Ask Slashdot: How Do You View the Wall Street Protests? 1799
__roo writes "The New York Times reports that the Occupy Wall Street movement has inspired hundreds of Facebook pages, Twitter posts, and Meetup events, and that 'blog posts and photographs from all over the country are popping up on the WeArethe99Percent blog on Tumblr from people who see themselves as victims of not just a sagging economy but also economic injustice.' What do Slashdotters think? Do you relate to the 99% stories? Do they make you angry — either at the system, or at the protesters? If it's at the protesters, is it rational or a just-world effect?"
Protests (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The 1% are insulated (Score:2, Interesting)
So start your own business. I did.
On one automotive forum (Score:2, Interesting)
That has to do with trucks, everyone in the in the Wall Street protests thread thinks these people are unemployed, welfare communists. Yes same guys that bitch about the gov and how they are taking away their rights and bringing down the country are calling the ones who are out there trying to get the ball rolling communists from behind their computer screen.
My view on this is that there needs to be more protests like these. It doesn't matter if these people are unemplayed or on welfare. Its the publicity and if it manages to spark more protests it'll get even more media attention which will being in more protesters.
7 Core Demands of Occupy Wall Street (Score:5, Interesting)
1) End the Collusion Between Government and Large Corporations/Banks, So That Our Elected Leaders Are Actually Representing the Interests of the People (the 99%) and Not Just Their Rich Donors (the 1%).
2) Investigate Wall Street and Hold Senior Executives Accountable for the Destruction in Wealth that has Devastated Millions of People.
3) Return the Power of Coining Money to the U.S. Treasury and Return to Sound Money
4) Limit the Size, Scope and Power of Banks so that None are Ever Again âoeToo Big to Failâ and in Need to Taxpayer Bailouts
5) Eliminate âoePersonhoodâ Legal Status for Corporations
6) Repeal the Patriot Act, End the War on Drugs and Protect Civil Liberties
7) End All Imperial Wars of Aggression, Bring the Troops Home from All Countries, Cut the Military Budget and Limit The Military Role to Protection of the Homeland
Not sure where this came from, but it was making the rounds on Facebook. Numbers 6 and 7 seem rather "wishlist"-y, but other than that this looks roughly accurate.
Re:The 1% are insulated (Score:4, Interesting)
So start your own business. I did.
I can't, nor can many of Slashdot's audience. Why? Because of a law IBM bought in 1986 prohibiting programmers and software engineers from working as self-employed individuals. (Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19tax.html [nytimes.com] ). So, once again we see regulations bought by corporations to steer things in their favor. Which is kind of the whole point of the protest.
Small (Score:4, Interesting)
I went to the park Sunday and got a first-hand look at the 'protest', and what struck me was how small the protest is. The park is slightly smaller than a half city block (size of a football field), and there were two or three tourists/observers for each sign-carrying/slogan spouting/sleeping protester.
The lack of a central them or focus allows anyone to identify with theprotesters: against the Fed? Fractional banking? Standardized testing in schools? Tax the rich? End the wars? Against student loans? Out ofwork? Then you can find a kindred spirit in the protesters. If they focused on one thing, the majority of protesters would bolt - they sacrificed any chance of actually effecting change (in my opinion) for the appearance of larger numbers.
The protest will implode on Oct. 15th, when they maximize their numbers, their lack of focus will undermine any advances people imagine they have made.
Re:It's the left version of the Tea Party (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly you have little understanding of how a university works.
Just because you have a giant endowment doesn't necessarily mean you can write checks off of it. They're likely tied to stipulations regarding their use.
It's becoming more expensive because costs have gone up, more people are attending (in general due to population increases, more people are "college age" than before but also enrollment goes up when the economy goes down).
Second, the economic depression has been on for a while now and wiped out emergency funds and other savings they'd accrued. There was a lot of money lost in investments that are now worthless, largely thanks to the gambling by our financial industry, but not exclusively.
To be clear, I'm not saying there aren't areas where universities can do better to reduce costs. For example, the one I worked at for years was quite heavy on the administrative level, and could likely shed some of that to save money.
Finally, just because information is easier to come by doesn't mean it's all valuable. The more information there is, the more work involved in organizing the useful bits from the shit.
Our economy is a web of interconnections. It's not at all as simple as you make it sound.
Bogus... (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember the '60s, they sucked the first time. And the anti-war protests of the '60s tended to be much more focused than this crap.
