Occupy Protests Go Global

[muir]

Dude, it's out of love, I just find it really quirky and lovely. But I really can't understand the key things I'm supposed to take away from it. It's really foggy and confusing. Perhaps it's beyond me, but I feel if it was more concise and ordered differently I could absorb it in a more constructive way.

Ok

Sometimes people on the right like to call people on the left things like 'bleeding heart liberals' or 'naive' or 'utopian' in order to discredit their ideas or because they simply see their ideas as unrealistic

It seems that they think that such 'utopians', as they would call them, fail to understand the true nature of people. Those sort of people seem to argue instead for a more dog eat dog system, which they feel better reflects human nature as they see it.

Human nature, as i see it, is composed of both good and bad. I think humans are capable of great acts of kindness and also great acts of selfishness.

So when i argue that we should create a system where power is exercised from the bottom up instead of from the top down, it is not because i am not taking into account the darker side of human nature....it is EXACTLY because i am AWARE of the darker side of human nature that i RECOGNISE the need to create a system in which the many can protect themselves from the darker impulses of human nature that might be expressed by some.

If you have a top down system and the people/person at the top of that system is cruel then everyone else is going to suffer.

That is what we are seeing globally at the moment. In a population of 7 billion the wealth of the world is largely concentrated in a very small number of hands. This small group are not politicians. They influence the politicians. They own and control the central banks and many corporate interests eg oil, media, weapons manufacturing, pharmaceutical etc and because of their wide reaching interests and influence they can influence the decisions of governments and can even hold whole national economies to randsom.

They exercise their power visibly through various bodies for example think tanks but mostly their influence is hidden from public view and therefore they are not accountable to the public....which is undemocratic.

So if this 'power elite' decide that they want to fraudulently get governments in debt to them by corrupting politicians then they can then demand that politicians sell off those countries assets dirt cheap....they will of course then buy up those assets and they will end up owning all the land, buildings, utilities and public services as well as the press etc

It will return Europe to a previous fuedal age where people worked on the land for barons as serfs. They had no rights and could be thrown from their land at any point, hence the enduring popularity of the Robin Hood story about someone who stood up for the poor against the robber barons....we of course have our own robin hood in scotland jim as you know: Rob Roy MacGregor who used to wait until the lairds factor had taken his crushing tax from poor old ladies, then Rob would rob the factor as he was travelling away and then go and return the money to the old ladies!

Well we are moving back towards those times where the people own very little, whilst the one percent own everything. If they own everything, including the government then they can impose whatever labour laws they want on the people. For example it would be like your boss saying tomorrow that from now on instead of working 8 hours a day you must work 14 hours a day.

If all the wealth is centralised then those people can then do away with physical money. Your labour would be recorded digitally on a microchip for example on a card. Everything could be put on that one card (they have tried this already with ID cards, which got shelved....for now) for example your passport and your drivers licence and without the card you could not purchase things, use public transport, enter buildings, go online, use your mobile phone, travel on private roads (all the public roads will be sold off to the 1%) etc

If you wanted to contest your new 14 hour work day the 1% could simply switch off your card and you would be frozen out of the corporate world they are busy building.

If this all sounds a bit dystopian scif-fi it is a vision of what could be if we keep giving away power and our rights to the 1%

So it is this posibility of abuses of power that a hypothetical system would have to guard against

A central tenet to such a system would have to be that whenever there is centralised power there is corruption and exploitation.

That would be the pillar to build a new system on. If you then follow that premise logically it leads to power being decentralised down to the people, who would then be involved in the decision making process through peoples assemblies. With the internet this way of making decisions as a community has never been easier to achieve.

Anyway to cut a long story short....the way to guard against abuses of power is to ensure that power lies with everyone and not a single person or group.

If reformists don't want to see a total system change...and i can appreciate such an idea might seem a little frightening then i would suggest to them that they should shape their reforms around the premise above with the intention of bringing power back to the people as much as is feasibly possible within such a profit orientated system.

 

[acd]

[video=youtube;1oHRdiklTlU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oHRdiklTlU&feature=share[/video]
This needs to happen more often.
Anytime a politician tries to speak, people need to drown them out with reality.

