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Forums - General Discussion - Occupy Wall Street Protests not working? What do you think?

 

How much of an impact is OWS having?

Can't hear them over the sound of my Ferrari 60 24.10%
 
Just a news story, no visible results 82 32.93%
 
Helping change minds, it's a start 68 27.31%
 
Change is on the horizon, just you wait 27 10.84%
 
I feel the impact already 6 2.41%
 
Can't hear them over the... 6 2.41%
 
Total:249
SamuelRSmith on 26 November 2011
lordmandeep said:
My parents story is like that.

Instead of sulking and never doing anything with their lives like the OWS people, they worked hard as they had a family that depended on them.

I do agree times have changed, before you could work hard and get a better life, but it is harder in today's world.

Upward mobility is way down from the past.


No, it isn't. It's just a different path. The best thing our parents generation could have to done to increase their wealth was buy a house. For us, it's better if we rent and save. It was better for our parents to enter the workforce as unskilled labour, and work their way up. For us, it's better if we enter the workforce as skilled labour.

Times are harder if you expect to have the same climb as your parents did, if you acknowledge the world is changing, and react to those changes accordingly, you can end up as prosporous as the previous generation.

I'll agree that, in the future, times will be harder for the moochers. But I have no problem with that.



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markimsoad on 26 November 2011

more movements will welcome against the bankers ( they cant never lose)



HappySqurriel on 26 November 2011
SamuelRSmith said:
Why is it that the people who like to claim that money isn't everything, are so obsessed with getting equal pay?

Why is it that many on the left, who say they stand for equality, only care about one element of equality - monetary. Why, to them, is everything about money?

If I have a close family, good friends, a fulfilling job or hobby, and make enough money to survive (and usually, a little more), why do I care that the man down the road should have 6 BMWs on their drive? Sure, I can aspire to be like him, but at no point should I want to take that away from him, or be jealous of him.

And, you know, it's usually the people like that who end up doing better in this world. My parents had it hard at the start - for many years my dad worked in a factory, for less than minimum wage (before minimum wage laws were introduced in 1998, the job was paying less than that law specified), for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week.

I grew up on clothes bought from charity shops, and my dad drove a car that the Trotter brothers would be ashamed of. At no point were my parents angry with the system, at no point did they resent the rich, and (despite being tired), they were happy and loving. They always refused any help from family, and never owed any debt (except a mortgage - which were always within reasonable bounds of income).

Of course, my dad's hard work and good attitude was recognised, and he slowly got promoted up through the company. It got to the point where his income was high enough for him to start buying shares in the company. He now is in the highest position within the company, and owns 66% of it. He also has joint investments in products with various other companies. As me and my brothers grew older, my mum also moved into the work place. My dad usually works 4 days a week, and finishes early at least once or twice. We spend a month+ a year on holiday in different countries. My parents have tens of thousands of pounds in savings, and my dad has recently set up his pension so that, when he comes to retirement, he'll have at least £1m pension.

The point of this story is - capitalism works best for those who expect nothing from it, those who don't think they are entitled to anything, those who don't try to have more than they earned (either through welfare, or excessive debts). Also, that wealth isn't all that important, as long as you have security. Honestly, in the latter years of growing up, the best thing about my parent's position, was that I essentially had two parents that worked part time. That mattered far more than the money.

It's telling that many of my dad's employees were already working there when my dad started. Why were they not promoted over him? Attitude and work ethic.


Maybe it is just the groups I have observed, but the progressive groups that protest for "equality" rarely are protesting for true equality; and are really protesting that the economy rewards people for holding different values than the ones they believe it should reward. They generally have no problem with people being paid different incomes based on merit, as long as the merit they are being paid based on is one that perfectly matches their (often warped) values.

An example of this is often seen in how individuals in these groups react when you ask them about highly paid actors or writers compared to highly paid athletes. Even though both groups are in the entertainment field, and are paid based on how highly they perform to bring in an audience, many progressive individuals have no problem with "talented" (in their opinion) actors being paid what they are but believe that no athlete should earn more than an average salary because there is no merit in professional sports.



HappySqurriel on 26 November 2011
markimsoad said:
more movements will welcome against the bankers ( they cant never lose)


Bankers don't lose in these situations because you're targeting the wrong people ...

As long as a government is in place that has the power to artificially prop-up these institutions, the banks will be able to use their money to influence policy to ensure they are protected. Protesting the bankers is a wasted effort because only reducing the government's power to give these banks unfair advantages can return the system to balance; and let the poorly run banks fail.



austin2359 on 26 November 2011

It is just as racist to attack the protesters for being white as it is to say whites as a group may be driven to succeed more.



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austin2359 on 26 November 2011

SamuelRSmith said:
Why is it that the people who like to claim that money isn't everything, are so obsessed with getting equal pay?

Why is it that many on the left, who say they stand for equality, only care about one element of equality - monetary. Why, to them, is everything about money?


