Forum Post: Is this a Communist Movement
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 16, 2011, 6:12 p.m. EST by CapitalismRulesPeriod
(160)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
You all are talking about redistribution of wealth so how many of you are supporting communism
Simply put. No!!
Re-distribution from who to where? The top .001 percent to the rest of the economy? The wealth divide has grown rapidly in America in the last 20 years, do the research. Blame it on the Banks, blame it on the politicians, blame it on the general dumbing down of the american population. I don't care.
The fact remains that its time for society to change as a whole for the better. Theres only so much clean air, water, and soil on this planet, so do your best to be the most conscious, loving person you can be.
Hmph, the trolls are getting organized, and it looks like they discovered upvoting. Viva scumocracy.
Being paid fairly for the work I do is communism? be careful, don't let The People hear that. They might all become Communists. :)
Do you know what communism is? In a true communist society everyone is economically equal. OWS is not asking for that, as far as I know. They are asking for fairness. They are not seeking to re-distribute all of the wealth. They are seeking fair wages, fair taxes, money out of politics, etc. When you look at the numbers, 1 in 7 on food stamps, 22% of children in poverty, 9.1% unemployment, CEO's who earn 343 times the wage of the average worker, we see huge income disparity. OWS would like to the decrease the income disparity to a point where all people earn a living wage and the number of people in poverty is significantly reduced.
so you want do limit the amount a person can make
No. I want to raise up the low wages at the bottom end of the spectrum so that all people who work full time can earn a living wage. I see no need to cap salaries on anyone as long as everyone is getting enough of the profits from their labor productivity to function. It is just outrageous that people who work full time in this country can qualify for medicaid and food stamps. It doesn't have to be that way. It could be more fair.
minimum wage is a living wage, I know from experience
ha ha ha ha ha.....yea....i doubt you very much so.....but if so...maybe in the 1980's.
The average rent is $300 without utilities, manny people who are paid minimum wage are people who need the job because they need money, and many of the people who make minimum wage get under 35 hours a week, get paid after tax less than $200 a week. In today econmy, see if you can survive on that.
umm, I'm buying my home in washington state, have a car payment, pay my bills, I did this for 11 months on minimum wage job before i got promoted, (from a dishwasher to a cook), so don't tell me it's not a living wage. It's not a rad living but you can pull it off. if you get under 35 hrs a week at your job, get another job to pick up the slack. I worked in Alaska last summer and we worked 18+hrs a day, we did that seven days a week for three months, and made a lot of overtime. if you want something in life you got to bust your ass to get it. I'm not saying the finicial system isn't all fucked, I'm for a blood letting personally,
Ha! Not in the town I live in. You couldn't even make a rent in my town and that's with gross pay on minimum wage. Are you kidding? When did you earn minimum wage and live on it?
Let's do the math. $7.25 x 50 hours per week x 4 = $1,450/month gross. Even if we say this person won't pay taxes, how could they possibly support a family? The rents alone in my town are higher than that. They could maybe rent a one bedroom for $1,200. Please. It is not a living wage.
Umm don't have a family if you are working a minimum wage job. Not everyone NEEDS to procreate.
new eugenics
That's very humane, atraxia. I wish you peace and love and that you learn compassion and empathy. It would make you a better person and a happier one, too.
it is indeed very humane to born a child into a life of poverty.
then vote for lower taxes so you don't have to pay as much
Since when can we vote for single issues? We have to vote for a candidate and those candidates are bankrolled by the financial sector.
i meant a candidate that supports lower taxes
We limit the minimum people can make and that is barley enough to support yourself, so why cant we raise that and put a cap on the total amount someone can make. Does one person really need to have control over billions of dollars in resources??
because if someone has the initiative to start a business and grow it to a multinational corporation they should have no limits on what they can make
this isnt a communist movement and why do you think that capitalism ,communism facism are the only system in the world right now this systems are faulty because thier all based on the monentary system which is money. at this stage of evolution of man money is the root of all evil and destruction of the earth we need a more sustainable equal,fair and beneficiary for all human beings on the planet not just the 1% ,we need a resource based economy (venus project) will explain more on this so let keep the fire burning because we are the 99% and we cant lose ,equality for all people.
