Actually, it was $49,445 in 2010. But the average Joe wasn’t feeling very fat or happy, since his income was down 6.4% just since 2007. Not to mention, as 'luc alludes, he’s had an unusually high chance, by the standards of recent history, of having gotten kicked out of his house, or the banks threatening to do so. (Whether they happen to hold the loan or not. :mad:**)
Even more to the point of what’s happened with the average Joe versus the top 1%, that median household income has increased only 7% since 1973. When you consider how much wealthier we are as a nation than we were in 1973, it’s pretty clear that the average Joe has been consistently getting screwed over the intervening decades.
ETA: Also, between 1973 and now, we’ve gone from a society where men were the breadwinners and women stayed home with the kids, to one where SAHMs are a distinct minority. So we’ve got more workers per household, and yet…
I apologize in advance, as well as in hindsight for my previous posts, if I seem exasperated in my posts. You see, when I post, I try very, very hard not to fall into the “My opponent is lying on purpose!” trap. Normally I don’t have to concentrate on it. You are really, really pushing it, though. Some of your statements are just so incredibly disingenuous that I have to wonder what the hell you’re talking about.
…After losing a brutal, decade-long legal battle against pretty much everyone in the country, including many among the upper classes. Not to mention that they started losing ground on this in a completely different political climate, and, as RTF has pointed out, the overwhelming victory here came in the form of a lawsuit, not legislation, and I think we can all agree that it’s harder to buy a Supreme Court Justice than it is to buy a congressman.
Yep, this is one example where a vast majority of the people banded together and oh wait my bad. There’s a reason that people quipped about Huntsman moving into “unelectable” territory by posting a tweet claiming that he believed in global warming and evolution, and while I admit that this one has more to do with the average republican voter being either apathetic or ignorant in regards to climate change, there’s no denying that the corrupting element of big business plays a crucial role in this. In other places, where big money in government isn’t such a problem, you wouldn’t have shit like this–a candidate in Germany who claimed that Climate Change was a left-wing, scientific conspiracy would get his ass laughed out all the way to the unemployment line.
To be fair, this is just one example, and overall, you do have a point. But it’s worth mentioning that this is an issue where the USA is dragging behind pretty much every other first-world country in a drastic way, and to an extent, especially when considering morons like Rick Perry, you have to wonder why. I personally think it’s partially big business getting its grubby hands everywhere, and partially religious anti-intellectualism, but that’s just me.
…Actually… hold that thought.
What, exactly, did we get done? No, seriously. What measures did we pass in, say, the last 15 years, that have to do with climate change and global warming? Honest question, I just can’t think of anything in particular, although I get the feeling I’m forgetting a big one here.
This is vague enough to be completely unhelpful.
It can be said to be true often enough, and in enough areas, in important enough parts of legislature, for it to be a true problem. When the people (recent polls showed a massive 67%) clamor for higher taxes on the rich, and the politicians turn around and propose a tax plan that lowers taxes on the rich drastically and raise them on the poor, especially when we know for a fact that this doesn’t help the economy one fucking bit, you have to wonder: “What are the motives here?”
What do the candidates do while in office? Furthermore, aren’t these kind of extreme examples, that do not reflect the vast, vast majority of political discourse in the USA?
How exactly am I proposing that we “go after rich people”? By removing their ability to pump millions upon millions of dollars into the campaigns of politicians (which is either heavily corrupting, as I believe, or does not much worth noting and therefore isn’t a huge loss anyways, as you seem to believe)? By reinstating crucial legislature that prevents them from essentially gambling with tax-insured funds? By splitting up “too big to fail” corporations that really should have been the target of anti-trust lawsuits? By cleaning up loopholes in the tax code and raising the effective tax rates on major corporations and the super rich to a reasonable level (fun fact: several large corporations actually had a NEGATIVE tax rate from 2008 to 2011)?
OH MY GOD CLASS WARFARE!
Furthermore, you misrepresent what “We are the 99%” actually means, ignore the fact that the occupy movements have come to represent hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country (as has been pointed out, there were tens of thousands in Oakland alone), and offer an explanation of the situation which is completely founded in your own imagination, but then again I’ve come to expect nothing less from you.
Scylla, do you know what the term “Astroturf” means? I don’t know about you, but somehow I don’t think the Tea Party helps your case when you remember that the main reason it got off the ground was that it had huge corporate fundraising backing it. Hell, there’s exactly one reason that I think that the Occupy movement couldn’t spawn a new political party: no money in it. Everyone with personal interest in their goals is going to be too poor to be of much help.
An exercise in completely hopeless political power.
Here’s the problem: it’s legal. Virtually everything that I’m complaining about is legal. You can do it legally with no problems. If it comes out, it might become a scandal, but for the most part, people don’t tend to care enough about it to make it a job-loss issue.