 

[bickelz]

I don't think it was the minimum wage that has sunk your economy, as the working class are SPENDERS not savers. If you pay them more they will spend it back into the economy.

That's a good argument for welfare but not for minimum wage.

An increase in your minimum wage means a reduction of hours and depending on how much your hours are reduced, you can actually make less. Minimum wage has also been shown to not be effective towards targeting the poor. Most beneficiaries are middle class high school students.

Negative income tax programs are far better in the eyes of about 97% of economists.

 

[magister343]

Quite right. A negative income tax or guaranteed minimum income would benefit the poor (and, arguably, the economy) greatly, but minimum wages hurt them.

The most significant effect of minimum wage laws in the United States was causing African American unemployment rates to skyrocket. Before minimum wage laws, blacks had a much lower unemployment rate than whites. It did not take long for the minimum wage to reverse that.

 

[muir]

That's a good argument for welfare but not for minimum wage.

An increase in your minimum wage means a reduction of hours and depending on how much your hours are reduced, you can actually make less. Minimum wage has also been shown to not be effective towards targeting the poor. Most beneficiaries are middle class high school students.

Negative income tax programs are far better in the eyes of about 97% of economists.

The back drop to this whole situation is the 'liberalisation' of economies

What that means is that the 1% has infiltrated and is controlling our governments. In fact a lot of the time members of the governments are members of the 1%. The 1% governments get themselves in debt to the 1% bankers, incurring massive interest payments for the taxpayers.

The 1% bankers then insist that the 1% government then privatise all the public assets and sell them off cheaply. The 1% bankers then buy up all these assets thereby centralising their control even further.

When governments 'outsource' work to private firms we have seen again and again that contrary to the 'guaranteed savings' this process is supposed to bring it actually causes costs to rocket because private firms argue over every detail of contracts in order to squeeze every last bit of profit out of them. They also charge a fortune for any new or changed services.

The council in my city is currently privatising services without public consultation despite the fact we have seen the costs of private projects such as the construction of trams sky rocket.

Its all to do with a process of neoliberalisation which is driven at its higher levels by an ideological understanding and at its lower levels by corruption.

The point i am trying to make is that the 1% are currently squeezing labour. They are going to justify this anyway they can. They will get their colleagues in government to legislate in their favour.

One attack on the workers will come in the form of cuts to wages....bare in mind this is dispite the 'bailouts' by the 99% taxpayers of the 1%

None of this needs to happen. There's plenty of wealth for everyone.

This is part of a large scale grab of resources by the 1% so don't get distracted by the justifications they print in their corporate media for attacks on workers pay and conditions.

If you help them to attack the workers, you will be attacking your own interests.

Concerning your point of helping the poor. Many people in the UK are caught in the 'poverty trap' which means that they earn more on welfare then they would if they went to work so they simply stay on welfare.

The corporate press then portray these people as scroungers and play on the anger of the rest of us that we are working and paying taxes to subsidise others.

However the reality is that the 1% has outsourced work abroad or imported cheap labour to cut its wage costs (part of the neoliberal process). The workers who are then left unemployed or who haven't been upskilled to deal with the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy are then provided for by the welfare system which is paid for by the taxpayer!

So what the 1% has done is made massive profits whilst passing on the external cost of their actions (benefits for unemployed) onto the taxpayer

That is what they have done with the banks as well...they have made massive profits and bonuses but passed on the costs (bank bailouts) to the taxpayers.

I'll repeat my original point: it isn't the minimum wage that has sunk your economy

Bankers want people to be in debt to them so that they can charge interest on the loans. Many economies are now hamstrung by massive interest payments on loans to the bankers......the money itself is simply created by the central banks on keyboards, by the press of a button. The banks do not create wealth, they simply extract interest off the real economy.

If you want to rescue your economy then you need to get the parasitic bankers off your back....not waste time attacking the pay of workers

 

[bickelz]

If you help them to attack the workers, you will be attacking your own interests.