The fact remains that this sort of event will continue occurring ad infinitum, because, despite our best efforts, it is the nature of mankind to constantly rebuild the power of the 1%. This movement is trying to best the corporations, if just for a moment, to gain a momentary reprieve for the people.
No, we have already had redistribution of wealth for the last 30 years right under your nose. The top 1% now controls over 42% of all of our nation's wealth and the top 10% now controls over 70% of our entire nation's wealth. The bottom 50% only control a meager 2% of all of our nation's wealth. How did this happen?
The middle class spends their wealth on goods/services and the corporations have redistributed their wealth by paying their profits all out to the executives and shareholders. Middle class wages have stagnated for 30 years while executive wages have gone up 256% in since 1980. Even last year executive compensation went up another 11%. The top 1% now controls over 42% of the entire nation's wealth. We have not seen numbers like this since the great depression. The top 10% controls 70% of the entire nation's wealth. All of our nation's wealth has been redistributed into the hands of the few.
The middle class was roped into replacing wages with easy credit. So instead of paying people living wages, corporations fooled us into thinking we were doing well and could afford things by giving us easy credit instead of wages. Instead of having wages to buy t.v.'s, furniture, etc. we were given easy loans. So the middle class became a debtor class. There used to be a tax disincentive to paying out all of corporate profits at the top because in the 1950's income was taxed at 90% over a certain amount money and now that tax disincentive has disappeared. In 1950's the highest marginal tax rate was 90%. In 1960-1970's it was 70%. In 1980's it dropped to 49%. In 1990's dropped to 39%. Under George Bush it dropped to a mere 36%. We have had over 30 years of massive tax cuts for the wealthy.
There is now no tax disincentive to paying out all of the corporate wealth at the top. And there is no employee bargaining power because now less than 12% of all of our jobs are unionized. Corporate profits are at an all time high, healthcare company profits are at an all time high, and oil profits are at an all time high. We don't have a healthcare crisis we have a healthcare company profit-taking crisis that no politician will doing anything about. Healthcare and oil companies have enjoyed a decade of record profits while we have had a decade of massive premiums for little coverage and a decade of outrageous gas prices.
The problems are: 1) deregulation of the banks by the Republican-controlled congress in 1999; 2) hedge funds are exempt from regulation; 3) tax system no longer has a disincentive against paying outrageous executive salaries (highest marginal tax rate has dropped from 90% to 36%); 4) commodities market is exempt from regulation (Republican-controlled Congress exempted it in the Commodities Future Modernization act of 2000); 5) the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations can spend unlimited funds in campaign elections (thus politicians on both sides favor the wealthy/corporations) and 6) the rise of corporate/billionaire propaganda media "news." Because of the need to raise massive sums in politics today, we no longer have a party that represents the people. The Democrats have to chase the corporate and big money donors too.
What can we do about this: 1) re-instate Glass-Steagall Act regulating the banks; 2) regulate hedge funds and the commodities market (because the commodities market is not regulated speculation has caused prices for commodities to go through the roof); 3) get rid of the money in politics (have federally funded elections with clear limits on spending and no outside groups allowed to have ads); 4) get rid of 1980's laws stating that corporations' only duty is to maximize shareholder profits; and 5) regulate "news" channels and newspapers (no more "slanted opinion news" masquerading as hard news) and reinstitute the fairness doctrine across all news outlets to ensure that both sides get equal time.
Corporations should have duties to society and to their workers too. They should have to balance their duties to maximize shareholder profits against their reinstated duties to their employees and to society. The laws saying that corporations' only duty is to maximize shareholder profits have led to the destruction of long-term business plans and care for their workers and have created short-term profit monsters at the expense of workers and society.
