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-   -   Wall Street Protests (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=26025)

glatt 10-19-2011 02:34 PM
Why does that matter? Being a ditto head isn't something to aspire to.

DanaC 10-19-2011 02:46 PM
I'm just watching last night's Daily Show. Stewart completely nails the hypocrisy of leading republican figures calling for their supporters to take back America, fight for democracy and the soul of the country, and take to the streets, then condemning the Wall St protestors for the same thing.

Amongst other things.

Jon Stewart rocks.

Pete Zicato 10-19-2011 02:57 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheMercenary (Post 765274)
But they don't agree on the issues.
I see the OWS thing as being much like the speech in Network. They're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. It's difficult to fit anger about the credit default swap thing onto a poster.

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 02:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by henry quirk (Post 765250)
Am I mistaken in assuming that 401k programs are voluntary?
I think it depends on where you work and what level your income is. All the companies I have worked for (3) it was voluntary and I chose to just send money to my own investment plans. I still do that.

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 03:00 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete Zicato (Post 765282)
I see the OWS thing as being much like the speech in Network. They're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. It's difficult to fit anger about the credit default swap thing onto a poster.
It would be funny to see someone try to put all the different issues on one poster board. :p:

DanaC 10-19-2011 03:12 PM
1 Attachment(s)
Here's one of the 99%

DanaC 10-19-2011 03:14 PM
Apparently, if the 99% can't agree on a nailed down demand that will encapsulate all their grievances, set forth a solution and still fit onto a placard, then their voices aren't worth listening to.

DanaC 10-19-2011 03:17 PM
I think this introduction, taken from the We Are the 99 Percent website gives a fairly clear picture of the movement's central concerns:

Quote:
Who are we? Well, who are you? If you’re reading this, there’s a 99 percent chance that you’re one of us.

You’re someone who doesn’t know whether there’s going to be enough money to make this month’s rent. You’re someone who gets sick and toughs it out because you’ll never afford the hospital bills. You’re someone who’s trying to move a mountain of debt that never seems to get any smaller no matter how hard you try. You do all the things you’re supposed to do. You buy store brands. You get a second job. You take classes to improve your skills. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough. The anxiety, the frustration, the powerlessness is still there, hovering like a storm crow. Every month you make it is a victory, but a Pyrrhic one — once you’re over the hump, all you can do is think about the next one and how much harder it’s all going to be.

They say it’s because you’re lazy. They say it’s because you make poor choices. They say it’s because you’re spoiled. If you’d only apply yourself a little more, worked a little harder, planned a little better, things would go well for you. Why do you need more help? Haven’t they helped you enough? They say you have no one to blame but yourself. They say it’s all your fault.

They are the 1 percent. They are the banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry. They are the important ones. They need help and get bailed out and are praised as job creators. We need help and get nothing and are called entitled. We live in a society made for them, not for us. It’s their world, not ours. If we’re lucky, they’ll let us work in it so long as we don’t question the extent of their charity.

We are the 99 percent. We are everyone else. And we will no longer be silent. It’s time the 1 percent got to know us a little better. On Sept. 17, 2011, the 99 percent will converge on Wall Street to let the 1 percent know just how frustrated they are with living in a world made for someone else. Let us know why you’ll be there. Let us know how you are the 99 percent.

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/Introduction

Undertoad 10-19-2011 03:20 PM
MBA failure dude wanted to be in the 1%, and if shit turns around he will be right back fighting for it.

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 03:22 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 765295)
Apparently, if the 99% can't agree on a nailed down demand that will encapsulate all their grievances, set forth a solution and still fit onto a placard, then their voices aren't worth listening to.
Not sure I would go that far as much as I would make the point that whatever they are saying quickly becomes white noise. As I have said before it reminds me more of WTO protests. XY&Z makes more money than we do and we want them to give it to us or give power to the government to take it from them and give it to us. It is a failed process of change. And now as I watch Obama and his mouthpieces begin to try to co-opt the protests for re-election I am even less interested in their demands.

DanaC 10-19-2011 03:24 PM
I know what you mean about the 'white noise' effect. But to me that doesn't make it meaningless, it makes it all the more meaningful. It is a primal yell of discontent from an unhappy populace.

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 03:26 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 765293)
Here's one of the 99%
He should have done his home work. That situation is his fault. Plenty of advanced degrees will get you a nominal increase in pay. Often what it may do is open other avenues, for example the chance to teach graduate level or less. Many professions are using Masters prepared educations as entry level now, esp for specialty work. If he did it for pay he was mistaken. Lots of people go back to schools for many reasons and they don't have anything to do with more pay. Did you get a huge pay raise after all the hard work you did in the completion of your recent education?

