Forum Post: Be Careful
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 2, 2011, 1:27 a.m. EST by WakeUp
(-1)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I take offense to OWS claiming to representing the 99%.
I am not in the 1% economically nor will I probably ever be. I have student loans and have worked a job almost every semester while in college (obviously along with summers). I find that you all represent the opposite of who I am. I take personal responsibility no matter what happens to me in life. I will never sit where you sit now.
You can protest, I don't care. This country gives you that right no matter how misguided I believe you are. Yet, you do not represent me nor even close to the 99% you have ignorantly used for your own gain.
http://the53.tumblr.com/archive
Learn something. Grow up. Wake up. Leave me out of it.
Occupy Wall Street does not claim to "REPRESENT" 99% of the population. OWS "is" and claims to "be" the 99%: on the basis of "not being" the remaining 1%. WakeUp; you say you are "not in the 1% economically" ~ therefore, by definition, you "are" of the 99%.
WakeUp, no system is perfect. You are correct that personal responsibility is the key to success in America and should be encouraged.
But, I think you will agree that there are real problems with the use of government in America. We need to make changes for the better.
Unemployment is a real problem which reduces the strength of our country. This is a world wide problem as well.
Let's work together to solve these problems.
If people don't like this country GET OUT!
It's not just this country. This is world wide.
It's not just this country. This is world wide.
If you're happy with the status quo, you're a mental patient not a rugged individualist. Seek help.
People like you find it hard to have empathy for those who are struggling (unsuccessfully!) in this economy and now are resorting to OWS. I do not blame you for not having the empathy - as long as you don't intend to utilize the current status to your advantage by exploiting the 99% as currently being done by 1%.
OWS is what taking responsibility looks like bro.
A whole page of people who have been misled by the media, therefore misunderstand the movement, and end up hating the people who are fighting for them.
Never before has so much ignorance been in one place at the same time. Cool.
Wrong. Simply reading through this page has made me, and most likely those in that website, dislike everything this movement stands for. It has nothing to do with the media, I don't listen to it when it speaks about OWS. I can tell from numerous posts on here about what you stand for.
freedom of the press
Because one person stands for everybody, right?
No I have read many, many threads because I never fail to be amazed by how many misguided people there truly are.
And those people represent everyone?
Ask me my stance on anything.
I agree 100%. They do not represent me.
what do visions of the future bring?
as in?
are there any possible changes that could lead to a positive future ?
I think business as usual in washington is whacked. Changes for the positive in that childish partisan grid-locked lobbyist-run nonsense really are needed... it's dysfunctional right now and getting worse.
yo... bozos in DC, notice tax revenues have dipped... care to adjust spending accordingly
yo... bozos in DC, notice unemployment going up with jobs migrating elsewhere in the world... care change policies that are contributing to that
nah... lets just blame the other party till the end of time and keep as our primary goal defeating whatever the other side is pursuing.
Meanwhile... medicare prescription drug plan brought to you by the big pharma lobby complete with no market based pricing influences... just pay what they say... raise taxes (oh cant do that) or maybe just borrow some more from china, they don't care either way so long as they get paid.
A little earlier... repeal glass-steagal... why exactly was that done... well big banks wanted that.
Our divided congress only acts in concert when big money is behind both sides of the divide kicking them to do something. They seemingly don't accomplish much otherwise.
Let's kick the big money out of there. The rest will fall into place.
Positive future as in the gov't providing for your life or the environment for you to succeed? Because despite what you believe, there is still as good of an opportunity to succeed here as there ever was and that website is the epitome of that sentiment. The gov't should only be there to foster that environment, I don't believe the gov't should provide any of my needs - SS, healthcare, etc. for me (a healthy, functioning member of society). Any public funds should be carefully monitored so they aren't abused and are given to those who TRULY need them (considerably fewer than those that receive public benefits now)
"There is still as good of an opportunity to succeed here as there ever was..." It is in that statement that you are mistaken.
If we didn't think so, we wouldn't be doing this.
Who said that we wanted to overthrow/destroy/end capitalism or even Wall Street? There's always a group of communists or anarchists or conspiracy theorists or flat-out crazies that will get involved with something like this because they believe our willingness to accept anyone with a desire to help fix things gives them a blank check to do as they choose and then sign it with our names.