No, it's an anti-corporatism movement. The primary demands of this movement are related to avoiding an all-out plutocracy, which is where we are headed without a course correction.
anti-corporatism could be considered communism
Anti-corporatism, could be called anti-aristocracy. That is not communism.
the aristocracy is the loads of czars that Obama has appointed to micro manage things
Only if you're a reductionist thinker, who relies on simplistic labels to avoid actually having to think deeper on matters than what their orthodoxy demands.
The topic question is shorter then a sound bit on Fox News. Let him go. He's a lost cause dude.
But other people read it and if I'm any good, find a new way to articulate it. Not for the sycophant, it was for the general public. Much like OWS.
But I hear you man.
Its about ending the unfair representation provided by wealth. It's not about getting rid of the corporation as a legal entity, but it is about the rights that corporations are given.
it could but I think most people know the difference between fascism and communism.
What is fair pay? I've been working since I was 11 years old. First babysitting, then clerking in a store as a teenager, working as a maid cleaning toilets, etc., waiting tables--all of this for not much money at all. I've worked hard, I've gone back to school while a single parent and achieved a successful and meaningful career. I'm not wealthy but I thank God I'm healthy and I can continue to work hard and contribute in some small way.
What is fair pay? Ask someone who has nothing to eat what is fair pay. Sometimes we have to just do what we have to do. I feel sorry for those who never know the satisfaction working hard and living off the fruits of their own labor.
Good luck with that communist thing. Check out where many of the world's billionaires made their fortunes. Russia is near the top of the list.
This is a collective movement. We are US ! United we Stand !
Join Together ! Oneness is better than Noneness . . .
Wiki Occupy Wall Street
http://www.wikioccupywallst.org
United We Stand ! Let's Build it Together ! Yes we are Us . . .
Negative.
I'm tired of these hippies who majored in PreColombian Pottery at some liberal Arts College who are angry at me for my 3rd house in the hamptons. I worked hard social networking at the parities during business school in order to get my job on wall street. I should be able to wear my cufflinks proudly and take my helicopter to the Short Hills mall to buy clothes for my girlfriends. Don't be mad at me because you majored in something that is worthless to society and now you have to work at starbucks to pay off that stupid loan that I sold to you.
I think someone needs to take a government class again. But then again with the American education system I can see why someone with a lack of knowledge can twist into what they want.
no, but we are not "capitalist" either. In fact I hate the word "capitalism" it was coined by marx himself. Its used to mean exploitive, but marxists use it to describe all non-communist based ideas.
Its also used to self describe by the wealthy and powerful that any critizism of them, or non-conformity of today's system is "communism".
However the two terms are seldom understood.
I think they are taking about distribution of wealth, not re-distribution. Changing the slope of the real wages curve. http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-four-charts-that-explain-what-the-protesters-are-angry-about-2011-10
this isnt a communist movement and why do you think that capitalism ,communism facism are the only system in the world right now this systems are faulty because thier all based on the monentary system which is money. at this stage of evolution of man money is the root of all evil and destruction of the earth we need a more sustainable equal,fair and beneficiary for all human beings on the planet not just the 1% ,we need a resource based economy (venus project) will explain more on this so let keep the fire burning because we are the 99% and we cant lose ,equality for all people.
The redistribution of wealth can go in two directions. All the stats I've seen show that distribution going from 99% to 1% over the last 30 years. What do we call that? Parasitism?
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
I would applaud if this was a communist movement. Communism does start from class struggle. This world would be a better place if we lived in commune. Propaganda has led us to believe that communism is a bad thing but its not. In fact, living in commune would allow us to be happier than if we all try to compete for the wealth that is available. As we have seen this system does not work. I want to state this as a fact: America is NOT a capitalist society. If it was all the wealth would be in the hands of only one person and if that were to happen I would guarantee that there would have been a communist revolt long ago. But I believe for a complete overthrowing on America's quasi-regulated capitalist economy there will have to be even greater greed than is demonstrated by today's wealthy... and there is insane amounts of greed.
All of us and we want a dictatorship of the proletariat with Obama as Prez. We want to socialize marriage and raise all children on Farms with re-education camps for all Republicans. Are you happy now??
