Occupy Wall Street (1 Viewer)

[bueno]

One of the more coherent "goals & demands" lists I've seen come out of a group so far:

OccupyAustin.org

Ratified by the General Assembly:

[*]This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

[*]This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

[*]This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

[*]This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

Except we don't live in a democracy, government regulations caused the crisis, governemnt prevent repercussions by bailing out corporations, and fair share means distribution of wealth.

 

[Slapdash]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

You mean the fact that the US consistently ranks near the bottom of the OECD on this metric?

 

[Eephus]

Again, why does it seem nutty?

Well, because a protest typically seeks to convey a message. I just walked through the just-setting up D.C. version of the protest about an hour ago. There were people holding up signs advocating a wide variety of positions on a variety of different topics. Lots of anti-war stuff, some anti-corporation stuff, some Ron Paul people saying to end the Fed, etc. Other than the people holding the individual signs, I have no idea who agreed with what. So it's hard to take any real message away from the protest other than "here are people that want to protest something."

That could be said about pretty much any broad-based protest on either the left or right. There are always contingents with their own limited agendas. OWS and the Tea Party alike are disorganized movements with central control that's ad hoc at best.

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

Again, why does it seem nutty?

Well, because a protest typically seeks to convey a message. I just walked through the just-setting up D.C. version of the protest about an hour ago. There were people holding up signs advocating a wide variety of positions on a variety of different topics. Lots of anti-war stuff, some anti-corporation stuff, some Ron Paul people saying to end the Fed, etc. Other than the people holding the individual signs, I have no idea who agreed with what. So it's hard to take any real message away from the protest other than "here are people that want to protest something."

That could be said about pretty much any broad-based protest on either the left or right. There are always contingents with their own limited agendas. OWS and the Tea Party alike are disorganized movements with central control that's ad hoc at best.

I don't think this is true. When there's an anti-war protest, the vast majority of people there are actually anti-war. If there's some sort of pro-life march, the participants all oppose abortion.

 

[mcintyre1]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

 

[bueno]

What is the solution? To try to make things more fair? Who's the best arbiter of "fairness" -- the government or the markets?

I would suggest that the public intellectual who probably best captures the ideas of the leaders of the OWS movement is the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz. And Stiglitz would argue that smart government intervention is necessary in order for markets to function correctly. Otherwise, he argues, information asymmetries that ensure outcomes that are not Pareto optimal are endemic. Stiglitz would argue that the financial services industry distributes risk across a broader spectrum than it distributes reward. Hence, finance professionals pursuing their self-interest have rational reasons to pursue risky investment strategies.

Other simple economic concepts explain how simply "creating a bigger pie" does not, in acutuality, create greater social utility when most of that pie is simply being allocated to a small subclass.

Smart government is kind of an oxymoron nowadays.

 

[Eephus]

Again, why does it seem nutty?

Well, because a protest typically seeks to convey a message. I just walked through the just-setting up D.C. version of the protest about an hour ago. There were people holding up signs advocating a wide variety of positions on a variety of different topics. Lots of anti-war stuff, some anti-corporation stuff, some Ron Paul people saying to end the Fed, etc. Other than the people holding the individual signs, I have no idea who agreed with what. So it's hard to take any real message away from the protest other than "here are people that want to protest something."

That could be said about pretty much any broad-based protest on either the left or right. There are always contingents with their own limited agendas. OWS and the Tea Party alike are disorganized movements with central control that's ad hoc at best.

I don't think this is true. When there's an anti-war protest, the vast majority of people there are actually anti-war. If there's some sort of pro-life march, the participants all oppose abortion.

Have you ever taken part in a mass demonstration or seen one first hand?

 

[pantagrapher]

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No, and that's not what brought the world to the brink of bankruptcy, and you know it.

Right. So the "99%" have no culpability or responsibility for anything. It's all the evil, faceless 'corporations'...or Wall Street...or the rich...If these people are so interested in human fairness, why aren't they sending their money to Africa instead of buying laptops, iPads and iPhones? I'm sure there are a lot of people in the world who don't think it's 'fair' that even these protesters enjoy such a high standard of living.

