You don’t believe those with political power and those with financial power are in collusion at the expense of the majority? It must be safer for you to dismiss them as entitled potheads than answer why its fair the banking industry made 13 billion last year loaning money to the government the Fed gave them for .01% interest.
Still does on practically every one of his podcasts. He hasn’t changed at all. He has always said he had a pathetic background.
Demand exceeds supply and the price increases. Who could have ever figured that out? Alternatively, the government subsidizes something and the price goes up. Universities are going to charge whatever they can. News at 11.
Everyone gets one and only one vote. If 99% of the country is really pissed at the status quo, why do they routinely re-elect the same Congresscritters year after year? A more parsimonious answer is that the Occupiers don’t actually represent 99% of the population.
Well, guys, guess that’s it, then. Picked a bad slogan. Reckon that pretty much finishes us. But thanks for that, John. Painful as it is, its good to get the stern truth, so we don’t waste any more time. Damn. Stupid, stupid slogan!
I’m on record as saying it’s a good slogan. But if you think it’s no good, you’re certainly free to express that.
The warm sunshine of your approval gladdens our hearts and lightens our burdens.
How can America transition to a knowlege based economy when knowledge is even more mobile than manufacturing? You don’t even need to ship it, the people with expertise are already hooked into the Web. What America is transitioning to is a service based economy. Those are the jobs that you can’t outsource. Selling each other haircuts instead of building things isn’t the way to remain an economic power. Either the USA will change their disasterous trade policies or fewer and fewer people here are going to be able to afford services… with harsh consequences for most Americans… whether they have college degrees or not.
Are you denying that opportunity is becoming harder and harder for most Americans to find? I’m finding that hard to believe.
If it’s all so obvious to you, surely you understand why this angers and frightens people? I mean, explaining that the lions are just hungry wouldn’t make the Christians feel any better about their fate.
Surely you don’t believe that everyone has equal political power. Surely you understand how gerrymandering and the 2 Party System leaves voters with few choices. Surely you understand that both parties support the status quo (except sometimes when changes make the rich richer).
Are the Occupiers claiming 99% of Americans agree and support them? The number is based upon the large and growing disparity in wealth between the top 1% and the rest of us. I haven’t meet any Occupiers but surely their point is that they are representing the 99% by standing up for us.
Because there’s no replacement that isn’t also advocating the same bullshit. Even the Democrats are favoring non-Keynesian economics at this point, trying to reduce spending before we’ve completely recovered from the recession.
And, frankly, you’re misrepresenting what Occupy has been saying. They’ve never said that 99% of people agree with them. They merely say they are the part of the 99% that are willing to stand up for themselves, rather than sit back and say that it’s “just the way it is.”
And, again, I point out that they are a big enough crowd that the candidates are vying for their support. Romney’s done it. Obama’s done it. Paul has done it. They may not have the entire 99% on their side, but they do seem to have power.
I really wish people would quit harping on this. This is liberal economics here. This is the government stepping in and keeping the banks from failing. Of course the banks are going to produce profit from something specifically designed to keep them from going under because they weren’t producing profit.
The problem is in what happened to create the recession, not what happened that actually halted it.
I don’t believe all politicians and all bankers make their livings finding ways to cheat every US citizen out of as much money as possible, because that’s asinine. We live in a free, open society here in the US and we have accountability and a large degree of transparency. Not to mention democratic elections.
Let me be blunt: If what the OWS idiots are saying is the blanket, jingoistic, class-warfare nonsense that capitalism is just inherently corrupt and we need to move the US towards socialism, I would not only say that’s ludicrous but its also treasonous and the National Guard should be mobilized to quash any such ambitions.
Like I said though, this isn’t even close to a possibility as these morons are not even remotely organized or cohesive or even focused on any thoughts other than making their pathetic lives seem important.
That and the guys are mostly trying to get laid and the chicks are trying to find a boyfriend…
Good thing I didn’t, then. And that was the whole point of my comment–pointing out why no one else had commented on anything: they likely didn’t want to listen to the guy, and thus didn’t want to pass judgement.
Don’t blame me then. Robot Arm was the one who used the word envy. I was responding to only what you guys said, since I admitted that I didn’t listen to the guy.
As for justice–no. Justice by definition cannot be for just yourself. If it crosses that line, it becomes about revenge. My point is simple: the OWS movement flat out said they were about getting justice for 99% of the people. And none of their demands resulted in things that would be good for them and not those other 99%.