This may come as a shock to you, but the Cold War ended in 1989. Give it a rest with the alarmist finger-pointing.
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” ― Frederick Douglass
that quote is awesome
I'm for government control of electricity
Actually in a sense, without this kind of reaction, true capitalism cannot exist. An Aristocratic capitalism for example "creates a market-government alliance which rigs the system in favor of the wealthy, and allows the middle class to work for and even compete with elites, but with different levels of commercial rules." That is what Occupy Wall Street is reacting against. A socialist democracy is a problem to, and could well tank an economy, however, in absence of crony capitalism, and dirty politics, we could and theoretically would repeal any legislation that doesn't produce results. The difference is that most legislation now is a negotiation between power players, not a discussion of the needs of the people. Whether you're a Liberal to the left or a Libertarian (Like myself) one thing is unquestionable, and that is that government and corporate america need an overhaul.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I am supporting communism.
You never see communism at work, in old URSS it isn't communism, it was only at the begennings under Lenine, Staline was a dictator like others :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
In communism theyrn't chiefs or leader, only workers sharing all they producting, and It's NOT the main idea of OWS
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Davidlowrendezvous.png
Oh yeah. Lenin...he was a real humanitarian wasn't he?
"Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity ... You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ... Yours, Lenin. P.S. Find tougher people."
It's not an opinion about the man, but about what's really means communism
Quote : "It was only at the begennings under Lenine" -beginnings <----
Agreed. It definitely isn't the main idea of OWS.
it is a non-violent movement
communism has nothing to do with violence
true
Yep right but OWS, i'd like to believe in, is a non-violent movement, but I'm not all the people.
most people would prefer not having to deal with violence
I hope so...
They can't even come up with the names of the leaders...erm organizers, in the background. If you think that they just popped out of the blue, well I assume you, like many of us, are wondering why there is so much talk of Marxist Socialism and ending Capitalism, when Americans are looking to find high paying careers? Why are there calls for an Arab Spring Revolution? Egypt is under military dictatorship, with no end in sight, so what would happen if Marxist lunatics, with a so called leader-less movement, toppled our lawful and legitimate Government, a military dictatorship? Luckily these idiots don't have a chance in heck, considering that the US Military is loyal to the US Government and the American people, not to Marxist radicals, looking to discriminate against the rich. If these crazies try to impose, by force or by other means, a mass murdering, slave owning Socialist regime, on the USA, they are going to regret it, when they are brought to justice and as they sit in their prison cells. The hell with Communism and we should lobby to lock them all up and throw away the key, when, as and if they try to overthrow our Government.
99% rules period here, no more derailing of our movement by trolls and trying to divide the unity of the 99% using this or that ism. Capitalism or Communism are all obsolete, whatever mix works for the interest of the 99% is what will be in place. To get away from useless trolls like this please visit: http://www.themultitude.org/
I love it. Let's create a place where WE control what is said, and WHO is allowed to say it, and ONLY give those we agree with a voice or vote.
Good luck with your movement.
Redistribution of wealth is not communism. The distribution of wealth (and income) is always determined by society, even in capitalism.
exactly, but in its current form it supports those who already have the most. At least 32% of the wealth in America is owned by the 1%
Yep, and just as it was society that distributed that wealth and income in such a manner in the first place, it is society's prerogative to fix it.
Redistribution of wealth... what do you think taxes are for? They take our money (even the 47% that pays no federal tax pays all other taxes) then they redistribute our taxes into the things it takes to run our country: e.g.: defense, SS, government jobs and studying the sex habits of the Scharzenegger.
Hey, I'm all for capitalism - I just want them ( 1% ) to pay all their fair share in taxes and quit buying our senate and congress. I'm not asking them to 'give' me anything. They need to pay what they righteously owe America.
I am a capitalist. Go team!
They pay most of the taxes already the top 1% pay 50% of the income tax approximately
taxes do not redistribute wealth. All it does as you say is help the government run the country. It has nothing to do with the redistribution of wealth that we want here.