Because everything is too expensive.  You shouldn't have to slave yourself and whore yourself to corporate America just to have a roof over you head or gas in you tank.

 

I can understand that some people have unrealistic expectations, but people with reasonable expectations are still getting screwed.



Kasz216 on 26 November 2011
nuckles87 said:

The Occupy Movement IS working. It's done something that nothing else has been able to do: shift the news media away from the deficit and onto real, current, pressing problems like income inequality. The media typically ignores these things. Heck, they ignored the Occupy Wall Street protests until the police started pepper spraying people on video. Anyone remember the 100,000+ Union march that happened last year in New York? Yeah, me neither, because it was completely ignored.

The Occupy movement has been unwilling to go away, and by its very nature it can be very difficult to ignore, because it's not only constantly present in cities across the world, but it's gotten bigger.

The "Day of Action" that happened after the Zucotti Park eviction proved as much that this movement isn't going anywhere. It's preaching popular ideas. Frankly, I think the evictions may be for the best, because as they are the "Occupations" began to cause problems. Police began placing vagrants and drunks in the protest, a few shootings that had nothing to do with Occupy happened near a few and got connected to the protests, we have police pepper spraying and beating people, and we have provacatuers and violent elements manifesting themselves within the movement. The Occupation needs to move out of the streets and into office spaces, and start using the streets for planned, co-ordinated protests.Much like the day of action that happened after the Zucotti eviction.

austin2359 said:

 

Scientific (Marxist) revolution is the only solution.



 

Its this kind of talk that only hurts the movement. Marxism isn't the solution. We just need to make our capitalistic system a more balanced play field, like it was before the 80s.

Popular Ideas?  They are less popular then the freakin Tea Party.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-favor-fading.html



Kasz216 on 26 November 2011
austin2359 said:
Correct.

The stats do confirm exactly that. That college students face the same unemployment but they have debt and people who do not have degrees don't have debt.

20% of 2011 college graduates have NO job, and debt.

47% of employed people are underemployed, working part time or out of their field.

So yes, college people were hit the worst, and young people were hit the worse, because older people are often managers and they can shift the blame downwards to absolve themselves from the responsibility of their own mistake.

So yes, no sarcasm, that is correct.

Regarding the protesters being white, first of all not everywhere, in Philadelphia there are more black protestors, but Whites are perhaps more driven to succeed than other races.


The undermployed/out of their field numberes have nothing to do with the recession.  A lot of people speicalize in fields where the main application is being a teacher and conducting research, usually as a teacher.

Overall college unemployment is VERY low... and largely centered in specialized degrees, with people who degrees that should make it harder for them to get a job have very low unemployment.

http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=


For most severe cases of college degree unemployment seem to be by choice of people refusing to "lower theemselves" to do a job not related to their giantly crowded major.



Kasz216 on 26 November 2011
austin2359 said:

SamuelRSmith said:
Why is it that the people who like to claim that money isn't everything, are so obsessed with getting equal pay?

Why is it that many on the left, who say they stand for equality, only care about one element of equality - monetary. Why, to them, is everything about money?


Because everything is too expensive.  You shouldn't have to slave yourself and whore yourself to corporate America just to have a roof over you head or gas in you tank.

 

I can understand that some people have unrealistic expectations, but people with reasonable expectations are still getting screwed.

Now... if I'm reading this correctly you are saying

"People shouldn't have to get a job just to own a house and have gas in their car.""

How isn't that an unrealistic demand?  Heck, it's even taking a car as a general right because it's gas in your tank, let alone a car.

If you mean a job in wallstreet... well you don't need a job in wallstreet to get those things.

 

Furthermore, trying to spread out home ownership to everyone is what LED to the economic crash and a lot of the things wallstreet did.  They needed to fill quota's for home ownership by the government, and needed to find a way to do it while making a profit large enough to justify them staying in buisness.



HappySqurriel on 26 November 2011
austin2359 said:
Correct.

The stats do confirm exactly that. That college students face the same unemployment but they have debt and people who do not have degrees don't have debt.

20% of 2011 college graduates have NO job, and debt.

47% of employed people are underemployed, working part time or out of their field.

So yes, college people were hit the worst, and young people were hit the worse, because older people are often managers and they can shift the blame downwards to absolve themselves from the responsibility of their own mistake.

So yes, no sarcasm, that is correct.

Regarding the protesters being white, first of all not everywhere, in Philadelphia there are more black protestors, but Whites are perhaps more driven to succeed than other races.

As Kasz has already pointed out, I was being sarcastic ...

The individuals who have been impacted in the most negative way by this economic downturn have been black people who only have a highschool education or less; a group this is unrepresented by the OWS movement. When you look at the employment to population ratio based on ethnicity and education, a white college graduate is the group that has (probably) been impacted the least by the economic downturn.