Forum Post: Globally, all Americans are the 1%
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 6, 2011, 10:32 a.m. EST by LibertyFirst
(325)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
While I agree that the 1% in the United States has grossly abused their unjust power over our economy and political system, I think it is important that we avoid the pitfalls of class warfare. It’s really not about being rich; it’s about corruption and abuse of power.
By global standards, all Americans are ‘rich’. Even those at poverty level (~11K annually) have more income than the global average and much more than persons in the third world. Are poor Americans rich? By global standards they are, and the middle class even more so. Are average Americans evil, greedy, thieving bastards intent on crushing the rest of the world? Though I’m sure some would say so, I don’t think they (we) are. Just like everyone else in the world, 99% of Americans are just trying to make an honest living and be free from oppression.
It’s the oppression we need to attack. It is the undue influence the corporations (including and especially big banks) have over our political system. It’s the failure of our system to protect the average person from these abuses of power that is the problem.
I think what most people the world over want is a fair chance. People have always wanted to be free—free from kings, slave masters, warlords who would steal the fruits of their labor. There is a very basic human desire to be in control of one’s own destiny, to make one’s own choices and enjoy the rights of self-determination.
I’ve seen a lot of people on this forum advocating a system of ‘equality’, wherein all basic necessities are distributed equally. The Zeitgeist Movement advocates doing this on a global scale. While I appreciate the sentiment of wanting to ensure everyone’s needs are met, I don’t think most people want to be given what they need in exchange for some entity claiming the fruits of their labor and dictating how they can live. I think most people, globally, want to be free of oppression by corrupt regimes so they can pursue their own dreams in a fair environment.
Throughout history, people free of oppression and corruption have thrived. The world is currently being oppressed by a corrupt big-money cartel, composed of the bankers, big corporations and the politicians they have bought. Yes, the oppressors are rich, but if you took away all their money without closing the opportunity for corruption, you will just fill the void left by the current elite with a new elite. I encourage everyone in the movement to focus on the corruption—the oppressive actions of the 1%. Remove the ability of the 1% to subvert the will of the people and we will have won.
I agree. This movement should only be about removing corporate and special interest group money from politics! I am not against rich people or the 1%. I am against them controlling the people's government for their own benefit. Which destroys opportunity for the rest of us.
You won't remove corporate interests without removing their power and their wealth.
If you only remove their power and wealth, they will be very quickly replaced by new power and wealth. Eliminate the ability of money to influence politics and you don't have to worry about the new wealth because they won't have the power to influence Washington.
Once political power is returned to the people, then we can democratically decide on what changes we should make to prevent this abuse of power from happening again.
Who prints the money owns everything.
The ultimate corruption is the corruption of money itself.
I agree. Control over the money is the primary tool by which the elite oppress the people of the world. There are many different paths to removing this power--different starting points.
But before we can begin deciding how to solve the problem,we need to agree on what the actual problem is. I don't think there is consensus in the movement yet on that point.
I'm just a simpleton, so it seems simple to me.
Asset-based currency redeemable in gold or silver. It stops 99% of this crap, right now.
I know there isn't consensus yet, but people are beginning to wake up and googling Money As Debt. Or reading The Creature From Jekyll Island.
In my simpleton world, if we don't fix this, our society is doomed. Protests like this will simply be used to impose a police state. The economy of the world is crashing right now because of the paper money issue. The press WILL NOT identify the willy-nilly creation of currency out of thin air as the cause of the 'crisis'. The disinformation will get people to rage and protest against all the wrong things, and demand things be handed to them for free (advocating theft and slavery); the events will be used to crush the last of their freedoms.
If you demand that you government destroy property rights, YOU WILL GET WHAT YOU ASKED FOR.
Let's say we had a sound money system. This is a necessary step towards freedom, but it doesn't stop big money interests from buying politicians and exerting undue influence.
In order to return to sound money, I believe we first need to wrest control of our political system from the clutches of the corrupt. Lord knows they're not going to move to sound money voluntarily. Hopefully we can accomplish this before they steal what remains of our wealth.
I am encouraged to see more people waking up and beginning to understand the nature of fiat money and our debt based monetary system. But we have a very long way to go before even 20% of the population understands this. Corruption is something people understand and can see.