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 03:28 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 765305)
I know what you mean about the 'white noise' effect. But to me that doesn't make it meaningless, it makes it all the more meaningful. It is a primal yell of discontent from an unhappy populace.
White noise never the less. It makes people turn away and they no longer hear you, regardless of the importance of the message or urgency. They should be marching on Congress, not Wall St. Do they think the bankers and investors are going to run down one day and write them all a personal check?

DanaC 10-19-2011 03:33 PM
Ha!

I ain't completed it yet babe:P

And, in fairness, I got a combination loan and grant for my undergrad course (including maintenance grant/loan combo) which I will not need to pay back a penny of until my earnings rise above the threshold (currently 15k p/a). I also got my MA fully funded via scholarship, along with a maintenance grant of £10k for the year. I am currently doing a PhD, the fees for which are entirely covered by a scholarship and again I am on a maintenance grant, this time 13k per annum for the three years o fthe course.

I have sacrificed time yes. But it isn't that much of a sacrifice. I wasnlt doing anything better before. I was paid a similar amount for working full-time as I now get in maintenance from the scholarship.

And, I fully expect to get a hike in earnings when I get my phD, assuming I can get a job in academia. But seriously, a payrise on what I am used to for a week's work wouldn't need to be a big wage :p



The truth is, I have in many ways, breezed through higher education without a financial care in the world. If at the end of this I can't get work in my field and end up stacking shelves at tescos, well, I'll have enjoyed the last 7 years of delving into a subject i love and be no worse off than I was before. I'm not sure how sanguine I'd be about that if I'd had to pay my own course fees, or been saddled with the levels of debt that my nieces are likely to accrue when they do their undergraduate degrees.

Undertoad 10-19-2011 03:38 PM
I have a plan for disrupting OWS.

If you were an original Trek fan you'll remember the I, Mudd episode, where a bunch of robots could not handle Kirk's divide-by-zero logic and simply shut down.

I am going to drive through the streets with one of those megaphone cars, playing a recorded message:

"Your iPhone was made by the richest corporation in the world."

It would take a while, but once they heard this message, I think you could just pick them up with pitchforks and load them into dump trucks.

DanaC 10-19-2011 03:41 PM
Except they're not calling for the dismantling of the entire system or the destruction of coporations. They're mainly calling for a fairer tax system and a reversal of the current and recent trend of wealth and opportunity concentrating entirely into the hands of 1% of the people.

That is not inconsistent with also wanting to buy goods from corporations.

Undertoad 10-19-2011 03:42 PM

DanaC 10-19-2011 03:47 PM
They've managed to find the least articulate, and least sophisticated protestors possible.

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 03:53 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC (Post 765317)
They've managed to find the least articulate, and least sophisticated protestors possible.
Most of all the ones I have seen appear to fall into this category.

Trilby 10-19-2011 03:54 PM
wait! I might know that episode!

was that the episode where Kirk said, "Everything I say is a lie. I'm lying!" and the robots exploded? Is that the right one? coz if I got a Trek reference right, Imma do my Nerd Dance!!

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 03:59 PM
Winter is coming.

Trilby 10-19-2011 04:01 PM
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

Undertoad 10-19-2011 04:09 PM
Bri WINS

Trilby 10-19-2011 04:17 PM
YAY!

Nerd Dance commences!!!!

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 05:45 PM
This is crossing the line for me.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...79A41E20111011

Every member of my family would be armed and instructed shoot to kill.

DanaC 10-19-2011 05:49 PM
Quote:
Around 500 people marched through Manhattan's Upper East Side, passing the high-rise buildings where many of the executives live. Among them are Paulson, global media mogul Rupert Murdoch, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and David Koch, co-founder of energy firm Koch Industries.

The protesters chanted "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out" and "Hey you billionaires, pay your fair share" and carried signs that read "Stop robbing from the middle class to pay the rich" and "We are the 99 percent," a reference to the idea that the top 1 percent of Americans have too much.
Marching past and chanting. Not attempting to gain access, loot and pillage. Marching past and chanting. that does not warrant a shoot to kill policy.

Nor does it warrant the 'Wall Street protesters target homes of top executives' headline.

Walking past highrise buildings where some of the executives live is not the same as targetting their homes.