My view is that it's a lot of naive people, influenced by left-wing hypocrites and by those who will use these well-intentioned protests for their own ends (e.g. the radical anti-war people that got gassed trying to enter the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on Saturday). But that's just like the '60s, too! I have generally no patience with the far-left agenda that has been so disproven throughout history (i.e. why communism, which sounds at face value reasonable, doesn't work in the large as a "violation" of human nature.)
Now if someone wants to protest with a clear agenda (like, for example many of the gay rights issues such as same-sex marriage), I respect that (even when I don't agree with it.) But I can assure you that (a) I'm not in the 1% of top income, and (b) those protestors DO NOT represent me!
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
To what ends? How far down the drain must things slide before they become worth fighting for?
Bingo. Myself coming from the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, I find it appalling that Americans criticize other Americans because they are fighting for greater equality, accountability and the preservation of the standard of living which is what makes living in the developed world great.
Like yourself, I'm not exactly sure what the hell these holier-than-though-we-have-it-good morons expect. Should things slide till things degrade to the point the average standard of living is no longer what it should be in a developed country?
The total student loan debt in the country is now surpassing credit card debt. When you used to be able to get a college degree with no more than $15K in debt, now you have to acquire debt 2-3 times that amount at least!. Social mobility is decreasing. There are 14 million people unemployed. People who worked hard for years, decades, are now unemployed because their jobs moved to China, and these same people get derided because they never got additional skills - with what money, with what education system, and if you are over 50, with what opportunities to get hired in a new field again?
You can finish college owing $50K and still not have a chance to get a job. And you have no other educational alternative since we do not have a state-funded post-HS vocational education system. Unemployed are being derided for not being entrepreneur and small business owners, but those who deride them conveniently ignore the little fact that capitalism (or any economic model for that manner) cannot absorb a population entirely made of entrepreneurs.
It is a sad indictment that it is cheaper for someone to travel to a third world country to get basic medical care than here. One would imagine that a country with the highest living standards would provide affordable health care for people making the minimum or close to the minimum. You need to make at least 2.5 or more of minimum wage just to afford medical and dental for yourself, let alone your family if you have one.
This might be a country with a very high standard of living, but you can still be poor and live a shitty live. It is an arrogant thing to say the poor in this country that they still have it better. They do, but just marginally with respect to the cost of living in this country. This from someone (myself) that comes from a country (Nicaragua) where there is still people looking for food and recyclables in garbage fields.
I would dare to say that in my old country, so long as you live within walking/commuting distance to a medical center (that is, you don't live in a remote village up in a mountain), you get a better chance to get basic medical care on a regular basis than a poor person in this country.
And that is the saddest indictment of all. People who deride the protesters, claiming that they have nothing to complain, they really don't know what the f* they are talking about.
Re:It's the left version of the Tea Party (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Police have generally been favorable to or at least tolerant of Tea Party protests. They have been hostile and violent towards Occupy Wall St.
That's because the Tea Party doesn't defecate on their cars. Daily Mail [dailymail.co.uk]
From a hippie to the hipsters... (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I'm a social liberal. Hippie, even. My passion is education and my occupation is sustainable transportation. I can't wait for gay marriage to be legal everywhere, I happily pay my taxes to redistribute wealth (I live within my means) and pay for socialized services, dream of the day of fiscally sustainable socialized medicine, and believe that all tax loop holes should be closed (in a perfect world, etc.). I like to donate my time to help other people. I'm a humanist preference utilitarian.
Statement: I think a good deal of the Occupy protesters are as bad as the Tea Party-ers. Few understand the implications of their assertions and demands. Few understand the futility of sit-ins, hunger strikes, and walk-abouts. They have no singular cause... no three points of demands and a plan to achieve them. Instead, they're so very grass-roots, that it's attracted a bunch of people who just feel like they need to yell at someone who's listening.
But no one's listening.
They're angry, they're let down, their parents' generation milked American credit for all it was worth and now they've been told go to fix it. Instead of creating meaningful action and initiative, they're chanting.
Further disclaimer: I marched against the war in Iraq with millions upon millions world-wide. The effect? America still invaded Iraq.
Statement: People have forgotten that the only way for protests to work is for the protestors to be pitiable. What are the memorable photographs of the 1960s? Here's a hint: they didn't involve hyperbolic signs or masked faces. They are of dead people-- having been shot unjustly by the national guard. They are of those being sprayed with fire-hoses and being attacked by police dogs. These protesters aren't allowing themselves to be pitied. They seem too well off for the middle class to care.
Re: (Score:4, Interesting)
Very interesting. As a poll worker, however, I am amazed that people feel they have to sleep in the streets to effect change. The number of people who vote in local elections is just a tiny fraction of those who vote in the big national elections. But it's in the local elections where the slate is chosen -- who gets on the big ballot, and who does not. If just 5% more people turned out to vote, we'd have radically different politicians to choose from.