Wall Street got bailed out and its executives campaigned all over the place to make sure they still got their bonuses. I don't think the 99% see themselves as completely blameless. I think they support the idea of shared blame and shared sacrifice. The 1% don't support the idea of shared blame and shared sacrifice.

You don't think there's been shared blame??? It seems like all you hear and read about is how Wall Street is to blame. Also, Wall Street got bailed out and Main Street got a trillion dollar stimulus plus health care. Beyond the stimulus, they've seen an huge increase in government spending--a lot of which has gone to benefits. I just read that approximately half of the households in the US have someone who receives benefits from the federal government and half don't pay federal income taxes--up from about 35% just 4 years ago. So please, let's stop hiding behind the mantra that there was this huge "Wall Street bail-out" and everyone else got "sold-out". As far as "blame and sacrifice" for Wall Street what are we talking about??? The mutual fund industry? Pension and endowment funds? Banking? Mortgage lending? Beyond just being mad at Wall Street, what do you want to do? You had Dodd-Frank that was supposed to fix all of this.

I meant accepting blame, not dishing it out. Wall Street refuses to accept any blame. Refuses to countenance any but the most toothless, symbolic reforms.The stimulus was weak and that "trillion" consisted in large part of tax cuts. It helped, but not nearly enough. The big bailouts were reserved for the banks. The Obamacare benefits mostly haven't kicked in yet. And I doubt people look at collecting unemployment after losing their jobs as a bailout. Maybe they should. Wall Street should take that message to the streets.

 

[The Z Machine]

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

You mean the fact that the US consistently ranks near the bottom of the OECD on this metric?

It's true. There's a myth about class mobility in the US, but in general it's not true to the extent that some people make it out to be. Most other first world nations are better at class mobility than the US, yet you wouldn't know that by listening to the rhetoric here.

 

[The Z Machine]

BTW, since I'm unemployed, I think I might join some of these idiots, just for the heck of checking it out.

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

When there's an anti-war protest, the vast majority of people there are actually anti-war. If there's some sort of pro-life march, the participants all oppose abortion.

Have you ever taken part in a mass demonstration or seen one first hand?

Yes, I have seen demonstrations.

 

[SacramentoBob]

If they have a rally near here, I'm gonna hold up this sign.

 

[mcintyre1]

One of the more coherent "goals & demands" lists I've seen come out of a group so far:

OccupyAustin.org

Ratified by the General Assembly:

[*]This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

[*]This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

[*]This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

[*]This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

1) Except we don't live in a democracy, 2) government regulations caused the crisis, 3) governemnt prevent repercussions by bailing out corporations, 4) and fair share means distribution of wealth.

1. Obviously. But common usage of the term "democracy" today includes a representative government. Would you have preferred they write "representative democracy?" Do you have a disagreement with the actual content of that point, or are you just here to be an Internet grammar Nazi?2. Government regulations that were purchased by lobbyists. Don't pretend that the top 1% weren't benefiting from loosened lending restrictions.

3. Yes, they did. And the protesters aren't happy about it.

4. Is that supposed to be a controversial statement? My "fair share" of taxes is distributed to others as well.

 

[guderian]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time. You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

 

[Eephus]

When there's an anti-war protest, the vast majority of people there are actually anti-war. If there's some sort of pro-life march, the participants all oppose abortion.

Have you ever taken part in a mass demonstration or seen one first hand?

Yes, I have seen demonstrations.

They're not nearly as homogeneous as you make them out to be. My experience is mostly on the left, because there aren't any local grassroots protests on the right in my neck of the woods. But even fringe groups have their own fringes and have had them as long as there have been popular movements.

 

[guderian]

I meant accepting blame, not dishing it out. Wall Street refuses to accept any blame. Refuses to countenance any but the most toothless, symbolic reforms.The stimulus was weak and that "trillion" consisted in large part of tax cuts. It helped, but not nearly enough. The big bailouts were reserved for the banks. The Obamacare benefits mostly haven't kicked in yet. And I doubt people look at collecting unemployment after losing their jobs as a bailout. Maybe they should. Wall Street should take that message to the streets.