There are many 'wants' here. Some want to do away with Obamacare(s) and I don't.
We don't have to throw away the baby with the bath water to get what we're entitled to.
This is true, we just need to find out the best way to get the baby out.
Is about as Communist as the Siberian tundras are hot.
Sure communist movement paid by Chinese! See on the ground there who donating for food and other stuff. Sure the Chinese ! http://defendwallstreet.com/
We are all first interested in removing greed and corruption...
Next you see many / most of us discussing and arguing ways to help bolster the economy and remove the inequality ... hence, all the discussions focusing on social systems.... What a fantastic environment here... we are All learning...
I agree with OWS but in no way agree with communism. Like capitalism and socialism, ANY social structure that uses money will become corrupt in the end. We should try "machine made abundance in accordance with Earth's allowable resources, but in the meantime, get our jobs back by imposing trade tariffs...
trade tariffs would make everything more expensive
personally I think redistribution of wealth is a misnomer
what they're saying is after calculating the monies the statistical representation ideally would look "better"
redistribution the word, implies we take money from the rich and literally distribute it to the rest to even it out (communism)
I do think that there is a certain amount of responsibility that the upper upper has to those at the bottom of the totem pole.
The fact that there are companies that didn't make money (took buyouts) yet the bosses continued to get bonuses (their regular higher pay should have been enough) thereby putting debt into the company (probably at the expense of jobs) while essentially being responsible for the loss is the kind of wrongdoings we are talking about.
that is the lack of distribution of wealth caused by the 1% we are talking about
Have you ever done anything creative, had an idea or original thought, have you ever liked a movie that wasn't a blockbuster? I bet you are one boring fuck.
yes, I have watched foreign films and documentaries
I agree with Lazy. How many books have you read? Seriously.
How many books have you read?
i read all the time. i am currently reading The History of Political Philosophy and also The History of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
which authors ?
Edward Gibbon, Aristotle, Plato, John Hersey, Christopher Hitchens, Adolf Hitler,Stephen King,Erik Larson,Joseph B. Lumpkin,Thomas Paine, Miguel de Cervantes, Roy W. Spencer, Jules Verne, Jonathan Swift, H.G.Wells, G.M.Woerlee, Charles Darwin, Alexander Dumas, Jane Austen, Karl Marx, Alexander Hamilton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Aeschylus, Jacob Abbott, Lewis Carroll, Sun Tzu, Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, Washington Erving, John Marshall, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Herman Melville, Horace, Homer, Sophocles, John Steinbeck, Charles Dickens, Niccolo Machiavelli, Robert Louis Stevenson, Franz Kafka, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Martin Luther King Jr., Leo Tolstoy, Jack London, Lyman Frank Baum, Steven Hawking, Albert Einstein,Dante Alighieri, the various authors of the Bible and the Koran and Aristophanes just to name a few.
But all of these authors wasn't written "The History of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire." and "The History of Political Philosophy".
the first wrote the book about the roman empire and the Philosophy book was written by hundreds of authors
No, greeks cannot writing about fall of the Romans because they are living and dying before the rise of the Roman's Empire...
Edward Gibbon is the first one
its a mix and until the dust settles no one will really know
Absolutely not. I love free enterprise! People should be able to make as much money as they want. However, this does NOT give them the right to control the political process anymore than anyone else. Period. There is no contradiction between radical democracy and radical free enterprise.
Sounds like it. Some people here are spouting on about having a new one world order.
No. Not at all. This is a pro-capitalist movement. Not the pseudo-capitalism of bank bailouts, preferred tax treatment for the elite, and economic incentives for the biggest and most powerful corporations to fire us here and create jobs overseas.
they take jobs over seas because they can't afford them here. It's a lot cheaper in china
They take jobs overseas because they have incentives to do so: no taxes, lower labor costs, better loan terms, etc.
They also do not bring the earnings back because they would be taxed; so we are literally destroying capitalism in the USA to develop the world abroad.