Re:The 1% are insulated (Score:3, Interesting)
"Taking out" a mortgage is not a one-sided transaction.
As we are learning in the current "robosigning" scandal, a very large percentage of the "subprime" loans would never have been approved if bank examiners had real data to examine. Banks were taking the income data from one application and cutting and pasting it into another application that would have other wise been denied. Often, when an appraisal did not support the size of the loan, they would simply appropriate an appraisal from another loan application and use it with the application that would otherwise have been denied.
The hunger for mortgages to bundle up and re-sell was so enormous that banks were calling renters and guaranteeing people that they'd be eligible for a mortgage, then falsifying the applications to get them through. The renter would say "But I don't think I'm really eligible for a mortgage" and the broker or lender would say "Let us worry about that".
Then, when these loans went into default as you would expect, the affidavits for foreclosure were robosigned, creating an entirely fraudulent case.
That's why there's a half-trillion dollar elephant working its way through the banking industry right now. Even in Florida, where the judges are about as banker-friendly as it gets, they are throwing foreclosure cases out of court.
The solution? Well, according to Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, they need to take the courts out of foreclosures completely, creating something called the "non-judicial foreclosure" where a panel of bankers would decide upon foreclosures and homeowners would get deprived of property with absolutely zero due process. No liability on the banks if they happen to foreclose on the wrong house or borrower (which happens a surprisingly high number of times).
That's how much power the banks have in this country.
Where's your $50,000? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The whole concept of 1%/wealth is ... irrelevan (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm 32 years old. I'm probably a bit below that 10% personally but growing up I lived in a household of 6 where the total assets were probably closer to 8k. We got by. Now when college came I chose one that I knew I could afford and had some luck finding a decent job (after a year of unemployment). Now I make an income that is greater than my entire family put together due to that good luck and I am getting better. I was careful and recovered from bad debt management (and that year of unemployment). I consider myself AMAZINGLY lucky as I have moved from below poverty to probably between middle and upper middle class. It was alot of work, skill, and luck. But I'm here.
These people are mostly younger than me college age students. They are carrying iPads and drinking Starbucks. At their age I actually wouldn't have dreamed of paying $5 for a beverage. Hell I didn't even pay that much for alcohol for getting drunk during college (quarter drafts were the best invention I have ever experienced). I have trouble identifying with them as it doesn't seem like they want to go through the struggle I did. I don't know where they want money from. I also don't know why they feel they deserve to be more prosperous than they are without struggling for it.
You can't find a job straight out of college? I had to relocate pretty damn far from home after a year of searching to find a job in a field that had a high hiring rate. Did you pick a good career path?
You can't afford to buy a home or rent your own place right out of college? Maybe you shouldn't be trying to do that in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.
If they put out a message that spoke about a specific issue or a set of issues like corporations being too involved with the government I could get behind that. But right now it feels like they are whining about sour grapes. Yes the division of wealth in this country sucks and it isn't getting better, but instead of whining about it and hoping someone fixes it for you or the problem magically goes away come up with real ideas about how to fix it or try to protest about specific causes. Heck it doesn't have to be one, but a little more focus would make them sound a lot less whiny.
It's the beginning of the end. (Score:4, Interesting)
Pure capitalism, just like pure communism is full of fail, and we are about to see the reason why. But not before we do a hell of a lot of damage with it, it will go down swinging in one of the bloodiest civil wars in the history of the Earth. It's far better that it happens than the alternative; we swing full into fascism and start paying our bills through outright global domination.
If you compare and contrast the history of the rise of Nazi Germany with our current events, especially how far our Rightwing has gone to the right, you will be startled, amazed and frightened. Few really do understand the terminology of fascism and it's history. It's tailored like a glove to our times though. I have often wondered how the good people of Pre-Nazi Germany could have been duped into becoming the evil empire that they became. Now I have seen with my own eyes, and heard with my own ears the effects of carefully cultivated propaganda.
Where we have failed: Our democracy has been hijacked by corporate interests. We have allowed bribery to not only become legalized, but its an art form. You can't have representative government if the moneyed few can influence the politicians. Our current economic situation is due to our trade policies. "Free Trade" is the biggest lie to be imposed upon the American people in our entire history. "Free Trade" is an oxymoron, business is war, and trade is the mother of all wars. Our founding fathers understood this, and that is why they limited the federal government to collecting funds only through trade tariffs. They understood the need to protect the ecology of the nation's economy.
