Public Forum

It is not so much a question of educating the 99%....most of the 99% already know the truth. However the rage of the people claiming they represent the 99% would be better directed at the White House and the Capitol....that is where the corruption, the lies and the deceit emanate from.

The policies of the current Administration are what is keeping the recession going...that is where the rage should be directed.

For more thoughts on this, check out my blog.... you may just find it a good read.... http://devereauxdailydose.blogspot.com/

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[-] 1 points by jpbarbieux (137) from Palmetto Bay, FL 13 years ago

The 1 % benefit upon the toil of the 99%, here they have a shared responsibility to OUR society.

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[-] 1 points by devereaux (0) 13 years ago

Please explain how this works? Do not the 45% or so who pay no taxes (and are in the 99%) clearly benefit from the taxes paid by the 1% (and the other 50% who DO pay taxes)?

Do not the 99% benefit from the jobs provided by the 1%?

Do not the 99% want to become part of the 1%?

Methinks you suffer from a couple of maladies...envy and jealousy!

.....devereaux

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[-] 1 points by Misguided (373) 13 years ago

Peter Schiff is dead on accurate. It's not anything new though, if you look him up on YouTube all you will get is his warnings years ago about everything that has happened. Those that listened to him then were able to soften the blow of the currently horrible economy. Maybe people should open their minds to ideas that prove themselves right from people willing to offer them.

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[-] 0 points by owschico (295) 13 years ago

Why would any educated mind be in support of people like this?

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[-] 1 points by derek (302) 13 years ago

First, I agree with Peter Schiff's first point that the worst form of socialism is to privatize gains and socialize costs (and risks), and that is what we have now. With that said, there are a few major problems with the rest of his ideology. There are public goods that can't be purchased -- like healthy communities, like safe communities, and so on. There can be market failures and economic arms races like with rising costs of college from a "two income trap" even without government involvement: http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap

He is mistaken when he says the 1950 succeeded because of lower taxes. Marginal tax rates were around 92% in the 1950s; see: http://www.businessinsider.com/do-low-tax-rates-on-rich-people-ruin-the-economy-2011-7

http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates

The most successful social systems tend to have both a vibrant public sector and a vibrant private sector.

Even other conservatives can see that: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/ "The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon’s wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments."

Although US conservatives ignore that health and community are important to happiness too.

What would Peter Schiff say about the issue that there are collective goods like air quality?

Capitalist systems can't work when wealth becomes too concentrated. The wealth just hoard their money or put it into the "casino economy": http://www.moneyasdebt.net

Schiff tries to make the point that without government guaranteeing housing and student loans the loans would not have been made, but that ignores that our economy would have tanked a decade or two earlier due to the concentration of wealth: http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com

What would he say about Greenspan's comment here: "Greenspan Destroys Deregulation in 16 Seconds " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAH-o7oEiyY "Henry Waxman's Congressional Committee questions Alan Greenspan. Greenspan meets greed, shows in one answer why "trusting the markets" is epic fail. Waxman: So where do you think you made a mistake then? Greenspan: I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such as they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders."

Still, I agree that a lot of the OWS people on camera are not making good rebuttals. Conservatives and propertarian libertarians do have some good points, but they don't have the whole story. As Manuel De Landa says, all real systems are mixes of meshworks and hieararchies. It can be hard to acknowledge some of their truths while then showing how they are often half-truths.

On the question of jobs, Peter Schiff could have been asked, what type of jobs, for whom, with what working conditions, with what level of precarity, and what level of stress? And how does his venture keep other ventures from coming into existence?

Related: http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html "Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue, I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. ... Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

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[-] 1 points by TheScreamingHead (239) 13 years ago

I would say that educated minds simply take information and use it to their own benefit. Who cares what side this man is on? If he's right, use his info to your own benefit.

Then once you get some money, you can give it all away to the rabbit charity if you want.

http://occupyyallstreet.blogspot.com/

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