the pool, and using the democratic machinery against itself? The ways they are doing this are manifold and we've discussed some on here, but suffice to say a) it's very hard to make informed decisions based on your own actual best interests 2) religion and cultural tradition are rather shamelessly exploited to move opinion. The failed Tsarist Russia didn't manage to out-wit the Bolsheviks doing this, Weimar Germany was a democracy quite happy to eat itself alive.
That's the biggest thing here. In order to be democratic, we have to listen to everyone, but when a good portion of people want to stop being democratic, what's the enlightened response? Join up, or emigrate? What? And changing nations only helps so much, as the globe is becoming smaller and smaller and the same business interests are keen to subjugating peoples on all continents. (It should be noted that most of the vocal support of this are the people also being subjugated!)
There's a whole host of systematic, institutional problems at work both over there and on this side of the pond that make parliamentary work difficult, and the interface between the man on the street and the 'Man in Washington' is a very confusing affair. And that man on the street has no interface with his 'corporate overlords', at all, which I imagine can be rather frustrating. Now before our favourite Holocaust co-opter flames me, this isn't to suggest that there's some conspiracy afoot, nor that the people manipulating these things for their own financial benefit are some sort of ghoulish untermenschen. They're acting on their own best interests, as we should assume people to do! The point is, those interests generate unhealthy side-effects (or should I say ripple-effects?) throughout the rest of society, and it seems that 'we' as a people lack the means of combating those effects. Shit, we can't even have a discourse on the subject!
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I really haven't wanted to wade into this thread for obvious reasons, but I thought I'd interject with one or two interesting observations:
I was listening to NPR this morning, and they had a short segment on how the 'Occupy Wall Street' protests are organized/working, what their stated goals are, who they are composed of, etc. The piece spend much of its time making fun of the protesters - implying that their method of direct democracy for making decisions was hopelessly disorganized, that their goals were confused and poorly defined (I believe 'overthrow the government' figured in there somewhere), that their ambitions were ridiculously small time (they focused on a lengthy debate about whether they should spend $2k to buy some sleeping bags), and that the protesters were mostly composed of your normal collection of young left wing nutjob protesters ('dreadlocks, camouflage pants, etc.' were their specific language in describing most of them IIRC). I was shocked that NPR would have aired such a piece, even when their sympathies were ostensibly with the nebulous goals of the protesters. That, more than anything else, suggests to me that there is some truth to the criticisms of this 'movement' as extremely poorly defined and largely marginal. Doesn't mean it doesn't warrant some press attention, but I was really surprised at NPR's coverage.
On the flip side, a well-heeled postdoc I know whose entire social milieu is upper-middle class Northeast intellectuals/liberals was telling me about her friends in Boston who were getting all fired up about the protests and being involved in their own small version up in MA. Clearly the message of (perhaps vague) discontent resonates with different aspects of society - the extreme progressive/socialist, the young soon-to-be professional, the older disaffected worker. It isn't a cohesive movement, no, but it does represent quite a bit of dissatisfaction with how the country is currently being run from a number of perspectives.
These movements can gain strength and coalesce into something real - just look at the Tea Partiers! I think a potentially better example, though, is Israel's latest upheaval in the 'social justice' protests this summer. It started with small groups of middle class, educated, 20-something workers who were fed up with the cost of housing (and later, childcare/etc.) pitching tents along a main drag in Tel Aviv - many of them might be called 'hipsters' (er, maybe). Yet their message resonated - into the execrable state of Israeli education, increasing living costs, falling taxes on the wealthy, perceived inequalities in society, etc. It resonated with a wide swath of educated, disaffected Israelis across the country who felt that a fundamental social contract had been abrogated. And it ended up with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets (peacefully, as a rule) around the country demanding comprehensive change.
