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Occupy George

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Re: Occupy George

#61

Post by epscylonb »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #50
epscylonb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am convinced that that in the same vein as america pioneering the separation of church and state, the next big government evolution will be the separation of state and business. It will be extremely hard to accomplish though because historically money and power have always been bedfellows. The real problem is the people are complacent, most of what western governments legislate is in the interests of lobbyists, but…

That would turn legislation into marketing. We have a bad enough problem already with knee-jerk legislation passed because it sounds shiny. Now, as a filter , introduced in addition to umpteen other ways to prevent legislation from passing, it sounds potentially helpful. Anything that makes legislation fail by default without an exceptionally good reason to pass would improve matters.

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting the jury be only check and balance, and I don't think it would be a silver bullet.

We are where we are because business (those who desire money) and politicians (those who desire power) have overlearned the system.

There is no reason why they couldn't overlearn the jury check as well, I can't think of a simple solution.

Perhaps we are doomed to cycles of people being complacent, which lets tyranny flourish only to be ended violently?.

Re: Occupy George

#62

Post by JoshTriplett »

scottjad wrote: post #35

"The richest 1% of Americans control over 1/3 of the wealth, leaving the bottom 80% with less than 1/5." This suffers from the pie fallacy covered in http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html Also if you look at http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html table 3 you'll see that the distribution of wealth between 1% and 99% in 2007 (which I assume is pretty much the same today) was essentially identical t…

In addition to the pie fallacy, it also fails on several other levels, notably that even if every single person had an identical income, simple savings for retirement would cause a significant "wealth disparity". "Inequality in Equalland" showed that even in completely "equal" conditions, the wealthiest 20% of people would have 64% of the wealth. http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-equ...

Talking about "income disparity" at least makes marginal sense, albeit frequently with a large dose of entitlement thrown in. But the concept of "wealth disparity" makes no sense at all.

Re: Occupy George

#63

Post by potatolicious »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #46
potatolicious wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OWS movement is certainly pretty confused and vague when it comes to demands. It would be a mistake, IMO, to use this to dismiss the reasons why people have chosen this time to protest. If you look at the people and signs at a #Occupy protest, you will find a familiar theme: income disparity and unemployment. People are running scared in an economy where social mobility has been utterly destroyed, unemployment ru…

I agree with your assessment of why the protesters protest, and that they don't have a clue how to "fix" things. I disagree with your claim that this indicates anything "fundamentally broken", other than the mindset of the protesters in thinking someone else should step in and make their lives better in all the individual ways they consider their personal situations undesirable. Edit: Clearly people disagree. I'd app…

I'd venture to say that the downvotes are coming from the very broad brush with which you're painting tens of thousands of people, few of which you personally know.

I'd argue that the unprecedented unemployment rate represents a clear systemic dysfunction. These aren't temporary job losses due to the natural boom-bust cycle, a very large portion of these jobs are simply never coming back. Whose fault that is is hard to say, but I don't think it's at all cynical to doubt that the unemployment rates will abate on their own.

It's also no secret that wages have been stagnant (if not outright dropping) for the past two decades. None of the trends indicate a cyclical nature, so it's not hard to suggest that these are systemic issues that won't correct themselves.

The quality of life of the average American is dropping precipitously. In a singular case we can point to any number of causes - lack of education, lack of self-discipline, substance abuse, etc etc. When multiplied a couple hundred million times over, it suggests systemic failure.

In other words, "broken", though of course we can argue about the meaning of "brokenness" till the cows come home.

FWIW, I'm the "4%". I'm definitely not doing badly at all for myself, even in this economy. In fact, my quality of life has never been higher. Despite this, it would be a mistake for me to dismiss the problems this country faces, or to jump to conclusions about those affected. It is perpetually disappointing to me how judgmental the wealthy and successful can be, using their singular case of triumph over the system as a wide brush with which to paint all those who have failed to beat it.

Re: Occupy George

#64

Post by [deleted] »

Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

[deleted]

Re: Occupy George

#65

Post by wisty »

Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

My theory is that they all object to socializing losses, and privatizing gains. Bailing out big corporations (while their CEOs and shareholders purportedly make out like bandits) pisses off socialists, social democrats, and libertarians alike, and they won't all agree on what should be done.

But they are all pissed off, and that's what unifies them.