They take them overseas to make obscene profits - not adequate profits.
do you know anything about how a corporation runs
Do YOU know anything about how a corporation runs? I've lived half my life abroad and have been living and working for American corporations abroad for 7 years. Over the full duration of my career from US soil to where I am now, I've worked for Fortune 500 companies and mom & pops, and I'm starting my own business now.
The way you talk, everything you know about how corporations are run you learned on TV. Get out and see the world. Talk to people. Open your mind. You don't know everything, and you clearly do not understand what this movement is about. To stand with OWS does not mean you are "pro-communist". Do you even know what communism is like? Have you been to China and seen it first hand? Better yet, have you watched Chinese communism evolve to incorporate more and more capitalist practices over the decades? I was living in Germany in the 80s under the shadow of Soviet communism, and I saw first hand what it did to East Germany. If you think everything that isn't unfettered capitalism = communism then you, my friend, have a very limited understanding of the world.
if you are starting a business then why would you support taxing wealthy ,also TV is a horrible place to get unbiased information
You don't know anything about me so you don't know what I do or don't support, nor my reasons for doing so. You also misread my comment, I'm suggesting that you are the ones taking lessons about how business works from the television.
Is it your position that wealthy people should pay zero taxes? How do you propose we build bridges and highways and pay firefighters and soldiers then?
no If your going to raise taxes then you should raise it across the board instead of just on part of the population
Well then you, my friend, are also in favor of raising taxes on the wealthy. Are you a communist?
no i said if you had to raise taxes then don't make select individuals pay you have to raise it on everybody
Yeah that's what you say now, when you're boxed into a corner and forced to articulate your thoughts properly. Before you go beating up on other people for the logic of their positions you should spend a little time trying to understand and be able to explain your own.
if you are starting a business then why would you support taxing wealthy ,also TV is a horrible place to get unbiased information
Yeah, they will destroy the world to make more and more money, no scruples, just blind greed.
Yep, that's about it.
Uhhhh, noh Mr. Period, tel meh.
But who will be able to afford these products that are made in China? The potential clients lost their jobs and their spending power with it. Look at GM
They no longer look to us as 'their market' - we are a measly 300M - they look to India and China - we're talking Billions, baby, Billions!
Tata serves the Indian market, true. GM does not. By outsourcing their production they wrecked one of the biggest industries in the US and wrecked their market in the process. No jobs, no money. No money, no car. CEOs like that are far from patriots
Sorry, you lost me?
OK, last try: what do you mean with 'They no longer look to us as 'their market' - we are a measly 300M - they look to India and China - we're talking Billions, baby, Billions!'
Oh.... Businesses - I won't even call them American businesses because they're all global now, but they like being known as "American" - don't think of the US consumer as their base any longer as we 1) only number about 300M of purchasing population and 2) we've been bleed dry and 3) our credit debt is at it's limit. China and India having Billions of consumers with quickly rising purchasing power and very little in debt, so far, are the beautiful new garden to be plowed under by big business.
After that who knows? Mars?
But who is taking the billions then? We should mean you and some others
Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding what you mean. Can you try again? :~)
This is an interesting article on outsourcing and why it may be bad from a business perspective: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/08/17/why-amazon-cant-make-a-kindle-in-the-usa/
I assumed that with "They no longer.." you meant GM. GM does not sell cars in India, Tata (an Indian conglomerate) does that and does it very well. Since it looks I misinterpreted you I am not sure what you meant with your post
I meant the "they" in general
Sorry not me. I believe in capitalism as it enables people to chase their dreams and ideas. I also believe that people need to be kept honest so some laws should be in place limiting what people can do and the harm they can do. One excess of capitalism for me for example is the problems that lawyers cause by claiming ridiculous amounts of money for injury/damage causing entrepreneurs/doctors to pay huge insurance premiums. Another excess is the privatization of profit and the socialization of debt in the banking world. Bankers act like entrepreneurs while in reality they have no risk in loosing their own money: they just take it out of your pension
No, this is an us-versus-them scapegoating movement. It says so right on the home page.