The Israeli movement came under a lot of criticism - first, for being ill-defined, leaderless, and composed of relatively privileged educated elites. Later, liberal papers like Ha'aretz panned their unrealistic proposed budgetary changes as mathematically unsound. There were critiques that the protests were orchestrated by various left wing organizations/leaders. But at the end of the day, they clearly struck a chord, and there's something to be said about galvanizing hundreds of thousands of boring, well-mannered middle class people to make a point. Who knows if these protests have the same power, but the point is that they don't have to be toothless or irrelevant.
Dissatisfaction, disenfranchised, disillusionment....the social contract abrogated, just as wiggin said. So many perspectives and groups make it look "disorganized", and the media doesn't know how to cover that kind of thing. They traditionally send reporters to ask the 30 second sound byte, "What is your complaint? What are your goals? What are your demands" with a take-me-to-your-leader and show us your Manifesto approach.
I've read things showing they're very organized, with hubs like a welcome center, food and water stations, even child-care and a Lost and Found. And organizing into sub-groups like tax reform, education reforms, even new third parties, etc. wiggin's also right that these things can gain strength and coalesce, over time. With cross-over from Tea Party activists who originally used their anger and frustration to have a voice, too.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...0,933662.storyOut of the 25 largest cities in the U.S., New York is the most unequal when it comes to income distribution. In New York, the top 1% of households claimed 44% of all income during 2007 (the last year for which data are available). That's almost twice the record-high levels among the 1 Percenters nationwide, who claimed 23.5% of all national income in 2007. During the housing bubble that ended in our current calamity, the average income for the 1 Percenters in New York went up 119%.
Meanwhile, the number of homeless in the city rose to an all-time high last year, with 113,000 men, women and children retreating night after night to municipal shelters. The real hourly median wage in New York between 1990 and 2007 fell by almost 9%. Young men and women age 25 to 34 with a bachelor's degree and a year-round job in New York saw their earnings drop 6%. Middle-income New Yorkers — defined broadly as those earning between $29,000 and $167,000 — saw a 19% decrease in earnings. Almost 11% of the population in New York, about 900,000 people, lives in what the federal government describes as "deep poverty," which for a four-person family means an income of $10,500; the average 1 Percenter household in New York makes about that same amount every day.
Lazy opinion journalism backed by seriously BS numbers. New York's homeless is maybe in the tens of thousands, not 113,000. 40k was a peak of last winter's shelter census.
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.o...es/basic-facts
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dhs/html/press/pr031910.shtml
But for the 20th time, money isn't a zero-sum game. Just because someone has a lot of cash doesn't put you at a disadvantage unless someone with a $40k salary is interested in the same Fendi bag as someone with a $400,000 salary.
Purchasing power, growth, jobs, etc. matters more.
I agree, the media doesn't quite know how to "cover" this. I also think it's a mistake to interpret the protesters as being "anti-rich", "wealth envy" or even "anti-Wall Street".
Hasn't there been enough credible data linked in this forum, for you to acknowledge the stagnant wages, decreasing purchasing power, employment and retirement instability for themiddle classesmiddle quintiles....for the last two decades? Of course, if you don't admit there's a problem in the first place, it's easy to dismiss the whole thing as immature hippies asking for free stuff.
It's easy to dismiss either way, actually. ", life is hard!!!1"/"
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
In praise of Wall Street protesters
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d5951...#axzz1a0ecK300
There's more than one way to view this, ya know.
I'm curious, did you intend to use both those links to counter the LA Times excerpt, or did you provide the first link as an example of "BS numbers"?
They should have clarified that that number refers to the total number of people that year who experienced homelessness of some duration and had to sleep in emergency shelters provided by the municipalities.
Re. money, when it comes to homelessness we are of course not talking about fendi bags but rather about affordable housing. Last time we discussed homelessness I believe we found that a lack of affordable housing is a prime driver of homelessness in the US and I can't imagine that particular problem is small in a city like NYC.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
That's why the NYC guy who formed The Rent is Too Damn High party was (temporarily) awesome. Housing in NYC is very expensive, in comparison to other urban cities, even when things like public transportation are factored in. That's another part of the American Problem dilemma.