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 05:52 PM
Haaaaaaaaa!!!

http://www.billoreilly.com/video?cha...59450079890880

Stossel is my hero.

TheMercenary 10-19-2011 05:58 PM
As compared to the Tea Party the Wall Street protesters fail....

http://www.billoreilly.com/video?cha...079890880#play

Bernie is a hero.

Stormieweather 10-19-2011 08:16 PM
The gawker is MY hero!!!:thumb:

Speaking of protests and since Merc is comparing OWS and the Tea Party:

Tea Party out for Liberal Blood

TheMercenary 10-20-2011 07:21 PM
Stossel Rocks!

Quote:
What's there to say about Occupy Wall Street? The answer isn't so simple. Some complain about taxpayer bailouts of businesses. Good for them. In a true free market, failing firms would go out of business. They couldn't turn to Washington for help.

But many protesters say they're against capitalism. Now things get confusing. What do they mean? If by "capitalism" they mean crony capitalism (let's call it crapitalism), a system in which favored business interests are supported by government, I'm against that, too.

But if they mean the free market, then they are fools. When allowed to work, the market has lifted more people out of the mud and misery of poverty than any government, ever.

The protesters are also upset about income disparity. Here again we should make distinctions. To the extent the country's income disparity is the result of crony capitalism, it's bad.

Yet even if America had a true free market, there would be income disparity. It's a byproduct of freedom. Some people are just more ambitious, more energetic, and more driven, and some have that ineffable knack of sensing what consumers want. Think Steve Jobs.

But it shouldn't matter if the income gap between you and rich people grows. What should matter is that your living standard improves.

Your living standard many not have improved lately. Over the past decade, median income fell. But that's an aberration largely caused by the bursting of the real estate bubble. Despite Wall Street protesters' complaints about rich people gaining at the expense of the poor, the poorest fifth of Americans are 20 percent wealthier than they were when I was in college, and despite the recession, still richer than they were in 1993.

And income statistics don't tell the whole story. Thanks to the innovations of entrepreneurs, today in America, even poor people have clean water, TV sets, cars, and flush toilets. Most live better than kings once lived—better even than the middle class lived in 1970.

Some protesters say they hate the market process that makes that possible. They call rich people "robber barons." That term was used by American newspapers to smear tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. But Vanderbilt and Rockefeller were neither robbers nor barons. They weren't barons because they weren't born rich. They weren't robbers because they didn't steal. They got rich by serving customers well. As Burton Folsom wrote in The Myth of the Robber Barons, there were political entrepreneurs, who made their fortunes through government privilege, and market entrepreneurs, who pleased consumers.

Rockefeller and Vanderbilt were market entrepreneurs. Vanderbilt invented ways to make travel cheaper. He used bigger ships and served food onboard. People liked that, and the extra customers he attracted allowed him to lower costs. He cut the New York-Hartford fare from $8 to $1. That helped people.

Rockefeller was called a monopolist, but he wasn't one. He had 150 competitors—including big companies like Texaco and Gulf. No one was ever forced to buy his oil. Rockefeller got rich by finding cheaper ways to get oil products to the market. His competitors vilified him because he "stole" their customers by lowering prices. Ignorant reporters repeated their complaints.

In truth, Rockefeller's price cuts made life better. Poor people used to go to bed when it got dark, but thanks to Rockefeller, they could afford fuel for lanterns and stay up and read at night. Rockefeller's "greed" may have even saved the whales. When he lowered the price of kerosene, he eliminated the need for whale oil, and the slaughter of whales suddenly stopped. Bet your kids won't read "Rockefeller saved the whales" in environmental studies class.

I have at least found some common ground with some Wall Street protest supporters. Joe Sibilia, who runs the website CSRWire (Corporate Social Responsibility), told me, "You can't have an environment where people are betting on financial instruments with the expectation that the government is going to bail them out."

So we agree that Wall Street bailouts are intolerable. Now we just have to teach our progressive friends that truly free markets work for the benefit of all.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/10/2...et-is-half-rig

TheMercenary 10-20-2011 07:24 PM
.

ZenGum 10-20-2011 07:38 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheMercenary (Post 765741)
.
I see your point, but it doesn't connect to anything else here. ;)

TheMercenary 10-20-2011 07:43 PM
It connects to this one...

.

One more and I will have a line!

ZenGum 10-20-2011 07:50 PM
[mathsnerd] Two points defines a line. Three would define a plane unless they're all on the same line. Four defines a space, similar caveat. Higher dimensional phase spaces cann be defined by ... [/youdon'treallycaredoyou?]