Incidentally, I'm fully behind the protests, and I'm a computer science major at MIT. Underachiever? Pfft. Don't make me laugh; if you can call three to four hours of sleep per night underachieving then I want to see your schedule. I came from a working-class to poor family and I'm on track to make six figures in five or ten years even if things don't turn around. And yet somehow I'm still behind these people. Why?
Because my family went through hell in order to put my sister and I on the track we are now; my mom left a teaching job to homeschool my sister and I to keep us out of a dysfunctional inner-city school system, so we've been living on one rather precarious income since I was three. My dad's union job got through almost to the end, until a hedge fund by the name of Brynwood Partners took over and decided to break the union. We would not have survived the resulting eleven-month strike and plant closure were it not for a combination of unemployment benefits, food stamps when the chips were really down, and a strong community that really cared for us when we needed it most.
Here's the thing: because of our family and community my sister and I were uniquely equipped to weather the storm that hit us; not everyone is so lucky. Any number of small things could have derailed us at that point, and for every one of me who makes it through there are ten more who through no fault of their own get screwed out of an opportunity to move up.
I was raised the old-fashioned way; life doesn't owe you one particular outcome over another. Life doesn't owe anyone a job simply by virtue of their existence. Jobs, wealth, happiness: all of these things are earned. The one and only thing in this country that a man is owed is a free and fair opportunity to better himself, and it is these opportunities that have been drying up over the past three decades.
In the old days, if you were good with your hands and willing to work you could get top-notch vocational training and hold down a solid middle-class career with just a high school diploma (or sometimes not even that). In the old days, the ordinary American had opportunity after opportunity available to him and all that was asked of him in return was that he get off his ass and grab one.
These days, that's all drying up. Vocational training of the old sort is dying out, and half the new sort is provided by for-profit "colleges" that often screw unsuspecting students. Academic degrees leading to the professions are hardly for everyone, and whole groups of people get closed out of that game before they even realize they're playing. Getting a decent job of the type that sustained our parents and grandparents is getting more and more difficult.
In short, OWS and its affiliate movements will be happy to stop stinking up your parks and get jobs if you will point the protesters toward opportunities they can reasonably be expected to be able to take advantage of. Until then, they will stay exactly where they are and grow stronger and stronger until the system has no choice but to make these opportunities available to them again. And I will stand with them.
without a spokesman or a message, its hard to separate out what you stand for vs the crazies...
On top of that your reasoning is weak at best. How do you know jobs have been disappearing? The time of our grandparents happened to be during the great depression when joblessness was wayyy worse than it is now. Yes, unemployment is high right now but it will eventually rebound. The nature of jobs has also changed but that is a biproduct of an advancing society/mature economy. 4 years ago unemployment was as low as we have generally been and yet this admittedly shitty recession has meant that no one will be able to support themselves ever again? Wall Street has nothing to do with rising job qualifications that you site either
What made a middle-class lifestyle possible for so many people during the 1950s and the 1960s was the wide range of jobs (especially blue-collar manufacturing jobs) that paid a stable middle-class salary. The rush to slash costs via outsourcing meant that said blue-collar manufacturing jobs went straight to China and India. At the same time, the drive by corporations to break unions meant that even those who kept their jobs often did so at greatly reduced salaries, meaning that one income (if you still had it) no longer did the trick.
Sending women out into the workforce alleviated the situation to some degree because it doubled the income of a household; however that also effectively doubled the pool of qualified, talented workers that businesses could choose from. This economy would essentially need more jobs in order to keep pace with the expansion of the workforce, but continued outsourcing meant that the opposite was actually happening.
Also, every time we have one of these recessions our standard of living adjusts downward. During a recession, layoffs mean that you have an incredible surfeit of people who are fully qualified if not overqualified for most positions, but who are so desperate for a job that they'll take 30-40% pay cuts just to hold on. Some businesses will in fact lay off employees they need so that they can get someone else to take the job at half the wage rate or less. This then ratchets up the rat race a notch each time, as the same jobs now require more qualifications, work experience, degrees, etc. and pay less than they did before.