So what does "Wall Street" have to do to accept blame? Are there specific people you want to stand up and proclaim that they were to blame and who are they specifically? When you say "Wall Street" what do you specifically mean? What reforms do you want? You had Dodd-Frank.

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

They're not nearly as homogeneous as you make them out to be. My experience is mostly on the left, because there aren't any local grassroots protests on the right in my neck of the woods. But even fringe groups have their own fringes and have had them as long as there have been popular movements.

Sure, there are outliers. But I feel like this is taking it to a whole new level.

 

[urbanhack]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time. You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

 

[SacramentoBob]

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed. If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

4x It's about time people accepted this. It's the same people who whine about oil company profits when their 401K is heavily invested in oil companies.

 

[Slapdash]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Apples and oranges. His data follows specific individuals through time and says little about the changes in distribution of income over time.

 

[Sarnoff]

The fairness is a red herring.This isn't about fairness, it's about justice.A democracy which is bought and paid for by the financial elite, and which only operates to benefit the financial elite, is unjust, and no true democracy at all.

So let's re-elect Obama, the most bought-and-paid-for corporate candidate of the last 100 years

 

[flufhed]

The fairness is a red herring.This isn't about fairness, it's about justice.A democracy which is bought and paid for by the financial elite, and which only operates to benefit the financial elite, is unjust, and no true democracy at all.

So let's re-elect Obama, the most bought-and-paid-for corporate candidate of the last 100 years

Great, another red herring.Have you seen Obama's poll numbers among liberals lately?I'll make it even simpler - me and many other (probably most of the people down there) recognize Obama is part of the problem. If we had the right President in there to stand up for justice, and believed he was doing so, do you really think people would be protesting?

 

[Slapdash]

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

You mean the fact that the US consistently ranks near the bottom of the OECD on this metric?

It's true. There's a myth about class mobility in the US, but in general it's not true to the extent that some people make it out to be. Most other first world nations are better at class mobility than the US, yet you wouldn't know that by listening to the rhetoric here.

Or that they can deliver health care insurance to their whole popoulation at the half what it costs us per person while we leave 40 million uninsured.

 

[mcintyre1]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/...s/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time. You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

Your statements about income mobility are disputed by many that study the subject. You claim that income mobility is high in the USA and certainly there are studies that have been done that will agree with your statement. But there are also many studies that make the exact opposite claim. As a counter-point to something you lay down as fact, here's a dissenting opinion:

Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top

5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22

percent chance.

Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300)

had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5

percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of

attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.

By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of

intergenerational mobility: our parents' income is highly predictive of our incomes

as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France,

Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income

countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom

had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.

Source: http://www.americanp...ityAnalysis.pdf

 

[jonessed]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time. You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

Kind of ironic that someone who has been actively protesting Wall Street is accusing people of bias when discussing Wall Street protests.Perhaps you should just stick to the merits of the conversations as opposed to trying to point out possible biases against people that disagree with you.

 

[guderian]

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time.

You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

I run a fund for someone that's in the 0.01%. He started out in the 99% and I pitched him on the idea of trusting me with some of the money to invest. They've been way more than fair to me, even picking up my health insurance when that wasn't part of my initial pitch. I started out at the very bottom. Went to public school, parents declared bankruptcy and I paid for the whole thing myself through student loans and working 30 hours a week while I was in school. I graduated during a recession and my employer shut down my group 2 months after graduation. So, I think I know both sides of this coin better than just about anyone on this board. Maybe I'm wrong about most of these protesters, but I've heard these same arguments since high school from people who never put in the time and effort to get anywhere and now they want equality of outcomes.

 

[guderian]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/...s/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time. You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

Your statements about income mobility are disputed by many that study the subject. You claim that income mobility is high in the USA and certainly there are studies that have been done that will agree with your statement. But there are also many studies that make the exact opposite claim. As a counter-point to something you lay down as fact, here's a dissenting opinion:

Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top

5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22

percent chance.

Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300)

had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5

percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of

attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.

By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of

intergenerational mobility: our parents' income is highly predictive of our incomes

as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France,

Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income

countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom

had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.

Source: http://www.americanp...ityAnalysis.pdf

I wouldn't disagree that the statistics that you cited could be improved, but in my opinion, that difference is mostly because of differences in family life and K-12 education--none of which seems to be on the radar screen of these protesters. Also, even those statistics show a dramatic difference in the relative income performance of different income groups relative to the initial data that you cited.

 

[mcintyre1]

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time.

You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

I run a fund for someone that's in the 0.1%. He started out in the 99% and I pitched him on the idea of trusting me with some of the money to invest. They've been way more than fair to me, even picking up my health insurance when that wasn't part of my initial pitch. I started out at the very bottom. Went to public school, parents declared bankruptcy and I paid for the whole thing myself through student loans and working 30 hours a week while I was in school. I graduated during a recession and my employer shut down my group 2 months after graduation. So, I think I know both sides of this coin better than just about anyone on this board. Maybe I'm wrong about most of these protesters, but I've heard these same arguments since high school from people who never put in the time and effort to get anywhere and now they want equality of outcomes.

Now I see why you have the views that you do, thank you for being transparent. Unfortunately, there is very little value in taking the example of your own and your client's improbable success and assuming that because it worked for you, it should work for others. I'm surprised that a person so successful would not realize this. This is akin to saying "I won the lottery, why can't you? It wasn't that hard."EDIT for clarity, I didn't like the wording I used originally.

 

[urbanhack]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time. You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

Kind of ironic that someone who has been actively protesting Wall Street is accusing people of bias when discussing Wall Street protests.Perhaps you should just stick to the merits of the conversations as opposed to trying to point out possible biases against people that disagree with you.

Actively? I happened to go last weekend because we happened to be in NYC. I stuck around longer than I wanted due to reasons other than the protest. I support the protests mainly because I have issues with corporations running our government and the continued gap in wealth in this country. Those are the two most broad issues I feel strongly about. I don't have a vested interest in this like guderian does, but go ahead and make the comparison.

 

[jonessed]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time. You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

Kind of ironic that someone who has been actively protesting Wall Street is accusing people of bias when discussing Wall Street protests.Perhaps you should just stick to the merits of the conversations as opposed to trying to point out possible biases against people that disagree with you.

Actively? I happened to go last weekend because we happened to be in NYC. I stuck around longer than I wanted due to reasons other than the protest. I support the protests mainly because I have issues with corporations running our government and the continued gap in wealth in this country. Those are the two most broad issues I feel strongly about. I don't have a vested interest in this like guderian does, but go ahead and make the comparison.

Okay.

 

[pantagrapher]

Ran down to Occupy Chicago on my lunch break. There were only about 100 protesters, if that. A lot of finance folks on cigarette breaks enjoying the spectacle. Photos to come.

 

[SacramentoBob]

Ran down to Occupy Chicago on my lunch break. There were only about 100 protesters, if that. A lot of finance folks on cigarette breaks enjoying the spectacle. Photos to come.

 

[guderian]

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time.

You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

I run a fund for someone that's in the 0.1%. He started out in the 99% and I pitched him on the idea of trusting me with some of the money to invest. They've been way more than fair to me, even picking up my health insurance when that wasn't part of my initial pitch. I started out at the very bottom. Went to public school, parents declared bankruptcy and I paid for the whole thing myself through student loans and working 30 hours a week while I was in school. I graduated during a recession and my employer shut down my group 2 months after graduation. So, I think I know both sides of this coin better than just about anyone on this board. Maybe I'm wrong about most of these protesters, but I've heard these same arguments since high school from people who never put in the time and effort to get anywhere and now they want equality of outcomes.

Now I see why you have the views that you do, thank you for being transparent. Unfortunately, there is very little value in taking the example of your own improbable success and assuming that because it worked for you, it should work for others. I'm surprised that a person so successful would not realize this. This is akin to saying "I won the lottery, why can't you? It wasn't that hard."