I found it interesting (and missing the biggest point) when Chicago's Board of Trade high-rise employees put posters in the windows, strung across maybe a half city block of street-side windows), saying, "We Are Part of the 1 %".
They're not, they're actually part of the 99% (secretaries, human resources, account managers, entry-level traders, data collectors, IT units, compliance specialists, para-legals, CPAs, etc.)
this board does have a slight problem with understanding homelessness. I remember the last time it came up I had to argue the very basic idea that you can't always point out the homeless based on their physical appearance.
Think it had something to do with a homeless doll people were complaining looked to clean.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 10-06-2011 at 09:22 PM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Who is the ultimate arbiter of who is or isn't in the 99%, or the remaining 1%? Are there defined and determined rules for who does and doesn't qualify, and are those standards even remotely meaningful?That's why the NYC guy who formed The Rent is Too Damn High party was (temporarily) awesome. Housing in NYC is very expensive, in comparison to other urban cities, even when things like public transportation are factored in. That's another part of the American Problem dilemma.
I found it interesting (and missing the biggest point) when Chicago's Board of Trade high-rise employees put posters in the windows, strung across maybe a half city block of street-side windows), saying, "We Are Part of the 1 %".
They're not, they're actually part of the 99% (secretaries, human resources, account managers, entry-level traders, data collectors, IT units, compliance specialists, para-legals, CPAs, etc.)
The point (as I see it) is to encourage masses of people, including "rich people" that don't fall into the Forbes 500 multi-billionaire status, to find their common complaints and Unity borne of anger and frustration: dissatisfaction with business as usual, political polarity and extremism, a status quo that's not working, lack of ethics and/or vision from our "leaders", the need for re-structuring our basic foundations of Education and Infrastructure *and Innovation*, and a deep desire in figuring out how to move FORWARD. Instead of being mired in the same damn muck of the last two or three decades.
You seem to be saying that the status quo sucks, and I agree! You seem to think that if enough people think the status quo sucks that it will get better, but it's not that people aren't united enough in their frustration, it's that what to do with that frustration that doesn't make sense. In fact, if the only metric you are using is anger, frustration, and dissatisfaction with business as usual, why can't the Forbes 500 be party to the 99%?
For that matter, why can't Al Qaeda be party to the 99%?
Personally, I'm actually surprised it's taken "this long" for America to see mass protests in the streets. I'd thought it would begin earlier than it did, especially after the '07--'08 financial crisis and bail-outs. Maybe it makes perfect sense, though---things take time to truly Trickle Down.
IMO the Tea Party movement, and the 2010 elections were the first visible fits and starts, symptoms of the greater dissatisfaction with the status quo. "Throw the bums out, clean house". But "politicians", in particular the GOP, didn't assess things from the greater population view, but from their own desire to get elected. And now we have a paralyzed House of Representatives and Senate, and multiple millions of citizens angry that nothing moves forward. Checks and Balances are one thing, but this kind of polarizing gridlock is actually dangerous.
I'm gonna ignore the comment about Al Qaeda because they're terrorists, and I don't believe American Civil Disobedience is terrorism.
Civil disobedience isn't terrorism, but the definitions you are using to describe who does and doesn't belong to a movement are so vague, so nebulous, that it might as well encompass everyone. Up to, and including, terrorists.
I'm not the one who picked the terminology (Occupy Wall Street, We are the 99%, Occupy America, or the like.) But I do think "most" people could find a place and identify within this movement, somewhere. "Most people" means a majority, and they are angry or Mad as Hell and not willing to stand by idly or unrepresented. Especially since our elected representatives aren't doing much. Or are seen as doing the wrong things.
I think probably everyone posting HERE is also part of the 99%. Most of this forum's threads are expressing dissatisfaction at fundamental levels, and the zit is almost ready to pop.
Okay, so let's say this goes through. Everyone gets really angry and agrees to join this movement and try to disrupt the economy until the economy and everything else gets better.