TheMercenary 10-20-2011 08:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenGum (Post 765758)
[mathsnerd] Two points defines a line. Three would define a plane unless they're all on the same line. Four defines a space, similar caveat. Higher dimensional phase spaces cann be defined by ... [/youdon'treallycaredoyou?]
Arrrggggg....:mad2::rolleyes::blush::p::D

BigV 10-20-2011 08:05 PM
um... not if they're all the same point, every time

ZenGum 10-20-2011 08:31 PM
Are you referring to geometry or the posts of certain individuals? :D

BigV 10-20-2011 08:35 PM
Yes.

TheMercenary 10-20-2011 08:36 PM
Yes.

Clodfobble 10-21-2011 07:53 AM
Quote:
Thanks to the innovations of entrepreneurs, today in America, even poor people have clean water, TV sets, cars, and flush toilets. Most live better than kings once lived—better even than the middle class lived in 1970.
I'm going to guess this silly statement hinges on the plurality of cars? Because a middle class family in 1970 certainly had one. Often the only reason they didn't have two was because the mother stayed home and didn't need one. And while a middle class family may or may not have had a television in 1970, that wasn't because they were too poor to afford common consumer goods, but because TVs were contemporary high technology. Unless the poor people of today all own iPhones, it's not comparable.

Pete Zicato 10-21-2011 11:49 AM
1 Attachment(s)
Everybody's getting into the act.



Attachment 34725

TheMercenary 10-21-2011 03:17 PM
I love it. Next we will see all the sour milk marching on Wall Street! :)

TheMercenary 10-21-2011 03:18 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clodfobble (Post 765861)
Unless the poor people of today all own iPhones, it's not comparable.
Why should poor people own iPhones and why would that even be a goal?

glatt 10-21-2011 03:28 PM
Buying the iPhone isn't even that big of a deal, it's paying the monthly service charge.

TheMercenary 10-21-2011 06:12 PM
The point being that the taxpayers need to make sure there is parity. There will never be parity. Someone needs to make my coffee at starbucks while I do my job.

Clodfobble 10-21-2011 06:16 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheMercenary
Why should poor people own iPhones and why would that even be a goal?
It's not, and they shouldn't. The point is, poor people today don't generally own iPhones, just like poor people in the 70s didn't own TVs. Stoessel was trying to equate television ownership in the 70s to television ownership today, and the two are not equal comparisons. Poor people today own TVs because you can get one for $10 at the pawn shop. You can't, however, get an iPhone for that price, just like you couldn't get a TV for that little back in the 70s.

BigV 10-21-2011 06:51 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheMercenary (Post 765988)
The point being that the taxpayers need to make sure there is parity. There will never be parity. Someone needs to make my coffee at starbucks while I do my job.
You might be seeking parity, or equality, but no one I've heard from the OWS movement has said that. I have heard that they're seeking less unfairness. I agree that there will never be parity, and that's fine. But that someone who's making your coffee at Starbucks needs to be making enough money to live and thrive. There needs to be greater opportunity for your barrista to improve their standard of living.

Starbucks are generally located in urban areas. Housing is expensive in the city. Transportation from areas with less expensive housing to the place where the Starbucks is located costs money, everything costs money. Starbucks is extremely progressive in that they offer their employees full health benefits, regardless of their employment status. But that's a rare exception. Healthcare costs money. The standard of living for someone making your coffee will be extremely restricted. For you to get your coffee made, you should support a system that makes possible for Starbucks to thrive, and that means happy productive employees.

It's in your self interest to do so.

BigV 10-21-2011 09:30 PM
Wall Street weighs in
 
A Letter from Goldman Sachs Concerning Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)– The following is a letter released today by Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of banking giant Goldman Sachs:

Quote:
Dear Investor:

Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds. As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests. And we have asked ourselves this question:

How can we make money off them?

The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world. At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain – but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.

The Rage Fund will seek out opportunities to invest in products that are poised to benefit from the spreading protests, from police batons and barricades to stun guns and forehead bandages. Furthermore, as clashes between police and protesters turn ever more violent, we are making significant bets on companies that manufacture replacements for broken windows and overturned cars, as well as the raw materials necessary for the construction and incineration of effigies.

It would be tempting, at a time like this, to say “Let them eat cake.” But at Goldman, we are actively seeking to corner the market in cake futures. We project that through our aggressive market manipulation, the price of a piece of cake will quadruple by the end of 2011.