So what is the solution? We all agre on the corruption but I would argue that that should be directed more towards Washington. Regarding greed... Ever heard of Adam Smith ,but more importantly are you willing to take away freedoms to accomplish your goals?
I haven't accepted the assumption that the solution is to find a scapegoat to blame.
Who mentioned scapegoat? You said you will no longer tolerate corporate greed. So how do you do that, more regulation, increase min. wage, what? I would hope that with such a strong opinion you have some understanding of corporate America, tax rates, economics, etc. and with some understanding and strong opinion you must surley have some idea for a solution.
I didn't say that I will no longer tolerate corporate greed, I said that's how this movement defines itself, by picking a scapegoat. All of "our" problems are "their" fault. It's a popular mind-set because shifting the blame to somebody else frees a person from having any responsibility other than to complain about the scapegoat.
Have you ever actually read Adam Smith?
class warfare?
That does seem to be what that phrase adds up to, yes. I've been here for a week trying to figure out what it's all about and that's about as far as I've gotten. This movement is an expression of discontent, framed in those terms. Not much more than that.
I was just pointing out that "the 1%" is the scapegoat in the case of this movement. In the case of the Tea Party, it's the government.
If you put BOTH of them together you have the problem....
I agree with that.
Communism is a buzzword.
ugh, hits. head. against. wall. i support change. period. i don't play party lines. no more divide and conquer.
communism is a political and economic system not a party
Communism is a planned economy with a monopolization of production power where someone else decides what you can buy: nothing else to choose. Just like Microsoft but then on a country scale
It's a ideology, but it's also a gathering of workers supporting each others. In a deadly winter of Russia people who can't eat dying very quickly, see also :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago
http://defendwallstreet.com/
Communism has nothing really to do with the redistribution of wealth which we are trying to achieve here.
The problem with communism is that it cannot be enforced, that's why it failed. It has to be collectively wanted by the population as a whole. But people are greedy; who wants to go to med school for many years only to be paid the same amount as someone working at the post office?
The idea here is that there needs to be less of a gap between the super-rich and those blue collar and middle class citizens that are being exploited. Exploitation of labour is what capitalism is founded on; it’s all about getting the most amount of profit for the least amount of work. Even those that are exploiting the average worker are being exploited by the elites who own the land, controls the money. Eventually capitalism will collapse in on itself in its current form.
redistribution of wealth is the definition of communism
I get what you're saying but... I believe with better regulations and labor unions we can get back to the post war years when the rich were very comfortable and the middle class were living the dream. They had health care, could afford a home, one income could comfortably support a family and send their kids to college.
This was all common before Carter and Reagan started screwing with things. We only need to look to recent history to see what can be done when the wealthy accept that the masses deserve decent lives too. getmoneyout.com
Yep, not only that in the past few years they have been taking away things that were commonly held as freedoms. they are reducing are ability to control our lives and have a voice. Every passport has a GPS chip in it, in the name of homeland security we can be held indefinitely and without a reason. Things our fore-fathers fought for have been taken away from us.
Yuck - I didn't know that about passports. - Hmmmm - have to think this one over. I'm glad you enlightened me.
They aren't GPS chips, they are RFID chips, very very very different technology. While GPS broadcasts a signal regardless of location, RFID can only be ready by an "RFID interrogator" which can only happen if 1) the chip passes within a specified range of the reader and 2) the reader has the proper decryption sequences to read the encrypted chip. Educate yourself before you needlessly scare other people: http://www.pcworld.com/article/123246/united_states_to_require_rfid_chips_in_passports.html
Furthermore, this can easily be prevented by purchasing a passport cover that blocks RFID signals. They are available anywhere that luggage and travel gadgets are sold.
Also only applies to passports issued after Jan 1, 2007. My current passport (issued in 2004) does not have this technology.
The government is not tracking your every move. Please. We barely have the budget to move a letter across the country and you think we have those kind of resources? Let's focus on real problems.
unions are awful. they work off seniority instead of performance. so the slug that has been there longer will get the promotion even though you work your ass off