I would hardly characterize myself as having won the lottery or that I've been "so successful". I'd say I'm pretty average for someone that's put in the time through college and grad school. Like I said, I've seen both sides of the coins and I don't see anymore corruption or greed among the dozens of CEOs, CFOs or fund managers that I've worked with relative to the 99%. I have one friend who talks like these protesters who broke his arm water skiing and went into work the next day, tossed water on the bathroom floor and faked an injury for workers comp. The fact is that this whole movement, is hypocritically driven by greed because in the end, as you've argued, they just want a greater share of the wealth. If this was a movement against greed, they'd go set up a commune somewhere and work for the community. The fact is that they just want a bigger share of the pie which makes them no different than the people they think they're protesting against.

 

[mcintyre1]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/...s/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Apples and oranges. His data follows specific individuals through time and says little about the changes in distribution of income over time.

I'd like to get back to this point. I don't see why mobility into and out of the 1% is being brought up as the main issue, and I'd love to hear an explanation from the other side. From my point of view, the heart of problem isn't that people can't move into the 1%. The issue is that the 1% (whatever their actual makeup) control a greater and greater portion of total income, denying spending power to the rest of the 99%, which in turn tanks the economy. Is the counter argument to this simply that mobility into and out of the 1% is great enough that spending power for people in the country as a whole hasn't declined? As in, people that were in the 1% but dropped out, still have spending power from the large income they earned while in the 1%?

 

[urbanhack]

Ran down to Occupy Chicago on my lunch break. There were only about 100 protesters, if that. A lot of finance folks on cigarette breaks enjoying the spectacle. Photos to come.

I'm only a block away.

 

[mcintyre1]

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time.

You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

I run a fund for someone that's in the 0.1%. He started out in the 99% and I pitched him on the idea of trusting me with some of the money to invest. They've been way more than fair to me, even picking up my health insurance when that wasn't part of my initial pitch. I started out at the very bottom. Went to public school, parents declared bankruptcy and I paid for the whole thing myself through student loans and working 30 hours a week while I was in school. I graduated during a recession and my employer shut down my group 2 months after graduation. So, I think I know both sides of this coin better than just about anyone on this board. Maybe I'm wrong about most of these protesters, but I've heard these same arguments since high school from people who never put in the time and effort to get anywhere and now they want equality of outcomes.

Now I see why you have the views that you do, thank you for being transparent. Unfortunately, there is very little value in taking the example of your own improbable success and assuming that because it worked for you, it should work for others. I'm surprised that a person so successful would not realize this. This is akin to saying "I won the lottery, why can't you? It wasn't that hard."

I would hardly characterize myself as having won the lottery or that I've been "so successful". I'd say I'm pretty average for someone that's put in the time through college and grad school. Like I said, I've seen both sides of the coins and I don't see anymore corruption or greed among the dozens of CEOs, CFOs or fund managers that I've worked with relative to the 99%. I have one friend who talks like these protesters who broke his arm water skiing and went into work the next day, tossed water on the bathroom floor and faked an injury for workers comp. The fact is that this whole movement, is hypocritically driven by greed because in the end, as you've argued, they just want a greater share of the wealth. If this was a movement against greed, they'd go set up a commune somewhere and work for the community. The fact is that they just want a bigger share of the pie which makes them no different than the people they think they're protesting against.

That is why I went back and edited my comment, I meant to refer mainly to the success of your client, who went from the 99% to the 0.1% as an example of winning the lottery. Frankly, I don't know how you couldn't see corruption and greed among the top earners in our country. Do you disagree that corporations (and for sake of simplicity, the top earners that own/control them) have the ear of the government rather than the wider populace they claim to represent?

 

[SacramentoBob]

Is the counter argument to this simply that mobility into and out of the 1% is great enough that spending power for people in the country as a whole hasn't declined? As in, people that were in the 1% but dropped out, still have spending power from the large income they earned while in the 1%?

