Occupy Movement, Discussion

[Paradox]

I'm poor, give me free moneys Q_Q

[RULINGCHAOS]

I contributed a couple hundred posts on this subject on another forum that I belong to.

To the video:

If they were not obeying officers, then the officers were withing their power to use spray on them. Even though they appeared to be peaceful, they could still be breaking the law by disobeying the officers.

Could they have handled it differently? Absolutely. Kind of a dick move.

To the movement:

What are they protesting?  Capitalism?  Go sit in front of the Capital building in Washington.  

Too much student debt?  You don't HAVE to take those loans.

Too many corporations with too much wealth?  Stop buying their crap.  
That is the ONLY way you will get their attention.  NOT by sitting in your own filth in some park chanting and banging drums.

Separation of wealth?  If you had the wealth you would think differently.  Do something to get some wealth.  Petitioning the government for wealth redistribution will make everyone poor, not everyone rich.  A common misconception.

Want to see some of their demands?  Read these and break them down if you wish.

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This is one of the lists I found on the OWS website.

"Forum Post: Proposed list of OWS Demands

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Unionize ALL workers immediately.

Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality.

Institute a 6 hour workday, and 6 weeks of paid vacation.

Institute a moratorium on all foreclosures and layoffs immediately.

Repeal racist and xenophobic English-only laws.

Open the borders to all immigrants, legal or illegal. Offer immediate, unconditional amnesty, to all undocumented residents of the US.

Create a single-payer, universal health care system.

Pass stricter campaign finance reform laws. Ban all private donations. All campaigns will receive equal funding, provided by the taxpayers.

Institute a negative income tax, and tax the very rich at rates up to 90%.

Pass far stricter environmental protection and animal rights laws.

Allow workers to elect their supervisors.

Lower the retirement age to 55. Increase Social Security benefits.

Create a 5% annual wealth tax for the very rich.

Ban the private ownership of land.

Make homeschooling illegal. Religious fanatics use it to feed their children propaganda.

Reduce the age of majority to 16.

Abolish the death penalty and life in prison. We call for the immediate release of all death row inmates from death row and transferred to regular prisons.

Release all political prisoners immediately.

Immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Abolish the debt limit.

Ban private gun ownership.

Strengthen the separation of church and state.

Immediate debt forgiveness for all.

End the 'War on Drugs'."

http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-ows-demands/

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That sounds kinda crazy. So I found another one.

"1. Complete bans on federal political contributions, replaced by public campaign financing.
2. Reversal of the "Citizens United v. FEC" Supreme Court decision.
3. Combating Washington's "revolving door."
4. Bans on gifts to federal officials.
5. Tax reform – eliminating special carve-outs and increasing progressiveness.
6. Single-payer health care.
7. Increased environmental regulation.
8. Reduction of the national debt through a progressive income tax and elimination of corporate handouts.
9. Federal job-training programs.
10. Student loan debt forgiveness.
11. Immigration policy, including amnesty for illegals.
12. Recalling the U.S. military globally.
13. Education mandates and teacher pay.
14. Massive expansion of public works projects.
15. Spurring China to end currency manipulation.
16. Reenactment of the Glass-Steagall Act.
17. Refinance all underwater mortgages at 1% interest rate.
18. One-year freeze on all foreclosures.
19. Free air time for all political candidates who gather sufficient signatures.
20. Immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan."

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/money/occup...shows-ignorance

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This one makes a bit more sense.

And another one:

The "Occupy Wall Street" protesters have listed 13 proposed demands from their website.

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy"

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/waterc...-post-manifest/

Now this is genuine fodder for discussion.

[Rosti_LFC]

As a European it's quite interesting reading through a lot of those points and thinking "well we already have all of these anyway".

For the final set of demands, we almost have 1, we have 2, 3, 4 (in some EU countries, less so in others but still way cheaper than the US), 5 to an extent (though not as much as we should), the last part of 7 is bulls*** because the western world is screwed if we don't massively shift into nuclear power (which is incredibly safe despite the scaremongering negative press), we have 9 within the confines of the EU.