What does this have to do with Wall Street? This last round of utterly asinine speculation and outright securities fraud triggered a really nasty recession, and when it ends employment rates will probably come back up to pre-recession levels, but wages for 90+ percent of the population won't. That roof-tarring job your father picked up during college to make ends meet? He'd have no chance of getting it today because he's a US citizen and thus a) he has to be paid at least the federal minimum wage and most likely will make more because he's a skilled tradesmen and b) citizens have avenues for seeking redress in cases of worker abuse. Illegals don't. The same goes for most minimum wage jobs out there that he'd have the "qualifications" to get.
Wrong again, I relatively recently worked for a commercial moving company that paid probably an inflation adjusted equivalent from what my father was making. Also, the wage cuts you refer to still does not deal with the fact that the standard of living has gone up in this country since the 50s and 60s. So standard of living has gone up, unemployment is at least stable, low-skilled jobs are still available for college students or anyone else willing to work them. I've personally worked every semester I've been in college. If you live around me and are willing to work, let me know - I can probably find you a delivery job where you can make a couple hundred on a good night or a lesser paying job if you don't have a license. You have an unfortunate grass-is-greener outlook compared to former generations but it was always hard to succeed yet the opportunities are still there. Students can get loans for good state schools, work part-time jobs, etc. and have great opportunities.
I can't waste any more time with this discussion. I wish someone with your background was more grateful of the American dream and would promote it in the right ways. How about drug tests for every individual on welfare? How about other safety measures to prevent the hundreds of thousands who live their lives taking advantage of the system. The top 5% pay 60% of the taxes, the top 1% pay 40% of the taxes. Half the country pays NO taxes. Stop looking to others. Yes, banks and loan agencies created the financial instruments but what about personal responsibility? No one put a gun to the head of people buying houses out of their price range. They might not have understood the complex details of their subprime mortgage but it doesn't take a genius to understand he or she can't afford a $750,000 home on a $40,000/yr salary. No matter what your banker says. Without the thousands and thousands of irresponsible citizens not working on WS, the banks couldn't have done what they did. I'm not saying wall street didn't play their part, don't misconstrue, but what about the homeowners? Why aren't you protesting the people who defaulted on their homes?
I would be all over people who defaulted if I could believe that they weren't sold a bill of goods, to put it politely. You assume that everyone who took out credit for a mortgage, student loan, etc. understood what they were doing. I personally have a rule that if I don't understand exactly what I'm getting into I either walk away then and there or I keep pestering the counterparty with questions until I can make an informed decision. Then again, I'm a suspicious bastard when it comes to these things as it is and I've just gotten an object lesson in what not to sign off on from a good chunk of the country.
Most of the people who took out subprime mortgages didn't just not know what they were doing; they literally weren't familiar enough with optimal debt-to-income ratios or the fine print of an adjustable rate (incidentally, I'll rent and save up for a down payment long before I consider touching an ARM; if I'm going to be shelling out three or four figures a month on a house I've got to be able to know what I'm going to be expected to pay each month and for how long I'm going to be expected to pay it.) to figure these things out. In a typical credit market, the lender is the gatekeeper; people come to him or her petitioning for credit, and then the lender evaluates the creditworthiness of each potential borrower and makes a yes/no decision. When the lender starts simply rubber-stamping things and/or pushing people to take money he knows they can't pay back, something's gone wrong. Incidentally, I have knowingly spotted people cash they couldn't pay back before because they needed it, and I simply wrote it off in my head before I gave them the money. When you loan to someone who may not be able to pay you back, the first question you need to ask is "can I afford to write this off if something happens" and if the answer is no then don't approve the loan.
I honestly feel bad for you because you are living proof of what OWS hates to admit exists. YOU ARE AT MIT FROM A LOWER CLASS FAMILY and the American dream doesn't exist? Yes, it was a struggle for your family but its not supposed to be easy. My grandfather lived on ketchup sandwiches and volunteered to be on the front lines of WWII to send more money back to his family, as a result he was a Nazi prisoner of war for 3 months thinking he would die every day. He came back as a blue collar worker but died when my dad was 18. My father tarred roofs throughout college and just recently finished paying off his loans. I understand I am unbelievably lucky to live the life I have lived through the sacrifices my family has made. My family IS the American dream and my opportunities are the product of that dream, as are yours. Its time you understood that.
