Forum Post: Concrete Solutions and Identifying Allies
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 11, 2011, 9:17 p.m. EST by Publius1981
(22)
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I sympathize with the sentiments of the OWS movement but I worry that you don't have any concrete objectives that align with the short-term needs of the 99% of which you speak. This includes everyone from the progressives in the encampment to a Republican voter in Ohio who would like to tell you all to "get a job," except he just lost his position because it was outsourced.
Most governments around the world treat universal access to health care as a basic right that can't be taken away if you or your spouse lose your job. That is a starting point - making sure that our potential workforce is healthy enough, mentally and physically, to be as productive as it can be. This is also in the interest of the 1% - Canadian companies don't have to pay as much in benefits as U.S. companies, which compensates for higher taxes.
The higher education system in the U.S. is dysfunctional. Where does $50k a year - what parents save for their children, and what first-generation college students save up go to? Not to the adjunct professors who teach an increasing share of the course load. Not even to full-time teaching staff who are told that research, rather than instruction, is essential to promotion. It goes towards a private bureaucracy that's not fully accountable.
No one wants to increase taxes because they imagine they can be part of the 1% if they work hard enough. Or they imagine that they can provide for themselves and their families if they just play by the rules. I have a job. I am religious. I consider myself to be a conservative. I also know that it doesn't matter how hard any of us try - we can't compete in a global market with people who have the same skills as us but are willing to be paid far less. We're told that more restrictive immigration laws are the answer. I don't believe that anymore. Foreign talent can't come here, a multinational company will relocate the whole company overseas, fire U.S. workers in the process, and locate where it can get cheap labor and keep the earnings in a tax shelter. The conservative, hard-working 50 % of the 99% are being told lies - that we want to believe - but that's not in our interests.
The problem I see is that OWS isn't reaching out to all of the 99 percent. America is a center-right nation. You need to conceive of your allies more broadly, and reach out across ideological lines. Your critics see you as anarchists and Marxists. I know that's not true - but you have to try harder to combat that image.
The correct term is oligarchy, but I totally agree.
Campaign finance reform is a start - coupled with an independent, non-partisan agency to administer electoral district boundaries to prevent gerrymandering.
Sad thing is - OWS is so idealistic and they believe they can have a pure democracy with an open-source leadership. It won't work. They need leaders with ideas, and people inside the system to work for change too.
I believe the first step toward reform is leveling the playing field in our politics. For decades now both the right and the left have been bought and paid for by corporations and special interests through the current system of legalized bribery (campaign donations) and paid lobbying. Securing real, loop-hole free CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM is the first step to getting our democracy back. Until the money is taken out of our politics our "representatives" will continue to be the lap dogs of the corporations and special interests. I read about a lot of people wanting tighter term limits, sensible financial regulations, or effective health care policies - these, and any other meaningful reforms, have next to zero chance of happening unless we get the money out of our politics. Unless we get the influence of the corporations and other monied interests out you can count on your children becoming the 21st century equivalent of the "landless peasant" (the 1% like to call it capitalism, but what we really have now is crony-capitalism or neo-fuedalism).