Quite a lot of them seem fairly unofficial (I'd hope) or created in a really naive way. A lot of them have a huge set of prerequisites that currently don't exist (you can't just impose a minimum wage hike which is that big without huge ramifications) or just seem totally fanciful - a six hour working day with six weeks paid vacation? I'm pretty sure even the French don't push for that sort of ludicrously relaxed work schedule.


Personally I think the occupy wall street is a bit dumb. Sure, banks might make excessive profits, but they're fundamentally crucial to modern life - without banks nobody would be able to buy a house or function in a meaningful way. Same goes for Wall Street and stock markets themselves - you can't enjoy all the perks of a capitalist system and then complain that the people who run that system are better off than you are. And anyone complaining about bail-outs typically doesn't understand the basics of how bail-outs work and what they're actually designed to do.

For me the occupy wall street seems to be a touch first-world-problems-ish, and it's people largely being ungrateful to the system that provided them with an awesome standard of life 10 years ago, but has since failed to maintain it.

Some of the points I agree with, and I feel that there are a lot of complaints from US citizens that are legitimate ones about the antiquated mechanics of the society and the long-term rejection of anything remotely socialist (despite the fact that it has proven to work pretty well in Europe, ignoring the Greek financial crisis which is the Eurozone and largely a separate issue).


Also inb4 Corrosive turns this into an argument on how governments are just evil and trying to screw us and Jesus is The Answer.

[DarthDuck]

This event/post gave me a ludicrous dream where I escaped from an execution and led a revolution while singing and dancing and also somehow evading the guards. Anyway......

Without lethal inflation, where does the money come from for mandatory paid vacations, shorter hours, and a tripled minimum wage? I believe something like that was going on in Greece and now that country is in a lot of trouble. How can we force our current generation to live with at least the luxury of the baby boomers if we are in an economic meltdown? Like Rosti was saying, the timing of attacking the banks is very bad.

My dream shows that I am all for this on a sentimental level, and I already expressed how I'm a bit jealous of the fun that the ones who got pepper sprayed had (I am not being ironic). But beyond being a nice idea, this seems to be a terrible idea (that was meant to be ironic).

[cubixcreature]

To the movement:

Too much student debt?  You don't HAVE to take those loans.

Too many corporations with too much wealth?  Stop buying their crap.  
That is the ONLY way you will get their attention.  NOT by sitting in your own filth in some park chanting and banging drums.

Separation of wealth?  If you had the wealth you would think differently.  Do something to get some wealth.  Petitioning the government for wealth redistribution will make everyone poor, not everyone rich.  A common misconception.

I couldn't agree more on student loans and supporting corporations, that's why I didn't mention these points in my posts. But I think these protests have raised awareness and that is a good thing. You may not know this, but many people, especially in this country, are very ignorant and really don't know jack sh** about any current events. But that's exactly what I've stopped doing, and the reason I'm not at the rallies. I've decided that I'm done buying any new goods, with the exception of food and art, because we already have way too much of everything and its unnecessary to be producing as much as we do. Also, used goods are just as good with most things, unless you need that pristine image of your material possessions for the first week of owning it before destroying it in a drunken stupor.  

But there are many things that we can't do much about by sitting at home and just not supporting corporations, I'm probably going down to the rallies soon to protest for environmental reasons. We are destroying this earth, and if we want even our kids to be able to inhabit it for their full lifetime then the way we abuse nature has to be changed very soon. We aren't the only animals on this earth that matter, and we sure as hell aren't the most important. We will only keep destroying the ecosystem if species keep dying off due to expansion and pollution.

For me the occupy wall street seems to be a touch first-world-problems-ish, and it's people largely being ungrateful to the system that provided them with an awesome standard of life 10 years ago, but has since failed to maintain it.

Some of the points I agree with, and I feel that there are a lot of complaints from US citizens that are legitimate ones about the antiquated mechanics of the society and the long-term rejection of anything remotely socialist (despite the fact that it has proven to work pretty well in Europe, ignoring the Greek financial crisis which is the Eurozone and largely a separate issue).

Also inb4 Corrosive turns this into an argument on how governments are just evil and trying to screw us and Jesus is The Answer.