All those words you said are exactly the same thing as being hateful, at least, as I use the term. Yeah, if I found him funny, I’d be able to listen to him. I watch South Park for goodness sake. I love overly critical reviewers.
The entire purpose of my post was to say that, if people find the guy unfunny and offensive, you can’t really expect them to want to take the time to listen to him in the first place. The comment on what you said was just an attempt to get the conversation rolling anyways.
Turns out I was wrong, BTW. Some Dopers are perfectly willing to listen to the guy. That surprised me, as hateful reviewers I’ve posted in the past have gotten the response that people couldn’t bear to listen to them. Maybe they actually find people like Confused Matthew more offensive, or were willing to put up with it to discuss something they felt was important.
I agree that Congress allowed them to do it, but I don’t see how the people who actually were trading on bundled bad investments aren’t also at fault. And it’s not as if Occupy Washington isn’t protesting Congress.
Indeed, it isn’t. That said, it’s not reasonable to expect us to listen to a 10-minute-long hateful ranting without so much as a summary. This is why I’m only commenting on the posts of others here, ones I can refute without knowledge of the podcast.
It becomes their fault when they “somehow become” the main source of funding for political election campaigns.
Okay, smart guy, tell me how we’re supposed to lower CEO pay when the CEOs are the ones who control both the means of production within the company and more or less their own salary? Let’s take a hypothetical oil conglomerate. Imagine that you think that the CEO’s pay is just way too high. What are your options?
Well, you could boycott them. Have fun funneling your money into a different oil conglomerate with a similarly ridiculously overpaid CEO. This applies to any business that doesn’t hold a mom-and-pop small-business equivalent, honestly; ridiculously overpaid CEOs is the rule.
You could create a new business and try to compete with them. Never mind that the initial funding necessary to create a business like this is in the millions of dollars. Starting an oil company is the exclusive range of the incredibly wealthy; you have to find oil, buy the land it’s under, and then drill for it. Kind of like if you want to mine coal, you first have to buy land, and then hire a lot of people to dig a really big hole. Not really within the means of the average non-billionaire person. And at the same time you have to worry about losing control of your company, so you have to make sure you have a 50% stock share…
Uh… What options are there for the average person? As a CEO, you have an incredibly disproportionate amount of control over how your company runs, and an incredible amount of power in that regards. And even if the CEO turns out to be massively incompetent, he gets a golden parachute of more than the average worker working under him earns in a lifetime.
You know what? I agree. The CEO, after all, has much more responsibility to his company. After all, if he fails, he gets fired and has to struggle to get a new job before he loses his houseand his car… Oh no wait that’s the mailbag guy. The CEO, if he fails, gets a massive severance package. And what’s more, he has a personal advantage in inflating the company’s stock value, then selling it all, damaging the company.
Even then, it’s not one man taking care of the entire company, in the same way that Hitler was not one man taking care of every single little detail in Nazi Germany. Subsidiarity is the term here, I believe. It’s thoroughly possible for him to work less than people under him… Who have lower chances than ever of rising – social mobility is at an all-time low.
Meanwhile, the guy running the mailbags works 40-hour weeks, plus whatever overtime he can get, for ages, looking for a promotion… And instead, despite his diligence and hard work, he gets his wages and benefits slashed. HUH, GO FIGURE.
Good question!
I’m sorry if I’m missing the point of your post, but I’d like to point something out. There’s a difference at the olympics between training harder and better with new techniques than anyone else, and bribing the judges. That said, I agree with the rest of your post, but it makes me wonder: why do we consider corporations people again? They’re quite clearly fucking sociopaths.
Never mind the vets.
And the retired police chiefs.
And Pilots.
And all of these people who are not deadbeats, but simply got fucked by the system, and who aren’t there because they can’t afford to be there:
Yes. We get it. There are a disproportionate number of college-age neo-hippies and hipsters who really have no business being there. But using them to just shrug off the whole movement is really, really dumb.
I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone can do anything but hypothesize. The stats are also misleading, at least somewhat. Income has increased at lower strata as well, and I’ve read some articles that suggest that consumption inequality doesn’t bear a resemblance to the income stats so often quoted over that same time–that over that time period, consumption (spending) has remained proportionate. The stats are not quite so pronounced if we go beyond 2007 and factor in the same economic impacts that have propelled the OWS sentiments. I have also read that much of the income is business income, as much as we like to harp on CEO salaries on this board. Every economist and pol has his own axe to grind, ISTM.