Agree, the corruption is intertwined with the money-printing power in a symbiotic relationship.
Once we take away the ability to print money, then we need to stop government from price-fixing and trying to 'run' the economy.
it stops fuck all. The wealthy also hoard all the gold, idiot.
Then we use ammo to trade with, OK? Or packs of cigarettes. Anything is better than air-money backed by nothing.
I think you called me an idiot because I identified what you are after. The destruction of property rights. Bring your own gun, you wimp.
what do you think the power of the 1% is if not property rights? good looks or what? geez...
If you believe this, then I take it you are in support of forcefully taking the homes of your fellow working-class Americans.
You don't happen to work for Bank of America, do you?
are you taking about foreclosures? what are they except the execution of property rights?
I was being flippant about BofA. Let me rephrase for you:
Why is it OK for your new governmental system to take from me what I have paid for with the fruits of my labor?
didnt know i had a new governmental system. i dont like govern and i dont like mentals either.
Call it what you will, but you are proposing that there be no individual property rights. That means someone is going to have to take my property from me. Who will that be and how are they going to take it from me?
who would want your property? unless you own a company of course, yeah id take that from you and give it to everyone working there which might but only might (its generally not the case in big business) include yourself. as a matter of fact those property rights to means of production wouldnt exist without the government so you tell me who is about doing stuff forcefully.
I do not own a company. I own my farm. My ancestor bought a piece of land with money he earned and saved. He then cleared the land by hand, built his own house and barn with the lumber, pulled the stumps from the fields, and grew crops the feed himself and his family. He traded the extra crops for things he could not produce himself, such as dishes and horseshoes. He and every family member since then has worked many, many hours a day, 365 days a year to continue this self-sufficiency.
By what right do you propose to take my farm?
i want to return property to the workers. if you are the worker on your property its none of my business. im talking about monsanto and the likes, not your self-sufficiency. its inefficient and strainfull but if you want to live that way its none of my concern.
What are the parameters for determining when it is OK for you to seize property? If I hire someone to help on my farm, am I now "like monsanto" and you will take my farm by force? Am I exempt from your theft if I pay my workers $35 an hour? Is it how many acres I own? Who gets to make these decisions and how to you prevent corruption amongst the decision-makers?
I ask you to consider that the problem is not property rights. The problem is the amount power that corporations have been allowed to attain and the abuse of that power. There was a time in this country where there were no corporations. There were businesses, but not corporations. When corporations were first allowed, they were subject to constraints that eliminated their ability to become mega multi-national conglomerates with more money than God and the ability to use and abuse the rest of us. I hate--and I do mean hate--what Monsanto is doing, but their ability to do so is not because of property rights, it's because of unrestrained corporate power.
If you don't correctly identify the problem, no solution you come up with will fix it.
what is their power? huge amount of property rights, thats all. they have no other power. how come you want to trade? i never suggested trade. trade IS property rights, is blackmailing with each others need. exchange products has other modes then property rights, then trade. gift economy is what i want, planned production for the needs of the people. now the next question you are going to ask.. why would anyone work then if he gets everyhting for free? BECAUSE humanity has to live, thats why. if you dont see that then go starve in a corner, its free! i have a solution that works, you guys dont have any solution, you just cry about the government being criminal, it will fix nothing. the government is not there to give you a living standard, its not there for your good life. its there to protect the property rights, thats what it was founded for and thats what is the content of the constitution when all the blah blah is stripped away. freedom. it is the freedom to exploit, the freedom of property. all socialist countries knew freedom and civil rights, but not THE freedom of capitalist nations. and again im not advocating for government property, just explaining what freedom is about.
You can easily eliminate corporate power without eliminating property rights. As I said, corporations used to be prohibited from acquiring any property not directly related to the execution of their business. They also used to have a limited life-span (corporate charters were only good for a limited time, after which the corporation would have to disban). These and other restrictions on corporate power prevented them from becoming so big that they could abuse the rest of us.
One solution would be to just revoke all corporate charters. That would force all businesses to operate as sole proprietorships (back off MBAs--I'm just trying to simplify;-)). This makes the owners directly liable for the actions of their company. So when Monsanto (the now much, much smaller Monsanto) contaminates your organic corn field with Round-up Ready corn, you can sue them--which means suing the owner. The money comes out of his pocket. There is no corporate shield for him to hide behind. His assets are all subject to liability suits.