The bottom whatever % you want to make it has seen their spending power increase over time.

 

[mcintyre1]

Is the counter argument to this simply that mobility into and out of the 1% is great enough that spending power for people in the country as a whole hasn't declined? As in, people that were in the 1% but dropped out, still have spending power from the large income they earned while in the 1%?

The bottom whatever % you want to make it has seen their spending power increase over time.

Have they? How are you defining spending power? Median household income? If so, you're right. They've gained a staggering 0.75% since 1989. Over that time period, the GDP per capita of the USA rose 32.5% Take a guess on where all of that money went.

 

[Mark Davis]

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed. If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

4x It's about time people accepted this. It's the same people who whine about oil company profits when their 401K is heavily invested in oil companies.

Same principle as when they show opinion polls on who the public feels should have their taxes raised to pay for things. Your break even point on the polling is pretty close to when you reach the income level of 50% of the people. That guy who makes $1 more than me, but not me.

 

[scoobygang]

Kind of piggybacking on Fatguy's comments on the Occupy Freedom Plaza rally. Most of the signs are anti-war or along the lines of the War on Terror causing the defecit. There are a few Zeitgeist types, but I didn't recognize Smoo.

There's one guy, and I've seen around DC before, who has a large, very professional sign that say, "STOP CHEATING MOVIE GOERS!" Normally, he protests outside of movie theaters. I don't know what his connection with Occupy Wall Street is, but it's hard to argue with that grievance. $5 for popcorn. Give me a break.

 

[fsword]

The fact is that this whole movement, is hypocritically driven by greed because in the end, as you've argued, they just want a greater share of the wealth. If this was a movement against greed, they'd go set up a commune somewhere and work for the community. The fact is that they just want a bigger share of the pie which makes them no different than the people they think they're protesting against.

While mentioning greed, please don't forget envy. :X

 

[pantagrapher]

Ran down to Occupy Chicago on my lunch break. There were only about 100 protesters, if that. A lot of finance folks on cigarette breaks enjoying the spectacle. Photos to come.

I'm only a block away.

I'll probably head back over there again tomorrow or Monday.

 

[JerseyToughGuys]

This has been posted already several times in the last 5+ pages. Again, people are missing the point of the whole movement. They are still formulating "demands" through discussion among those involved in the protests-- democratically. That's why you'll see a wide ranging list of topics. For a more coherent list from a different general assembly (and to get a better understanding that each general assembly will have different goals), see my post of OccupyAustin's "goals and demands" last page.

This? It sounds like Obama's platform from 2008.

Ratified by the General Assembly:

This movement is about democracy. We demand that the government be truly responsive to those it represents. We demand an end to the massive corporate influence blocking the voice of the people by eliminating corporate personhood and limiting monetary contributions to political campaigns and lobbying.

This movement is about economic security. We demand effective reforms to prevent banks and financial institutions from causing future economic crises.

This movement is about corporate responsibility. We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers.

This movement is about financial fairness. We demand tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

"We demand strict repercussions for corporations and institutions who cause serious financial damage to our country and its taxpayers."--so it was the 'corporations' fault for making them take out all of those loans and refinancing them to take out equity to buy a new SUV and 50 inch plasma?

No. Once again you've shown your inability to grasp the core issues at hand. Their statements are not about personal debt, they are about the rapidly increasing disparity in % of total income that the top 1% takes each year. Historically (1949-1979), that top 1% took home no more than 12.8% of the entire pre-tax income in the US. By the time Reagan left office, that number had jumped to 15.5%. By the time Bush left office in 2007, it had skyrocketed to 23.5%.Last year, the share of our nation's income that goes directly to wages hit a record low. At the same time, corporate profits hit an all time high. Our economy depends on the spending habits of the 99%, not the savings of the 1%.

I guess I can't "grasp the core issues at hand" because there are no formal "issues at hand" since you seem to disagree with the ones that they put forth on their own Facebook page as well as the ones that you posted on page 19. When I directly quote a line from the list of issues that you posted about repercussions for financial damage damage, you still say 'no'. Now, since you seem to have a better grasp of what they want then they do, you're arguing that it's about an income disparity between the 99% and the 1%. Again, this is not in the list of issues that even you posted.