The minimum wage creates unemployment. It's a price floor, which creates a surplus. The higher the minimum wage, the more workers will want to enter into a job with that rate while employers will want to higher less and less with the higher rates. And also with these higher rates, employers have to cut hours. And since it costs more to run the business, prices will rise. The minimum wage is passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices; in other words, it creates inflation in markets like retail. Even though the minimum wage is trying to match the cost of living, which rises, it could be seen as a cause to the cost of living in areas like groceries.

I'm not attacking workers either since most of the people that benefit from the minimum wage are people like me, who don't need it as much as other people. Just look at the data (which was collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

http://www.heritage.org/research/re...ge-single-parents-or-suburban-teenagers#_ftn5

You're correct that the minimum wage as not sunk the economy, but it makes it harder for firms to be more productive.

Unions are a better solution. If the government enacts laws that get rid of collective bargaining rights, then it is not serving the interest of it's people. But making a decision about economic matters based on how you feel about what will help the poor is not the answer. I'm all for emotions but when it comes to the economy, you really have to think through things because it's always more complex than it seems.

 

[muir]

The minimum wage creates unemployment. It's a price floor, which creates a surplus. The higher the minimum wage, the more workers will want to enter into a job with that rate while employers will want to higher less and less with the higher rates. And also with these higher rates, employers have to cut hours. And since it costs more to run the business, prices will rise. The minimum wage is passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices; in other words, it creates inflation in markets like retail. Even though the minimum wage is trying to match the cost of living, which rises, it could be seen as a cause to the cost of living in areas like groceries.

I'm not attacking workers either since most of the people that benefit from the minimum wage are people like me, who don't need it as much as other people. Just look at the data (which was collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

http://www.heritage.org/research/re...ge-single-parents-or-suburban-teenagers#_ftn5

You're correct that the minimum wage as not sunk the economy, but it makes it harder for firms to be more productive.

Unions are a better solution. If the government enacts laws that get rid of collective bargaining rights, then it is not serving the interest of it's people. But making a decision about economic matters based on how you feel about what will help the poor is not the answer. I'm all for emotions but when it comes to the economy, you really have to think through things because it's always more complex than it seems.

I'm not going to enter a debate about whether the minimum wage is a good thing or not, as i understand it there are strong arguments on both sides. I'm saying that the corporate press is going to attack workers pay.

Also i'm not making my points from emotion; i believe your country is entering a depression.

 

[barbad0s]

 

[InvisibleJim]

Best post in this thread.

 

[bickelz]

I'm not going to enter a debate about whether the minimum wage is a good thing or not, as i understand it there are strong arguments on both sides. I'm saying that the corporate press is going to attack workers pay.

These big corporations that the protestors think are so evil outsource their unskilled labor. Minimum wage is almost irrelevant to the conversation anyways unless you want to get into outsourcing and child labor.

Also i'm not making my points from emotion; i believe your country is entering a depression.

Ok, here's the logic...

1. People are suffering because they're underpaid.
2. Let's mandate the lowest pay they can have and that will fix everything
3. Now we can feel good about ourselves because we "helped" people (but really tried and failed)

If your viewpoint on min wage is that it's a good thing, you're not using a whole lot of logic or economic knowledge to your advantage.

And that's great you think we're entering into a depression, many other experts do too. If that's true, you're coming right behind us.

 

[muir]

These big corporations that the protestors think are so evil outsource their unskilled labor. Minimum wage is almost irrelevant to the conversation anyways unless you want to get into outsourcing and child labor. .

It wasn't me that brought up minimum wage....go and look back over the thread....it was me who said that minimum wage is not the issue

You then started talking about minimum wage and i made the point that there are going to be attacks on workers pay....you seem to have taken that as some sort of defence of minimum wage.

What i did say is that the working class spend.

Ok, here's the logic...

1. People are suffering because they're underpaid.
2. Let's mandate the lowest pay they can have and that will fix everything
3. Now we can feel good about ourselves because we "helped" people (but really tried and failed)

If your viewpoint on min wage is that it's a good thing, you're not using a whole lot of logic or economic knowledge to your advantage.

And that's great you think we're entering into a depression, many other experts do too. If that's true, you're coming right behind us.