Now what?
Raw emotion is a stupid basis for a movement.
I'm not convinced the "movement" is based on raw emotion, or trying to "disrupt the economy", though. I think what we are seeing is what "delayed response" looks like. We're accustomed to that delayed and reactive response from Washington, but not from the populace.
It's interesting to read about the Populist movement that didn't really take hold until the early 30s, even though it began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and similarities between Federal Reserve monetary policy, and government fiscal policy. History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
They're not based on that goal, and they probably haven't even thought things through enough to realize that's the only possible end result if they succeed in what they're doing. It's just the only thing they seem to agree that they should be doing. "Occupy Wall Street", it's right in the name.
I've often thought a problem was the opposite. Politicians are too responsive to the heightened emotions of any given minute, and make knee-jerk decisions without thinking about them rationally. But really, it's the voters who are to blame for that, since we vote people out who fail to make the knee-jerk decisions that correspond with our knee-jerk reactions to events.We're accustomed to that delayed and reactive response from Washington, but not from the populace.
Trying to tie this back, raw emotions are never good in politics. They should stay separate. I'm not supporting any movement that's so ridiculously poorly directed and defined, except that they're angry about something, somewhere, for some reason.
We could probably ask local vendors and merchants in any place these protests are taking place, and they'd probably say "business is up!". Whether it's pizza delivery, porta-potties, or some savvy small business selling a colored plastic wrist band 'for the cause'. ie, NYC hasn't seen their economy suffer at all, in fact, it's almost a tourist attraction.
The only reason it started @ Wall Street is because that's the ubiquitous title for the general US Financial and Banking Industry, and because it's an important US urban hub. Probably wouldn't have had the same connotation if it was....Occupy Greenwich, Connecticut!
Politicians are good at responding to knee-jerk, short-term emotions, I agree there. But those politicians mostly plan their campaigns, elections, and RE-elections over the course of years. But they've got huge and bulky machinery behind that, so it's like turning a barge around on a dime--it can't be done.
Tampa's protest started today.
Drove through chants of "we were sold out", gave a few honks, got a few window taps and supportive anti-fox cheers thanks to my bumper sticker.
Noticed a depressing lack of topless hippies
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Even Fox News might be seeing the Light! They gave unprecedented criticism to Hank Williams, Jr.
Cain doesn't understand the protests, either. If you're not a millionaire, or don't have a job, blame yourself, he says. But he admits to not having any facts, to back him up, even though he blames things on the Obama administration.
So, then, not only is the term so broad that it's useless, it's also broad enough to be patently self-contradictory and/or extremely dishonest? Good to know, I guess.
Well, given what one of the marks of maturity is, I think it does validate a lot of the pointed criticisms about the "movement" - little more than petulant children, whom we'd better hope don't actually influence politics.
So, the movement would be having the opposite of its intended effect, then. <sigh>We could probably ask local vendors and merchants in any place these protests are taking place, and they'd probably say "business is up!". Whether it's pizza delivery, porta-potties, or some savvy small business selling a colored plastic wrist band 'for the cause'. ie, NYC hasn't seen their economy suffer at all, in fact, it's almost a tourist attraction.Whadda bunch of unmitigated morons.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
Cain, it's disingenuous of you to suggest that people can't be Mad as Hell and want things to change. You, yourself, emigrated to the US based on such self-disclosed assessments. That was your way of initiating "change" and bringing those expectations with you. For those of us who don't want to leave the US, because we still believe this is the best place (for many reasons), civil disobedience is part of our history. What else would you have us do instead?
People be civilly disobedient, and even mad as hell, and still not use raw emotion as the basis of their movement.
They can also refer to facts. This graph is from WikiCommons, using Census data. If it's wrong then some other source could prove it wrong. Using, uhm, Census data? Or would it mean more if thousands or millions of people took to the streets, so every "number" became a real person?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Un..._1947-2007.svg
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