What we have now are trade policies that are dictated by multinational corporations that call this rape "globalization". It means they can have goods manufactured in countries that pay only pennies for labor, then come flood our markets with these products. This kills kills our industry. It kills our job market. New ideas and innovations can't draw upon our work force, they have been cut out of the loop, and those in power have the markets sewn up. These corporations in power, not only stack the deck in their favor with bought and paid for politicians writing them laws, they also fix the markets for themselves, and get huge stacks of "welfare" from our tax payers.
The first step to correct this is to get control of our politicians back into the hands of the people, and out of the hands of the mega rich and the multinational corporations. This involves campaign finance reform, but that hasn't happened, in fact its went the other direction. It's now even easier to buy politicians with the changes to PACs.
The second step is to correct all of the crooked trade policies and laws that stack the deck in favor of specific corporations and industries, allowing them effective monopolies.
But this isn't going to happen. Those in power have seen this coming for a long time. They have been buying both political parties for decades now. They have been systematically disarming the public as well. They have been building the worlds biggest prison industry, and police state. They own the laws, the politicians, and the law enforcement. They have now the ability to use the military on our civilian population if we decide to have armed revolution. They also control the media, which has proven to be an effective propaganda tool.
The media has done a great job of indoctrinating Americans into believing this corrupt system is "the American way" and to fight to the death to defend it from "liberals, commies, socialists, etc" We have proven how well they control us when they can send our children off to wars that have lasted longer than WW2, and for reasons that are not clearly explainable, we just "have to trust them". We are fighting a "war on terror". This is such a lie. One can't fight a war on an "emotion." It's nonsensical double speak, set to confuse and befuddle the undereducated masses.
The Tea Party was a contrived movement, started by billionaires in an attempt to guide the obvious
Re:To me, the one side means the most (Score:5, Interesting)
To summarize, bullshit.
The lender is responsible for ensure they borrower is capable of paying back the loan, especially when they are lending someone elses money, especially MINE.
Yes, the borrower is responsible for paying back the loan, and when an otherwise good borrower suddenly fucks up and doesn't pay back a loan for whatever reason, you understand that is part of the risk of lending.
However, when the bank makes loans like they did for my wife. $180k loan to a woman in college (3rd year vet student at the time) with absolutely no job and no time for one anytime in the next 2 years, then its is entirely justified to blame them when it goes South. The bank was fucking utterly retarded to loan my wife the money. Her only 'income' was student loans, which ... they fucking counted as income.
Fortunately for them, we actually do have the money to pay for it.
The point however is that there are times when its just part of the lending business, and then there is what has been going on over the last decade where bankers were giving money to anyone anywhere regardless of if they actually qualified for it or not ...
Theres absolutely no way you can claim its not the banks fault when they were giving loans to people who claimed other loans as 'income'.
Few people are blaming the banks because the banks legitimately took someones house who hadn't been paying for it, and those people are just nutjobs. What people ARE bitching about is the fact that the banks are foreclosing on homes they don't even fucking have loans for, and GETTING THE DAMN HOMES. They're foreclosing on homes with no paperwork showing they even loaned any money or bought a loan from someone else. They are calling up offering MUCH better financing now and asking existing customers to refinance because they don't have anything to PROVE they actually own the lean on the home!
No one feels sorry for the guy who lost his half million dollar house because he couldn't pay for it working at McDonalds. We are pissed off because the fucking bank GAME HIM A HALF MILLION DOLLARS WHILE WORKING AT MCDONALDS. We're pissed off because all the assholes that caused this shit are still rich as fuck and the government gives them money so they don't get hurt any more, while those of us who didn't fuck up are paying for it. I don't mind helping out when I'm helping someone worse off than me, but here its the poor and middle class bailing out the rich because THEY FUCKED UP.
Don't try to shift the blame. I any many other people did our part and paid our bills, and we'll be glade to help out the guy who can't feed himself, but forcing me to bail out the fuckwads who have 4 or 5 extra digits on their bank accounts than me ... when they fucked up and are still currently raping others like me?
We are responsible for our position in life, and what you're seeing in these protests is people who are getting more and more tired of being fucked over even though they've done everything they were supposed to, because the rich guy in the office on the top floor, Southwest corner, who will make more in the next 15 seconds than most of us will in the next 3 years, pays off the right politician.
They are becoming more responsible for their direct position in life, hopefully the guy in the building and the politicians will start listening, in the last year, several countries have fallen for smaller reasons.
You can keep blaming the little guy, but he's getting a lot closer to just whipping your ass rather than bitching.