There are many other ways to reign in corporate power, too. I think it would be best for everyone if we chose an option that did not involve stealing the property of our fellow citizens but rather had a more focused target.
As for everyone being willing to work for the collective good, we don't have to speculate on whether or not this would work or how corruption could creep into such a system. There are lots of real life examples we can look at. All of them have failed.
I have a suggestion, though. If you feel that such a system would work, then try it. If it's successful, I guarantee people will voluntarily join you and then you won't have to worry about forcing them. You could take advantage of the property rights afforded to you in America today, get together with some like-minded people and buy a piece of land (it's going pretty cheap right now). Run it as a collective and see how it works. You are lucky enough to live in a country where nothing is stopping you from pursuing your dream of living in a collective society, and of trying to convince others to join you. Your rights do stop, however, when you put a gun to my head and try to force me to join your collective.
A 'socially just' tyranny is still a tyranny.
Oh, and one more thing.....
I often work 16 hour days without complaint because I get great satisfaction out of being my own boss. I love that I get to choose which field I'm going to plant first and what I'm going to plant this year. I love that I can choose to work extra hard in the hopes of earning a bit extra to take the kids on vacation next year. I work really hard because I know that I get to decide what I do with the fruits of my labors. I accept full responsibility for my decisions about how to run my farm, and if fuck up, I am the one who suffers the consequences.
The day you come in and take those decisions, benefits and responsibilities away from me will be the last 16 hour day I work. If you want the same productivity out of me, you're going to have to put a gun to my head and make me a slave.
This is, incidentally, what usually happens in a collective. People don't assume shared responsibility. They assume someone else is going to take care of it. There is a very famous event studied by psychology students everywhere. It is the Kitty Genovese murder. Kitty was murdered on the street outside her apartment. She screamed her head off, and many neighbors saw what was going on, but nobody called the police. Everyone assumed someone else already had, so nobody did anything. This is the nature of humans. Unless that changes, you are going to have to use force to make your collective work.
yeah i can go live on the street collectivly, the freedom to live under a bridge. great idea. all the power of mankind, all machines, land and knowledge of course rests in the hands of the capitalists, but at least i'm "collective" with my bros with nothing in my hands. great idea. i dont want another system because i want to work 16 hours a day, i want to work less! i mean working 16 hours to take the kids to vacation? theres people working 16 hours a year and taking their kids to vacation the other time. i know such people. you are a fool supporting this system when this is your situation, you are obviously on the receiving end! and proud of it without complaint. do you pray to jesus? do you wish for a good afterlife? or how do you put up with this?
"corporations used to be prohibited from acquiring any property not directly related to the execution of their business"
whats this nonsense? where do you have that from? you can always make a new corp for a new business purpose with a property right even if that was the case at any time in history of capitalism which i dont believe untill you show evidence.
whats a family different then working for the collective good? do you rent your dishwasher to your wife? no you dont, you rent stuff to people you dont care about, thats the general idea of trading. you dont trade with your friends and family and neighbours, you borrow, you dont take interest rates. what amount of work is already being done for free btw when people have to reproduce with the lousy wages they get for endless shifts already in this system, adding to it, filling up its failings? tons and tons.
im tired of hearing this cut corporate power without interfering with their property bullshit from free market activists for today... ill answer you tomorrow when my mood is lighter again then after looking at this forum for 4 hours, it makes me desperate.
one last thing about this kitty business: if everyone assumed someone else called they all cared, its in the example! nobody said "none of my business" or did they just not want to look bad? how come the police gets a milion of calls every day about such stuff and you are pulling the one when it didnt?
If you don't know the history of corporations in America, please do some research. You will find it enlightening. I would suggest you start with www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/colaw.html. This is a good layman's overview and it is cited so you can read the original 18th century laws if you like. Here's a quick summary for you:
The founding fathers were well aware of the abuse corporations would engage in if not restrained (they learned this in large part from their experiences with the East India Company). As a result, corporate charters (permission to start a corporation) were granted selectively to enable activities that benefitted the public, such as building roads. Conditions were imposed on the charters such as limiting corporations only to the activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose, corporations could not own stock in other corporations, corporations could not own property (the owner could, but he was not shielded from liability for corporate wrong-doing). There's more, but I hope this gives you an idea of how corporations can be restrained without impeding the individual rights of human beings. Over time, these constraints on corporations were eased until we find ourselves with the monsters we have today. If you research the topic, you will discover some great insight into how our government works.