No that's not what i said

What is it about you free marketeers that you always try to tell other people what it is that they are saying?

Yes i think you are entering into a depression and yes i think my country is too. I am making my preparations for that.

You on the other hand are going to finish college and go into an increasingly competitive job market in the middle of a depression (many students are now laden with debt as well)

I think people should be angry about the situation, but they should put their anger where it will make a difference

 

[Sriracha]

[video=youtube;-P7uuPCWXng]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-P7uuPCWXng#![/video]

 

[bamf]

[video=youtube;-p7uupcwxng]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-p7uupcwxng#![/video]

lol!

 

[Sriracha]

[video]http://www.youtube.com/embed/OAOrT0OcHh0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showi[/video]

 

[acd]

[video]http://www.youtube.com/embed/OAOrT0OcHh0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showi[/video]

What a lovely pundit you've got there...

"You work hard and the quality of life improves." Maybe for some, but I wouldn't say it's the rule. You work hard to make somebody else richer, usually.
You work hard, make just enough money to slide by.. and destroy your mental and physical health in the process. Yup! Working a 60 hour work week at the fucking mill sounds like heaven on earth to me!
It's also misleading to say that this movement is composed entirely of spoiled college kids, when clearly, there are veterans, elderly people, and professionals joining the ranks. Would you like to insult our veterans the same way?
Do you think that our veterans are all spoiled selfish snowflakes who don't feel like working hard???
Do you think that our veterans are in the street protesting and partying it up because they feel entitled?
Nevermind the fact that they've come home to virtually no job prospects after fighting in a thankless war for the last decade..

Or maybe the older generations who have worked their whole lives only to find themselves worrying about being able to survive on a laughably diminished SS check... that they have spent their whole lives paying for. But that's an entitlement I guess and all the elderly are selfish for feeling entitled to their money. In August, when congress was screwing around about whether or not to default on the debt.. You know they briefly entertained the idea of cutting SS "entitlements" and military pay before even considering cutting politicians salaries? But we're the selfish ones.
Misinformation. Be careful about that.

The rest of what this guy says is nonsense.
Force people to live out in the woods for a spell so that they can then come home and graciously accept the fact that their government is corrupted by wealth and slowly stripping their rights away year by year?
Is this a joke?

 

[muir]

[video]http://www.youtube.com/embed/OAOrT0OcHh0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showi[/video]

Wow did you see that guy?

What a fantastic insight that was into the corporate mindset!

Did you like his condescension? It was like he was saying we are worthless scum who should shut up and be greatful for what scraps Bill and his buddies chose to toss us! He is overlooking the fact that its the 99% that do all the dirty work not him and his buddies who are hoarding all the money.

Doesn't he realise how ridiculous he sounds when he talks about meat packers, oil workers and farmers....doesn't he realise that they are part of the 99% who he and is corporate buddies are ripping off?

He talks about 'perspective' and 'reality' but i'd love to see him try and hack it on an oil rig....it would break him in half! In fact i'd love just to see him do an honest days work!

What about his veiled threats: 'play times over'. That one is hilarious....he's not living in the real world! How long does he think he would last if he came down from his ivory tower and said that to a real workers face?

He likes to talk tough while hiding behind the corporation with its expensive lawyers and security guards and the police outside, but if he's talking about taking the gloves off and bringing in the law of the jungle....he would last about as long as a 'snowflake' in summer

This is what the 99% is going to do to Bill Whittle:

[video=youtube;4L7UDkPAO5I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L7UDkPAO5I[/video]

 

[acd]

I love that this is now a meme:

ORIGIN.

 

[just me]

Nothing to love about ANY of this, personally, though I understand your statement.

 

[acd]

It's better to see people having a sense of humor along with their outrage, rather than resorting to hunting this guy down with pitchforks. And actually, I do love that people are bold enough to protest for what they believe in, rather than cower and shink away because the media "doesn't get it" and police are resorting to brutality...

I love that people are finally fed up enough to speak up. I love that people have finally awoken to the fact that the government controls us; we don't control the government and that the system is not working for the majority of people who compose it--that we are not a democracy.

 

[Saru Inc]

All this bullshit is bullshit.