Please contact your Goldman representative for a full prospectus. As the world descends into a Darwinian free-for-all, the Goldman Sachs Rage Fund is a great way to tell the protesters, “Occupy this.” We haven’t felt so good about something we’ve sold since our souls.

Sincerely,

Lloyd Blankfein

Chairman, Goldman Sachs

ZenGum 10-21-2011 10:17 PM
:lol:

classicman 10-21-2011 11:01 PM
Quote:
But that someone who's making your coffee at Starbucks needs to be making enough money to live and thrive.
Thrive??? Never gonna happen. :headshake

Lamplighter 10-22-2011 01:50 PM
1 Attachment(s)
OMG: Occupy Portland Crime Rate up 550-800%. :eek:
Well, that's how our local newspaper might want you to react.

The Oregonian's Anne Saker reports on
"the spike in crime around the downtown camp".
Quote:
<snip>
between Sept. 22 and Oct. 5,
the two weeks before Occupy Portland's march through the city,
police made 2 arrests for vandalism;
between Oct. 6 and Thursday, the first two weeks of the encampment,
there were 11 arrests for vandalism.

Two weeks before the march, police arrested 2 people for disorderly conduct;
in the two weeks after the march around the square,
police made 16 disorderly conduct arrests.
The police report covers the entire downtown business area,
bounded by I-405, the river, and Burnside (A).
Occupy Portland is camped in two city park blocks,
the "Chapman Square" at the center of the map below.

Unfortunately, the Oregonian did not bother to research or cite
the number of arrests in any other "10-block radius" of the city,
or details such as...

8 of 16 D.C. arrests were unrelated to Occupy Portland,
and others were for "interfering with police" while police were
"reclaiming Main Street" after the original OP march.
.

gvidas 10-22-2011 06:04 PM
Here in the D, I have it on good authority that the police have been told to step up enforcement of nuisance ordinances in the area around the occupy protest.

So, 'number of citations and arrests' might mean something different from 'how much crime there is,' either of which could be the 'crime rate', and both of which are only a part of the question of how safe you are in a particular place.

Clodfobble 10-22-2011 08:15 PM
I, for one, wouldn't feel safe at all! I mean, those people might vandalize me, and then disorderly conduct all over my face.



Jesus Christ I can't believe I wrote that.

Lamplighter 10-22-2011 09:23 PM
:)

Lamplighter 10-22-2011 09:44 PM
First person to say "Kumbaya" gets sent to Time Out.

Washington Post
By Marc Fisher
Updated: Saturday, October*22, 4:10*PM

For tea party and Occupy Wall Street movements, some common ground
Quote:
Wayne Schissler walked the four blocks from his workplace
to the small Occupy Allentown protest to show the young demonstrators
that a tea party member is not a monster.
What he learned after a few hours of talk surprised him.

“They didn’t stink, and they weren’t on drugs,” he said. “I could see me being them, 30 years ago.”

Fifteen hundred miles away in rural Minnesota, Vas Littlecrow,
a tea party die-hard since the movement’s early days,
let the Internet noise about Occupy Wall Street wash over her,
leaving her alternately annoyed and intrigued.
She went on Google Plus to debate the Occupiers,
“and they started saying things that clicked with me,” she said.
“This was deja vu with how I got into the tea party.”
<snip>
No one expects the tea party and Occupy movements to merge forces,
but their adherents are discovering that their stories are often strikingly similar:
They searched for jobs and came up empty.
They found work, but their pay barely covered food and rent,
with nothing left over even to buy an old car.
They saw their towns empty out as young people moved away in search of money and meaning.
<snip>
Sorta nice to hear of people talking to one another.







[PEEP]Kumbaya

DanaC 10-22-2011 09:59 PM
That's heartening.

ZenGum 10-23-2011 05:25 AM
Op-Ed from the New York Times of 10th October: Panic of the Plutocrats.

My favourite selection:

Quote:
What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

Lamplighter 10-23-2011 07:00 AM
I enjoy reading Krugman, probably because he agrees with me !

Often I get the image he is clinging to a buoy,
swinging a flare and hailing a ship being blown ashore,
while the Captain and mates play poker down below.

Geitner would do well to pay heed.

DanaC 10-23-2011 07:30 AM
That's a really good article.

Griff 10-23-2011 08:29 AM
I'm not a big Krugman guy but he has his finger on something this time.
We'd probably split on the solution though. I'd say never again to the bailouts while Krugman would probably extend them to everyone. We agree that banking needs tighter regulation and these con-men are no John Galt.


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