Since you suggested that corps could always make a new corp with property rights, I'll address that directly by pointing out that this was not always the case. Corporations did not always have property rights and we don't have to give them property rights today. We can do this without taking away the property rights of ordinary citizens.
I'm not going to argue with you about whether or not people would work hard for the collective good. As I said, we have lots of real-life examples where this has been tried and we can look at those results--no need to speculate.
I will challenge you again though to start your own collective if you feel this will work. You don't have to live under a bridge. There is a lot of property for sale in this country. You can do as my ancestors did and your collective can pool your money together and buy land, clear the land, build your shelter, grow your food..... I don't understand the resistance to this.
again: you challenge me to be a farmer like yourself. only instead of inheriting stuff like you did i am supposed to take a credit and buy land and machines and pay interest rates to it. do i sound like i want to work 16 hours a day to take kids to vacation and add some extra hours to pay the interest rates? or use my hands to make stuff in hours when machines do it in minutes? i want a revolution to END this kind of shit! that is my resistance to this and should be yours aswell! you want me to live like one of your ancestors? how far back should i go? to hunting animals and gather berries? or just compete with monsanto on people byuing my commodities and working a 16+ hour shift like you do? im better off even now, thats crazy..
i skimmed your link and i guess this piece is representative:
"Corporations only have conditional obligations to fulfill for the society that created them. It is the obligation of that society in creating a corporation to ensure that it works to the common good and welfare of the society and not just to the benefit of a few moneyed interests"
so there is no profit and the state owns everything or how do i understand that, all the profits from trade belong to the state ? what is the reality behind this words except the nasty taste of feudalism? and you would like to have that without slavery i guess? only with minimal wages? i dont see how you can argue nobody wants to work for the common good but the crown would force corporations to work for the common good. they would of course work for the good of the crown which is the history of 19th century.
No, I do not suggest that you farm. You can do whatever you want on your commune, I only suggest you buy land because you will need to physically be somewhere--you need a physical place for your community. And I most certainly did not suggest that you use credit. Save your money and pay cash.
You shouldn't have to work 16 hours a day. You said that wouldn't be necessary in your society. I choose to sometimes work 16 hours a day and I don't complain about it. That's the lifestyle I choose and I am very happy with it. I'm not asking you to do it. You can live however you want.
Of course, what I think you are getting at is that you and your fellow commune participants should be given everything you need to set up your commune and then you'll take it from there. Who are you going to steal this property from?
As for corporate law history, if all you can mange to do in the interest of educating yourself is 'skim' the link, then I don't think you are genuinely interested in learning.
im not genuinely interested in learning from you because you havent proven to me that you can offer anything besides "oh go do it better then" which i classify as you dont give a shit who is right about stuff aslong as you dont get bothered. i argued why life is shit when you try compete with nothing on your hands against the development of productive forces of mankind that belong to the capitalists. because you need to work more then them for the same results, that is productivity. that is the loss in your "good advice". now you want me to save and do the shit when im 50 years old or what? well no im not interested in taking this any further if you dont want to answer my questions. my judgement about you wanting to reintroduce feudalism is probably right then since you dont even dispute it and neither dispute that i picked the relevant idea quoting. now thats some consequent pursuit of the idea of a good ruler from a good subordinate, i can congratulate you on that at least.
Please stop suggesting that I said thing that I absolutely did not. Feudalism? I didn't think that required a rebuttal since I said no such thing.
If it'll make you feel better, yes I dispute that the quote you chose is at all representative of the piece.
The fact that you have no interest in learning more about things you claim to be passionate about astounds me.
Last one, paris....here is a link to another thread talking about corporate charters, how they were used in the past and the way they restrained corporations. I promise I'm not making this shit up. You really should educate yourself.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/bring-back-charter-renewal-for-corporations/
no but feudalism is the term for the thing you are suggesting, everything belonging to the crown and it licensing businesses. not knowing the word for it doesnt change anything with the idea.