Thank you for your constructive feedback. I would say yes, there are people only protesting first world problems and just want life to be made easier for them, which is silly. I believe an easy life creates boredom, depression, and promotes Mindless activity, and aside from that its a very selfish and ungrateful wish. But there are many people protesting these corporations because of outsourcing and supporting slave labor in Third World Countries and improper treatment of workers and so on. I don't believe you need more than $15,000 a year to survive as a single human a year in this country, in fact, I don't even make that much and am Independent of all financial aid (I'm not in school, but I'm still learning in vast amounts).

I also believe that Corrosive is entitled to his own beliefs, but know that I am not corrosive and that is not where I'm going with this thread =P

[Rosti_LFC]

But there are many people protesting these corporations because of outsourcing and supporting slave labor in Third World Countries and improper treatment of workers and so on.

Then those people should choose to protest in a different way. If you're protesting in unison with a body where the majority are protesting for something entirely different then you might as well not be protesting at all. That's part of why the Occupy Wall Street thing seems so dumb (and the copycat ones, such as the one in London). You see interviews with the people protesting and there's a huge range of mixed messages coming out. There are people who have legitimate concerns about the power of large banks and TNCs, and the concept that misregulation of a fairly small group of people can have such a detrimental affect on the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Then there are loads of other people who are just like "blah blah banks evil blah blah fat cats blah blah government sucks and can't do sh** blah blah I hate bail-outs blah blah" and clearly don't really seem to have a clue what they're really talking about, and don't seem to be protesting anything more significant than the fact that they are unemployed, and the people scapegoated for making them unemployed are still earning a decent wage. Americans (or Europeans) complaining about how they are poor because they're being exploited by rich people? Welcome to how most of the rest of the fu**ing world feels.

If you have a valid point to make but choose to make it from inside a group of people who aren't really making much sense, then people aren't going to hear it. You could go to a white supremacy rally and voice perfectly valid arguments against high levels of immigration, but people are still going to think you're just a racist. If you want to make an intelligent point then you shouldn't stand on a platform of idiocy.

[cubixcreature]

Then those people should choose to protest in a different way. If you're protesting in unison with a body where the majority are protesting for something entirely different then you might as well not be protesting at all.

I would agree that you should be protesting in a different way, but you can be doing both at the same time. You can be protesting by not supporting companies that outsource and such, but you can also be protesting by going down to these rallies and inform those who don't understand the dangers of outsourcing and the extreme conditions people are put through just so you can receive a $40 pair of Nike's that you'll probably lose or stop wearing in 6 months. Its f***ed up. I just can't see how the people knowledgeable of and those that created these type of work environments ever allowed it to happen, the nerve of some people.

[Rosti_LFC]

I would agree that you should be protesting in a different way, but you can be doing both at the same time. You can be protesting by not supporting companies that outsource and such, but you can also be protesting by going down to these rallies and inform those who don't understand the dangers of outsourcing and the extreme conditions people are put through just so you can receive a $40 pair of Nike's that you'll probably lose or stop wearing in 6 months. Its f***ed up. I just can't see how the people knowledgeable of and those that created these type of work environments ever allowed it to happen, the nerve of some people.

Because companies are never going to regulate themselves, and the level of government intervention and regulation in the US is far lower than in the EU or countries in SEA. Partly that's down to a far more anti-socialist environment, partly it's down to how US politics is far more based around financial backing and company lobbying these days than it is ideology.

If you put companies in an environment where they will make money if they exploit and/or take risks and the levels of potential retribution are fairly low, then they're going to do it. It's why sweat shops exist. It's why the whole current financial situation was allowed to happen. It's not even that all large corporations are evil and their CEOs have hearts of stone - some of these things (mostly stuff like sweat shops) are totally unintended and are just consequences of insufficient supplier management and supply chain control.

Company leaders will always try and keep their company profitable, usually at any cost. Often it's not even a selfish thing - obviously they're doing it for their own job security and reputation, but if their company folds then it'll hugely affect the lives of their employees, investors, and companies which have corporate links to theirs (as demonstrated by the fact that the fall of a few companies like Lehman Bros has screwed up a fair chunk of the global economy for years). There's a lot of pressure on them to perhaps turn blind eyes, take risks, maybe stretch the boundaries of what is ethical, and unless the government forbid them then they're probably going to. Heck, if they don't then one of their competitors almost certainly will and the net result is going to be the same anyway, just not in their favour.