But who knows? And, again, what do we do about it? Do we get to demand higher pay (again, income has outpaced inflation and has grown for “the 99%” as well) because the business owners reap the benefit of their business risks, according to the rules? If rules are broken, @#$% 'em and string 'em up, I say. But I only hear vague platitudes about bribery and illegal influence and so forth. What exactly was done that was unethical? I reject out of hand that this economic situation is necessarily the outcome of something unethical or unfair. But if people believe that, what should occur that will specifically address income inequality? What will occur that will cause OWS to declare success as it relates to this? Not “what outcome?,” what specific policies or laws should change?
His point isn’t that they shouldn’t get to keep their trophies. His point is that we’re all nitwits for giving them, in that they create a sense of privilege and entitlement that bears no relationship to real work. If you want an analogy, it would be that shareholders and boards are crazy to pay CEOs crazy $$$, if that’s what you believe. “CEOs are entitled to whatever someone is willing to pay them” does not contradict “the hothouse flowers we have raised have an unrealistic sense of entitlement by virtue of things like participation trophies.”
Doesn’t the mailroom guy get to collect unemployment insurance? Again, your entire argument seems to based on what you think is “fair”. And the question is, who should tell the company shareholders (iow owners) how much they pay the people they want to run it.
How about all the CEOs who don’t manage to fail at running the thousands of companies out there that manage to stay in business?
Where I would agree with you is that shareholders / boards SHOULD hold CEOs and executives accountable. Or we should allow the market to. The problem is that an inept CEO can cause thousands of people to lose their jobs. The CEO doesn’t even have to be inept. Sometimes businesses just fail. And when thousands of people are suddenly out of work, politicians feel compelled to get involved. And their involvement often inadvertently or intentionally disrupts the mechanisms that would normally allow the inept business to fail and be replaced by one that has it’s shit together.
In reality, this is much harder than you seem to think it is. The CEO can’t just pull some "STOCK PRICE ^ / v " lever. And he typically has restrictions when he can and cannot sell his stock. And buying and selling stock doesn’t “damage the company”.
If they don’t think they represent the 99%, then why is their defining chant “We are the 99%”? I don’t think I’m misrepresenting what they think they are by quoting their exact words.
Done what? What power do they seem to have?
Just for the record, advocating socialism is perfectly fine and dandy. It’s not treason, or anything remotely like treason. If the majority of American voters voted for people who advocated socialism we’d become a socialist society, without a whiff of treason anywhere. Treason is betraying the US to its enemies, not advocating something that you personally disapprove of. But then, I bet you don’t know what socialism is, either.
Budget Player Cadet pretty thoroughly curb-stomped this line of thought three or four posts back, at the very end of a long post. Best come up with something else.
Dating has gotten a lot more complicated, apparently!
Well, here we are, no? Arguing about them, discussing their ideas.
Their dilemma is how to create and exert power without being corrupted by it. If you want to play ball in America, you have to rent the gloves and bats. Unless you own the equipment store.
They’re not playing by The Rules, are they, John? Everybody knows that, according to The Rules, you must, simply must, have leaders and a clearly defined agenda! Why, every failed political and social movement in America had a clearly defined agenda! Its tradition! And you simply must allow an opportunity for ambitious egotists to assert control! That’s the American Way, if something cannot be exploited, what damn good is it?
If you wanted to support them, who woud you write a check to?
Sure, income in the lower strata has grown, but it has typically grown at a rate that either does not meet or just barely equals the cost of living. So in terms of spending power, wages for the middle class and the poor have either dropped or remained static. Meanwhile, the wealthy have seen TREMENDOUS boosts in their income.
And of course, spending has remained proportionate … people have been maxing out on their credit cards to retain their lifestyles. There has been much fretting over that. As for business income, yes, one of the sources of CEO salaries has been shares in their companies, but in most cases the CEO can easily convert those shares to any other kind of wealth simply by selling as many or as few of them as they like. It really IS their money!
But we agree on one thing: statistics can certainly be confusing, if you WANT them to.
Well, end the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, restore the capital gains tax, increase the inheritance tax, start bailing out the middle class instead of big banks (say, a working foreclosure relief program), start offering programs to encourage corporations to hire American, put a wall between the banking industry and CDOs, pass a law essentially saying that if ANY Wall Street firm DOES use CDOs, they are on their own and will not in any way, shape or form be bailed out, nor will their investors, and of course prosecute actual cases of fraud, and most of all, institute campaign finance laws to keep our politicians from being so dependent on big bucks donors. Citizens vs. United may well be the death knell of democracy in America if we can’t counter it.
None of this will happen currently because Wall Street owns both the Democrats and the Republicans.