I am well aware of the definition of feudalism (but thanks for presuming I'm uneducated). In your haste to merely skim the reference I gave you, you have failed to actually read the the conditions that were placed on corporations to prevent them from gaining power and influence. This is not in the context of a feudalistic society--it is the history of corporations in early America.
the early history of america IS feudalism and slavery.. just answer my other questions... what about the profit? what about the wages?
Thanks for confirming my suspicion that the public education system has truly jumped the shark.
yeah sure does when you dont even know the history of your own country. its not my country, mind you. its yours. crazy stuff. but then again what do you expect from someone being proud of working 16 hours a day. maybe its not the public's education system's fault at all. maybe its not even its purpose to give you a general idea about the economy, what value is or profit, what a commodity is and wage labour and instead putting some empty phrases in you head like "go do it better if you dont like it". you could prove a few suspicions of mine: do you believe in god? are you a christian? do you not get along well with other liberals when it comes to politics? do you think socialists are evil and want to steal your property? do you vote republican?
Property rights for them, not for you.
didnt know property rights cared about who has them.
Sometimes the people who are denied property rights care.
Other times, they get bamboozled into destroying their own rights.
well show me someone who is denied property rights. he is denied everything BECAUSE of property rights. get that through you wires man.
I have my own gun.
Private property is not personal property - a gun is personal property, a farm is private property, and rents are an abuse of it, but right, rentier capitalism is something Ayn Rand absolutely loves.
Your masters will tell you what is property and what is not.
I have no masters.
Yet you deride the concept of real money as currency.
I deride the concept of any currency being more real altogether. Gold as currency is as much of a social construct as fiat currency.
I could scream all day about bringing back the cocoa standard (which was the basis of mesoamerican economy due to excessive amounts of gold) or the rice standard (the japanese koku was based on the amount of rice consumed by one person) and they would still be social constructs.
Which social construct is more real is up to the society involved.
Money is an abstraction, a social construct as you point out.
It exists to serve a purpose.
One of those purposes is to be a store of value, allowing you to create a surplus of wealth and consume it later. This is what allows a division of labor economy.
Therefore it matters whether the currency has cost or not.
When currency has no cost and is imposed at the point of a gun, certain aspects of the abstraction, this social construct, make themselves felt. It allows those with the power to create currency at zero cost to steal from those who must create real value in exchange for it.
absolutely!
I guess I see it a little different than being poor. It's us struggling with debt that remains for those who lose their careers/jobs. I'm sure we make a lot more money than the 70% mentioned, but those 70% don't have mortgages/car payments/credit cards/medical bills/college loans/etc.
want a real tax solution. Lets stop worrying about raising tax rates, and 1) make capital gains tax the same as wage income tax. right now its at %15 2) close tax loopholes and make GE/Walmart pay their far share.
That will lead to more crony capitalism, not less.
income != buying power. This misguided world view is nothing more than semantic trick that has been keeping us compliant for the last 40 years.
Its what always has been used to break the working class in two.
No, none of us are arguing that having money is what makes wall street evil. Its 1) HOW wall street got its money and 2) what evil things wall street does with its money. Not just wall street, the people who's money comes not from working but owning stock. (they bought on wall street, it comes back to wall street, the gate keepers of the economy)
Sure if we wanted, we could stratify the working class beyond the 99%. This isn't about that. Its about everyone who works DOING SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE. Trading stocks produce nothing of value, and if anything decrease value by containing capital in a small porition of the population that won't spend it on anything but more capital.
Just because some of us might be higher on the made up pecking order than others doesn't make us any less 99%. We all work. Its a trick to get the middle class to side with the rich.
Here is a good rally cry. "Pay Workers, Not Dividends"
I can't tell if you are agreeing with me or arguing with me, mleon.
