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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Time for a welfare check on our good bud Rokjox and ensure he's not making
Molotov cocktails in his basement and breathing the fumes!
Remember Rokjox that the pen is mightier than the sword. So make a sign and protest like a responsible citizen.
Something like this message is about right for your sign.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Real incomes for average Americans (and judged by income, I'm included in that class) increased 40%, but the highest income level in any given year has increased by eight times as much.
So I'm supposed to be angry? Does it really matter how much the very highest income is in a particular year? Only if reducing their income increases mine. There is no evidence that this is the case.
I guess it matters if you want something for nothing. Many of the "OWS" protesters live off welfare money which comes from the top 1%. They should be happy the 1% has been as successful as it has, because the middle class tax base has not kept up.
OWSers frame this as a result of the rich being greedy because their incomes went up eight fold. But the middle class was greedy also: they demanded higher pay, more job security, more benefits and more safety in the form of regulation. The problem is they wanted it at a time when hungrier countries were coming up to speed. Now we have lost most of our manufacturing jobs, and the service sector jobs we have replaced them with do not pay nearly as well. The math here is very simple: it should come as no surprise that middle class wealth has stagnated.
How to get these jobs back? Cut out costly regulations, streamline the hiring process. Allow people to make less than minimum wage if they are learning a trade or skill. We have too many people with useless college degrees and not enough skilled workers. Allow companies to fire workers for any valid reason, without recourse. This will remove a barrier to hiring.
The other crucial ingredient is capital- we need a savings base again so small companies can get loans to grow. This part will be painful because it means raising interest rates. Of course, the Fed does not want to do this, because it means we will be paying hundreds of billions more in interest on the debt. But it is something we have to do if we ever want to achieve real growth again. Real growth, not speculative bubbles.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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The attacks on my last post make me wonder what I'm missing. All over OWS protests I've seen and read, including a post 17 before my last one on this thread, OWS supporters gripe about income disparity. Even in the liberal press, I read that OWS is a reaction to "corporate greed," whatever that means.
The letter I cited in my post is in today's Bee. You can read it if you doubt me. I'm merely responding to what supporters of OWS say. With no "official" platform on anything, judging the movement by what its participants actually say strikes me as a perfectly rational way to judge its foundations.
You're free, of course, to come to your own conclusions about what keeps people coming by the hundreds to OWS events. I'll continue to make deductions by what I see and hear from participants.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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The other crucial ingredient is capital- we need a savings base again so small companies can get loans to grow. This part will be painful because it means raising interest rates. Of course, the Fed does not want to do this, because it means we will be paying hundreds of billions more in interest on the debt. But it is something we have to do if we ever want to achieve real growth again. Real growth, not speculative bubbles.
Crack Addict, you hit on a problem too many ignore. The virtually non-existent interest rates have robbed the income of savers -- many of them retired, and most members of the "Greatest Generation" to which we pay such meaningless lip service. I personally know plenty of people (my wife's folks prominently) who relied on interest earnings for a significant part of their retirement. Unfortunately, with current policy, the only way nominal interest rates will rise is after unanticipated inflation. That will give them some income, but rob their principal. Shame on us!
John
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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You're free, of course, to come to your own conclusions about what makes hundreds of millions stay away from the OWS camps and continue to go about
making a living.
Hint on what we think OWS really is about.
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Jorroh
climber
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Jesus John, get a clue.
Yeah all about envy, I wonder where you got that piece of wisdom?
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jorrah, as I said, I get it from what the protesters say.
Where do you get that it's not?
John
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malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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Occupy is the new political reality.
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Jorroh
climber
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Dingus, I don't think Johns blinkers allow a vision of that width.
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Jorroh
climber
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Lolli
I guess one of the nice things about an event like OWS is that it brings out the very worst reactionary instincts in our resident conservatives. It certainly makes it easy to see why Weapons of Mass Destruction/ the fictional Saddam-Al queda link/ trickle down economics etc were such easy sales to these people. Get them in the right mindset and they'll willingly parrot all sorts of baloney.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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What an ignorant, bitter, uninformed piece of sh#t you are.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Coupled with the outrageous Supreme Court decision granting corporations peoplehood your damned right a lot of people are pissed.