No. You’ve shown That you have no idea just how much of a role money plays in the political systems of the USA. I don’t think we need anything else, really.
…So why shouldn’t we limit the corruption caused by a massive influx of power from certain extremely rich groups and individuals?
To be fair, I went ahead and started being unpleasant by calling him an asshole. I hold to this statement.
Maybe it is time to let it go. Maybe there are too many problems associated with a long-standing occupation, problems our enemies are only too happy to highlight and exploit. Perhaps it would be best to dissolve and disperse, and move towards a tactic of demonstrations, etc. in response to specific causes. Rest assured, they will give us plenty to bitch about.
Evolving isn’t losing, evolving is staying alive long enough to win.
It is worth doing, but the costs are enormous. In Oakland the people doing damage and spray painting were not known to the occupiers. That brings up the old question of whether they are outside agitators ,paid to make the occupations look bad. Or perhaps people who don’t like the occupations and want to harm their cause.
But life in the camps is scary. Some people are homeless because they are crazy. Their actions are unpredictable and some fly off the handle at imaginary affronts. A few need medication or psychiatric help. The camps are open so people who want to make trouble can walk right in. The campers are not trained at policing and don’t know how to handle them.
There is talk of Occupy Detroit moving to private land. But that goes against the concept that they need to be seen to make a mark. Staying on Woodward provides a constant reminder to those who drive by.
There also is talk about quitting until spring. Michigan winters could kill some people living in tents.
Unfortunately this link only shows approval rates for small business loans back to January of this year, but it’s pretty telling. Approval rates for loans from large banks ($10B in assets or greater) has dropped from a high :dubious: of 12.8% to 9.3% in October. Small bank approval rates have meanwhile risen to 46.3% from 43.5%.
Generally, that’s the sort of shit you should separate by a post or two. You think, maybe?
Anyway, I tried twice. You don’t fucking get it, and I’m not thinking much of your sincerity based on the evidence of the above. It’s not that complex either. Some things you can change by voting, others… human nature type things… things intrinsic in society… not so much.
That’s the signpost just ahead, we are heading into Deep Bullshit, philosophical bullshit, revealed truths, eternal verities.
Which “things” are these, Scylla? These “human nature” things that are “intrinsic”? As a species, we survived and evolved for untold thousands of years as a cooperative social species, are we now somehow “intrinsic” capitalists? When did that happen?
Sharing, cooperation, mutual community, collective responsibility…these notions are one hell of a lot more “intrinsic” than New Coke.
Wow. You’ve achieved fifth grade. First you get my career wrong, then my gender. Gonna call me “gay” next?
I’d say it’s pretty good, since your primary participation in this thread has been to contribute useless cites and reams of personal experience that are at odds with pretty much every reliable narrative of the actual events. And then you play dumb as a box of hammers (labeled “One Box of Hammers”, in the back storage room of a hammer store) when you get called on your internally inconsistent, self-serving bullshit of a monologue.
So yeah, I’d say it’s a pretty good insult to refer to you as “High Financier” and highlight the amazing, oft-repeated, frankly hilarious self-importance of every bullshit post you make.
Sorry you can’t come up with any reasonable counter, though.
Just because I think you’re being inconsistent doesn’t make me right. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise if you can clearly demonstrate how I’m wrong. Stating clearly and unequivocally what I think doesn’t make me close minded – it communicates to you what I think, so you can respond (or not, if you so choose).
Maybe my posting style has been too abrupt, or brusque? I wrote in one of my first replies to you that perhaps there was no point in us even discussing this, and said I leave it to you to decide whether my reply was worth responding to or not. I never held out much hope we would come to any sort of consensus, and now that we haven’t, well, I’m fine with that.
So explain yourself, if so inclined. My hypothesis, that you would “return to this thread with some kind of bullshit rationalization as two why these two obviously contradictory statements are actually quite consistent with each other” has yet to be falsified, quite the contrary. Prove me wrong! Or not.
No, Scylla. So far, you haven’t even tried once.
Well, that’s certainly a complicated concept. Clearly over my poor little head. Yet in both of the quotes above, we were talking specifically about how to achieve lasting, significant social change. At first you call me naive for thinking I could achieve this by voting, and in the second you claim that all I need to do, really, is vote. No need to sit out in a park.
Anyway, just to reiterate my earlier public service announcement, if you want Scylla to address any of my cites or arguments, you’ll have to incorporate them into your own posts. Feel free to re-use my words as you wish!
[QUOTE=Scylla]
Money didn’t trump all there, and that was my point.
[/QUOTE]
But there’s no replicable course of action here. There’s no “the OWS people should do X instead of what they’re doing” takeaway.
Also, the outlier nature of this example suggests that the tons of examples Scylla says he can think of need to be presented to similar scrutiny.