To refute your statistics using IRS data..."income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent."

Because one of the key facts that you class warriors always miss is that in the US there's abundant income mobility. The people comprising the top 1% today weren't necessarily in the top 1% 10 or 20 years ago.

I don't disagree with the issues put forth by the general assemblies in most cases. What I disagree with is your simplistic and condescending interpretations of them. The income disparity is at the heart of many of those individual issues, I never claimed that it was on any list, and frankly I don't know whether it is. That doesn't change its relation to the grievances that many have.I have no idea where you're getting your statistics from, but I'm getting mine from here:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-9-09pov.pdf

That is an analysis of IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Are they the end all be all of analysis on the data? Of course not. All I can do it read what I find and make my own conclusions. I have no reason to doubt their analysis as of yet.

Again, your data doesn't account for income mobility. There were a lot of people in the "99%" in 1997 who ended up in the "top 1%" in your data. You have to look at where someone was at one point in time and then compare that to where the same person is at some other point in time. You are probably correct about the condescending interpretation. In general, I think these protesters have a very dim view of how the economy works. The people within these corporations are almost all in "the 99%". They're making almost all of the decisions that were in the long list of issues I posted above. As far as "Wall Street"--again, it's almost entirely composed of people who were never in "the 1%".

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed.

If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

You are a trader or work in and around wall st and the markets, correct? Are you at all biased because of your situation?If not, my mistake.

Kind of ironic that someone who has been actively protesting Wall Street is accusing people of bias when discussing Wall Street protests.Perhaps you should just stick to the merits of the conversations as opposed to trying to point out possible biases against people that disagree with you.

Actively? I happened to go last weekend because we happened to be in NYC. I stuck around longer than I wanted due to reasons other than the protest. I support the protests mainly because I have issues with corporations running our government and the continued gap in wealth in this country. Those are the two most broad issues I feel strongly about. I don't have a vested interest in this like guderian does, but go ahead and make the comparison.

beer related reasons, I hope.

 

[guderian]

That is why I went back and edited my comment, I meant to refer mainly to the success of your client, who went from the 99% to the 0.1% as an example of winning the lottery.

Frankly, I don't know how you couldn't see corruption and greed among the top earners in our country. Do you disagree that corporations (and for sake of simplicity, the top earners that own/control them) have the ear of the government rather than the wider populace they claim to represent?

I didn't say that there isn't corruption and greed--just that it's not any different than the rest of the population. Again, it's not the "top earners" that "own/control" companies. The largest investment fund on Wall Street is CALPERS--the California Public Employees Retirement System with a fund of $236 billion. If you look at their top 10 holdings in 2007, before the great crash it included:

Exxon

Citigroup

Bank of America

Pfizer

JP Morgan

GE

Microsoft

Johnson and Johnson

Wal Mart

Procter and Gamble

So, in 2007 the public employees retirement fund for California's largest holdings included 3 of the evil Wall Street firms, an evil oil company, and a drug profiteer (Pfizer). These are all areas that the protesters have mentioned they have 'issues' with. This is just one example. They have other such funds in California and all 50 states have pensions and every university has an endowment that's similarly invested.

So, why are these people protesting Wall Street??? Wall Street is driven by the investment dollars and that's controlled by funds like this who, in this case, are managed at the discretion and for the benefit of the public employees in California. According to their website they manage retirement "benefits for 1.6 million California public employees, retirees and their families." Wall Street and the 99% are largely one-in-the-same.

 

[fsword]

Frankly, I don't know how you couldn't see corruption and greed among the top earners in our country. Do you disagree that corporations (and for sake of simplicity, the top earners that own/control them) have the ear of the government rather than the wider populace they claim to represent?