I agree that the abuses in the financial system need to be stopped. Wall Street is fraught with insider trading, ponzi schemes and a general massive rip-off of the populace. I'm not sure that the stock market is the problem, though. Abuse of the market, sure, but not the market itself. Stocks are nothing more than partial ownership in a company. If I make widgets and I come to you and say, "If you will give me $10, I will give you one percent ownership in my company. In return for your investment, I will pay you a portion of the profits my company makes every quarter." This is a fair deal for both parties. I get money to help build my company and the person who bought the share gets a return on their investment. There is nothing inherently wrong, unfair or evil about this. Once corruption enters the system, though, it becomes unfair. This is the problem.
I am disagreeing with the relevance of ordinary American's being the %1 globally. I think its a divide and rule tactic. Its what the %1 says to make us side with them against our own self interests. Terms to google PPP(purchase power parity).
"If I make widgets and I come to you and say, "If you will give me $10, I will give you one percent ownership in my company. In return for your investment, I will pay you a portion of the profits my company makes every quarter." "
No its NOT a good deal. It makes a wage earner the investor that doesn't work, and can perpetually not work, and does not care about factory at all so long as he gets his dividends. So instead of having the money to pay the people working at the widget factor, the former owners now merge "management" needs to pay the investor. To keep this going he needs to grow the company exponentially, selling more stock, loosing more control, and paying workers less.
The only people who can reliably win are those who have the time and start up capital to play in the big leauges which means are rich to begin with, and use the winnings to re-invest in the next company. Thus anyone who's not a player to begin with won't be. Or, alternatively, hire someone (like a hedgefund manager) to do this form them, which again is cost prohibitive.
Also, even if a FAIR deal between the factory owner and investor, what about the poor fools who work for the factory. Its a bad deal for them. What could have been their salary is now someone else's divends.(someone who doesn't actually do work for the company). If you think that is FAIR, I don't know what to tell you.
Here is another thing. There was no stock market when this country was founded. Up until the 1920s, when they took over the economy, and esenetially bought everyone out, this sort of shenanigans was frowned upon. Stocks where not traded by reputable companies until the 20s. It was less then 10 years in the mainstream when their first crash nearly wiped us out.
Thanks for clarifying your position, mleon. My intent was not to get people here to side with the 1%. My intent was to get people to understand that the focus should be on the abuse of power, not class warfare. I understand purchasing power parity--but its not applicable to this argument. My comparisons of earnings are equalized in terms of purchasing power. (Stats from the World Bank).
As for the stock market, we could argue about this all day, but I'm not sure that will get us anywhere. You say that if the earnings go to investors, that means they are not going to the workers. What's to say they would go to the workers without the stock market? What if the owner decides to keep his earnings for himself?
Your arguments about companies focusing only on dividends to the detriment of the company and it's workers have merit. We just disagree on why this happens. I would argue that this is the result of the failure of our system to limit corporate power. It used to be the case that corporations were not allowed to own any property that was not directly tied to the execution of their business. This prevented corporations from becoming huge conglomerates whose only interest is in making more money. Now we no longer have those restrictions (and others that I'll leave out for brevity's sake). This leads to companies whose only concern is acquiring more. They base CEO compensation not on the quality of the company for the long-term, but on how high they can move the stock price this quarter. In this environment, you have leadership who does not care about the quality of the product or the well being of the workers.
Contrast this with the small business person who has spent their own money and put their own sweat into building a business. This person cares about their company. It is their baby. I don't know if you have had much opportunity to talk to entrepreneurs, but if you have I'm sure you will agree that they tend to be extremely passionate about their business--money is not usually at the top of the list of what they are trying to achieve with their efforts. They care about their workers and their product.
If this business owner wants money to expand his business, one option he has is to sell stock in his company. Does he suddenly become evil if he makes this choice? Does getting the money from selling stock vs borrowing it from a bank change his motivations and business goals?
I don't know if I've done a good job or not, but I'm trying to get you to separate the system itself from the effects of corruption in the system. Today's stock market is a cesspool, breeding abuse and manipulation. The concept of a stock market, however, is not an inherently corrupt system.
yes, I can easily contrast this with a small business, and owner operators. Small business owners, and private companies CAN care about their workers, they have the RIGHT to. Once you have to answer to stockholders, there is no grey area anymore
I am not a marxist, nor am I waging "class warfare". I am arguing that wall street, stock trading, and banking in general is a disaster waiting to happen, and inherent fraud onto itself.
[Removed]
[Removed]
No war but class war.