Re: Occupy George

#66

Post by davidw »

potatolicious wrote: post #63
JoshTriplett wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your assessment of why the protesters protest, and that they don't have a clue how to "fix" things. I disagree with your claim that this indicates anything "fundamentally broken", other than the mindset of the protesters in thinking someone else should step in and make their lives better in all the individual ways they consider their personal situations undesirable. Edit: Clearly people disagree. I'd app…

I'd venture to say that the downvotes are coming from the very broad brush with which you're painting tens of thousands of people, few of which you personally know. I'd argue that the unprecedented unemployment rate represents a clear systemic dysfunction. These aren't temporary job losses due to the natural boom-bust cycle, a very large portion of these jobs are simply never coming back. Whose fault that is is hard…

I think taking issue with 'fundamentally broken' is fair though.

The current recession is not as bad as the great depression, and I'm very, very glad that in the US, we pursued incremental, evolutionary fixes to the breakage then, than much of the radical transformation that happened elsewhere, and turned out to be far, far worse than the 'broken' in the US.

I mean, if something is genuinely fundamentally broken, you should throw it out and completely remake it, no? Terrible idea, as far as I'm concerned, with regards to the US economy.

Other than that, I think your original comment was as good, although I still think the whole thing ought to be flagged as a political discussion that doesn't belong here.

Re: Occupy George

#67

Post by jamieb »

scottjad wrote: post #56
jamieb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by the pie fallacy you mean that people are forgetting that the 2011 pie now represents a much greater total number of dollars than the 1920 pie, then I must point out that the simple economic fact that if we just multiplied everyone's bank balance by 1000, nobody would be better off, even though they now had 1000 times as many dollars. And while it is true that a 1920's person could not buy an iPad, this is of sc…

Your characterization of the pie fallacy is wrong. pg: "I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a…

Ah, ok. So "Its possible to create wealth without taking wealth from others".

Unfortunately, although it is possible to do so without taking it from others, taking it from others is still a viable way to do it. Further, its also possible to destroy wealth. And its possible for the destruction of wealth to be asymmetrical.

So is the current financial state an example of wealth creation, wealth transfer, or wealth destruction?

I'm looking at the national debt, the median house price, and the DJIA and I'm not seeing "wealth creation". What leads you choose "pie fallacy" as your answer?

Re: Occupy George

#68

Post by fiesycal »

jforman wrote: post #26
Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

One of the common outcomes I've heard called for is a "separation of corporation and state," in response to what people feel is an outsized voice in the democratic process for corporations at the expense of individual citizens. The backlash against TARP is a good example of fairly broad sentiment that federal policy favors financial institutions and high-value investors over "Main Street." Lawrence Lessig has spoken…

You should read this http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870426150457620...

99% of TARP has been repaid already. That's more than you can say about regular people paying back their credit card debts due to limitless spending.

Re: Occupy George

#69

Post by nknight »

hkmurakami wrote: post #27

This is alarming to me, because this particular act is appears to be pure sensationalism to me. It also takes the numbers grossly out of context. When I saw the "Richest 400 vs Bottom 150,000,000" 50/50 split on one of the bills, my immediate thought was the following: __Do these people consider how many jobs these top 400 people created over the last decades, and how much better off the world is because they existed…

Let's assume for a moment that the richest 400 people in the US "create jobs" in some reasonable proportion to their personal wealth.

Let's also assume that all of them disappeared tomorrow.

Do you believe that half the jobs in the US would go away?

Let's assume none of them were ever born.

Do you believe the US would have half the jobs it does today?

I hope you can see what I'm getting at.

That aside, take a look at who the 400 are:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/

Just go down the list. Google them and their companies. Take a look at how many people they actually employ.

Some of them you might argue made significant contributions to the creation of entire industries, but many are just investors. Hedge fund managers. Bankers.

OWS isn't pissed about Bill Gates or Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos or Michael Dell. They're not looking at the guys who started value-creating businesses and contributed directly to their success. That's not who this is about, and it never has been.

Re: Occupy George

#70

Post by johncoltrane »

Shenglong wrote: post #11

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out. If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first peo…

There are other good replies here. But one of the reasons you can't figure this movement is because it's a grass roots movement. There is no central body defining agendas, goals and slogans. Only thousands of people fed up by what they see going on above them.

30 years ago, you could probably see the hand of Moscow in this.

Last year, the involvement of the christian right and at least some members of the republican party was very clear when looking at the Tea Party.

OWS appears to be something else.

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