I'm not complaining about how I got to where I am; if all you had to do to pull off what your family or mine pulled off was do what we did, then I might take issue with OWS. The fact is that we were incredibly lucky that what we did worked. If the hedge fund had succeeded in breaking the union we would have been on the street. If TANF wasn't there when we needed it we would have been on the street. If decent-paying union jobs didn't exist (and so many on the right believe that these jobs should be eliminated) this never would have been possible in the first place.
I'm going to say this now: I'm not here so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a half-decent whiny voice can get a free house and a free iPad. I'm here because the path your father took and the path you and I took to get ahead is becoming available to fewer and fewer people, and that needs to change. The American dream should be available to anyone willing to put in the hours and learn the system, and the more blue-collar jobs are sent overseas, the more unions are broken up, the more safety net programs are slashed, the more the American dream becomes a matter of sheer luck.
The problem is that sheer luck is not what I believe brought me to where I am at right now. I believe, as do most conservatives, that safety-net programs are necessary. The system is abused by so many freeloaders, however, that hardworkers have to stand in line (in the event your father lost his job for example). You keep throwing out generalities about how the American dream is now harder to achieve but what are you basing this on? I could argue that it is actually easier. If you haven't noticed, my grandpa started our family on that path during WWII. When was it much easier, 1800s?
Like I said the blue-collar jobs were outsourced 5 years ago as well, when unemployment was as low as it probably was when blue-collar jobs were in abundance. Yes, the nature of the jobs may have changed but general unemployment numbers alone disproves your point. Its a recession, unemployment is high but that is not a permanent systematic adjustment.
I can go get a number of jobs needing no education within blocks of my current apartment. It is not true that there are "no" jobs available. Skilled workers are looking for specific jobs that may have been eliminated one way or another but the solution is either go learn another skill or work a less/unskilled job until the economy rebounds - not sit in a park.
Here's the catch: every time we have one of these recessions our standard of living adjusts downward. During a recession, layoffs mean that you have an incredible surfeit of people who are fully qualified if not overqualified for most positions, but who are so desperate for a job that they'll take 30-40% pay cuts just to hold on. Some businesses will in fact lay off employees they need so that they can get someone else to take the job at half the wage rate or less. This then ratchets up the rat race a notch each time, as the same jobs now require more qualifications, work experience, degrees, etc. and pay less than they did before. Unlike employment rates, however, the new employment standards and pay schedules do not cycle back to pre-recession levels when the economy starts growing again.
That roof-tarring job your father picked up during college to make ends meet? He'd have no chance of getting it today because he's a US citizen and thus a) he has to be paid at least the federal minimum wage and most likely will make more because he's a skilled tradesmen and b) citizens have avenues for seeking redress in cases of worker abuse. Illegals don't. The same goes for most minimum wage jobs out there that he'd have the "qualifications" to get. If you tried to get one of those "zero-education" jobs right now they'd look you in the eye and refuse you for being overqualified; I actually had a friend looking for part-time jobs at clothing stores/fast food joints/etc. in her neighborhood (zero-education jobs all, because she's still only 18) and getting turned down. Why? She went to Bronx Science and only wants to work so she can provide her own spending money and help her parents cover her tuition.
What does this have to do with Wall Street? This last round of utterly asinine speculation and outright securities fraud triggered a really nasty recession, and when it ends employment rates will probably come back up to pre-recession levels, but wages for 90+ percent of the population won't unless we begin changing how large corporations do business. I'd much prefer such change came from a political movement that demanded re-regulation of Wall Street, campaign finance/lobbying reform, and bona fide attempts to bring jobs back to America than from a protests movement as disorganized as OWS. That said, I've never been one to overlook possible vehicles for opportunity no matter how unlikely they appeared, and just because OWS is scruffy and disorganized doesn't mean they can't be useful.
Standard, no one interested in admitting your own abuses of our rights