Thanks for that legal wisdom.
So I guess laws restricting what newspapers can/can't report would be just fine, since newspapers are published by "corporations," now "people"?
Face it: you liberals are just mad that rich people are exercising their right to free speech and it's effective in getting relatively poor, stupid people to vote against their economic self interest, and that just burns you up!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Now I'm really confused. The 1% vs. 99% are corparations vs. poeple? Here, all along, I thought it was the richest people vs. everyone else. Silly me!
Then again, you said corporations weren't people, so how can they have emotions like greed?
While we're at it, please explain why if I want to sell something for the most I can get I'm greedy, but if I want to buy something for the least I can pay, I'm not.
The beauty of OWS is that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. "We are the 99%" looks like envy to me, but it obviously looks different to you.
john
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Example: Company A from Europe buys Company B from U.S. Company B was a successful start up, profitable and a couple hundred high tech strong. Company A was a publicly traded EuroD#@&%e company with a lot of borrowed cash on the table, to affect the 'market entry' purchase.
First thing Company A does is off shore more than half of the tech talent, never to return. They did so because to compete on a global scale they 'must' - their competition demands it and analysts will penalize the investors of Company A if they fail to do so.
In this way, investment groups become criminal gangs imo. Coupled with the outrageous Supreme Court decision granting corporations peoplehood your damned right a lot of people are pissed.
So what? When you choose to buy a computer, and you save $50 by buying one from China, do you want death threats and people protesting outside of your house? We should have the economic freedom to buy what we want. Jobs are not a human RIGHT. To keep a job we need to be able to do it better than the next guy. This is (and always has been) a fact of life. There is nothing at all criminal about it. As soon as we accept this and get back in the race the better off we will all be.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Roxjox, you idiot!
I was NOT talking about, or TO, YOU!
You and I are ok!
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Crack Addict, you hit on a problem too many ignore. The virtually non-existent interest rates have robbed the income of savers -- many of them retired, and most members of the "Greatest Generation" to which we pay such meaningless lip service. I personally know plenty of people (my wife's folks prominently) who relied on interest earnings for a significant part of their retirement. Unfortunately, with current policy, the only way nominal interest rates will rise is after unanticipated inflation. That will give them some income, but rob their principal. Shame on us!
John, you make a very good point, what the government is doing here is shameful. There is another issue at work here also though.
Interest rates have been pushed to below zero in real terms. This discourages savings and encourages speculation. Uncle Sam prints money and loans it to banks at nearly 0% and believes this keeps credit flowing. Again, the problem is they don't understand the difference between capital and money. If we are saving 10% of our paycheck at the bank, that is real capital that can be used to loan to small businesses (we have SAVED instead of CONSUMING). If we save a meager 1%, all that printing money does is tax the existing (1%) savings pool and forcibly redistribute it. That is why low interest rates do not seem to help a small company get a loan or a person borrow to buy a car - there is not enough capital to loan out right now, despite all the economic gobblygook you will hear from Bernanke.
This is the problem with government economists - they are "bad economists" according to Von Mises - they see what is openly visible but they ignore the hidden. The same with employment - when the Government creates a job, they see that as an increase in employment, but they do not see what is lost by taking money out of the private sector.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Rox, did you see my reply?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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this society of idiots fixated on unregulated profit driven free-market corruption may very well decide that clean water is not worth their time and money... they may decide that the free-market has more influence over flooding and water management than storage-discharge relationships and geology... they may decide their new crop of useless business management students don't need any natural science education.
http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking.aspx
Here is a list of Countries ranked by Economic Freedom. The countries at the top of the list have the least financial regulation, on average. There is a VERY strong correlation here with prosperity.
Now look again at the list, and tell me which countries have cleaner air, water, etc. - the ones at the top of the list, or the ones at the bottom?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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The whiners at OWS have misdirected angers.
They should not be angry at corporations or Wall St. They should direct their anger at gov't (both parties lately).
Too much gov't interference in some areas - like encouraging home loans to unqualified people, ridiculous labor and manufacturing regs that do nothing but force jobs overseas.
Too liitle gov't in others - like not doing their jobs in regulating the free market properly, or worse, repealing common-sense regulatory measures.
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