Are you suggesting the corruption and greed from those non-top income earners is just? Why are we all protesting against greedy behavior by anyone,(or envy or pride for that matter), regardless of socioeconomic or political status? Any argument for social justice woudl be bolstered if we didn't protest against greed in a discriminatory and hypocritical fashion, right?

 

[pantagrapher]

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[mcintyre1]

Frankly, I don't know how you couldn't see corruption and greed among the top earners in our country. Do you disagree that corporations (and for sake of simplicity, the top earners that own/control them) have the ear of the government rather than the wider populace they claim to represent?

Are you suggesting the corruption and greed from those non-top income earners is just? Why are we all protesting against greedy behavior by anyone,(or envy or pride for that matter), regardless of socioeconomic or political status? Any argument for social justice woudl be bolstered if we didn't protest against greed in a discriminatory and hypocritical fashion, right?

Again, you need to stop focusing on personal economic issues. Of course there is corruption and greed in "the 99%." It does represent 99% of the population, afterall. But you're referring to personal issues like envy. That's human nature. When I refer to "corruption and greed" I'm referring to political corruption fed by economic greed. You've got to be trolling if you're implying that the 99% is buying off politicians to benefit themselves. If that were happening, there wouldn't be any protests.

 

[Eephus]

Kind of piggybacking on Fatguy's comments on the Occupy Freedom Plaza rally. Most of the signs are anti-war or along the lines of the War on Terror causing the defecit. There are a few Zeitgeist types, but I didn't recognize Smoo.

There's one guy, and I've seen around DC before, who has a large, very professional sign that say, "STOP CHEATING MOVIE GOERS!" Normally, he protests outside of movie theaters. I don't know what his connection with Occupy Wall Street is, but it's hard to argue with that grievance. $5 for popcorn. Give me a break.

12 GALAXIESGUILTIED TO A

ZEGNATRONIC

ROCKET SOCIETY

SF Guys will know who I'm talking about

 

[ericttspikes]

Furthermore, what is this 'corporate greed' driven by? A demand for stock price performance. Who drives that? Investors. Who are the investors? The largest investors on Wall Street are pension and endowment funds. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, for instance, is just about the largest investor on Wall Street. Mutual fund complexes like Fidelity and Vanguard are among the others. So, there's a massive logical inconsistency in a lot of these arguments. If the end result of all of these protests is a decline in company profitability, who gets hurt???? First, stock prices would go down. That means things like CALPERS and university endowments are crushed. Which, in turn means that tuitions will go up, retirement ages will be extended and benefits slashed. If people want to stop corporate greed, then look in the mirror. Invest in mutual funds that don't care about corporate profits and have your union vote to tell your retirement fund to do the same.

4x It's about time people accepted this. It's the same people who whine about oil company profits when their 401K is heavily invested in oil companies.

So people should be happy that "Wall Street" is now too big to fail? That the tentacles of bankers and the financial services industry is so intertwined in the fabric of America that when things go bad for them or they don't get their way they'll again threaten to take everything down with them? Maybe you're right, a reset is in order. Most people my age were sold the old "Social Security won't be there for you so you need to set up a retirement plan" spiel. Get rid of the penalties to remove my own money and I'll be glad to get out of the shell game. The stock market is a suckers bet.

 

[scoobygang]

Kind of piggybacking on Fatguy's comments on the Occupy Freedom Plaza rally. Most of the signs are anti-war or along the lines of the War on Terror causing the defecit. There are a few Zeitgeist types, but I didn't recognize Smoo.

There's one guy, and I've seen around DC before, who has a large, very professional sign that say, "STOP CHEATING MOVIE GOERS!" Normally, he protests outside of movie theaters. I don't know what his connection with Occupy Wall Street is, but it's hard to argue with that grievance. $5 for popcorn. Give me a break.

12 GALAXIESGUILTIED TO A

ZEGNATRONIC

ROCKET SOCIETY

SF Guys will know who I'm talking about

What's awesome, is that this guy is generally in a suit and tie. And not a bedraggled homeless dude suit and tie. It's clean and pressed and fits well. It might even be tailored. For all I know, the guy's been hired off of K St.