Forum Post: Occupy wall street - What are you claiming precisely ?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 21, 2011, 8:01 a.m. EST by jpleroch
(1)
from Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Hi everybody, I'm a french 'indignatos' as this worldwide movement came first in Spain. I have a very important question (already asked to several movement across Europe) what are presicely our claiming ?? This is important because we all have the same problem and I think we all have to have a common claiming and we should claim the same things all over the world. Could I have a answer PLEASE ??
They say we don't know how the system works. I say they don't know how systems in general work.
In science old theories get replaced by a new theory if the new theory explains the things of the old theories (and even more) better than the old theories. But it can take a long time before the new theory becomes mainstream because they always face the problem of dogmatism in the establishment (think of Gallileo).
This new theory I found, by doing some research in the web, is called 'debitism' and the principles and consequences are very easy to understand if you are not blinded by the things which you consider to be facts. But the fact is, facts exist only if you can prove them by logically deducing them from given facts. And the most things you consider as facts are only beliefs deducted from beliefs.
So here is an introduction in the theory of debitism for preschool kids (things in brackets to make it easyer for the experts to understand):
Money (and such things as expected money or how you may call this) is created if someone (banks or so) gives a credit (or something equivalent) to someone else. And if someone pays back his credit the money gets destroyed. So the amount of money is always equal to the amount of debt, which is also true if you take interest rates (and such things) into account. Therefore money is just the proof of the promise of someone to pay back his debt. And the rest of the economy is just about how getting this piece of proof to pay your own debt plus the interest rate.
The problem which we face today is that someone must first take a new credit (which we can't because everybody says we have too much debts) before we can pay back our debts plus the interest rates. And the 1% can't give us the money either because their money is our promise to pay our debts and interest rates (so we need to bail them out which is only some sort of new credit). So we first will have to pay our interest rates before they can give us the money to do this. You see how messed up the system is?
So if we really want our system to keep running we are forced to make higher debts and not lower them. But even then there will be a point where the system collapses. And as history shows people don't say it was the systems fault. They say it was the fault of aliens which we have to kill and start building up the system again. From time to time they changed the colour but not the structure. And the history got repeated many times.
And now a little bit theory of systems in general:
A system is called stable if every limited input leads to a limited output.
Real existing systems always tend to get into a stable state. Think of a pressure tank: if the pressure gets too high the tank explodes and the system is stable again.
So, if you don't want a collapse as the solution for the problems we face you should better educate yourself and others about debitism and start a public discussion about a stable system where everyone can live by his believes and where we all can freely care for our needs.
And stop insulting the movement beeing a bunch of lazy ignorant anarchists. The only lazy ignorant anarchists I see is the man behind the 1% and his supporters who profit from keeping people blind and uneducated and for whom a human life means nothing.
And I would be glad if one of the economy experts can proof the theory of debitism to be wrong. But before you can do this you will have to study this theory and understand it because that is the way how real science works.
And don't believe anything I said. Maybe I am just the man behind the one percent or one of his supporters who tries to disturb the public awakening.
Learn to think and educate yourself. Internet is not just for commerce and porn.
Feel free to use this text as you like as long as you keep it together. Maybe someone will print this on toilet paper for the 1%?
And to anonymous: if you want to hack the system distribute this.
Welcome in the next millenium.
If you wan't to discuss this, please follow the link:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/maybe-this-will-get-the-support-of-mainstream-medi/
I think Occupy should take your approach. We shouldn't make demands but offer alternatives:
Eg. Offer Big Businesses a choice: Do you want More regulations and Higher Taxes or Death Penalties for CEO and Board Director for crimes.
Do you want Term Limits, or Do you want the People to Choose Committee Memberships?
Economic events of the last four years are only a warning and not the main event, because the economy is and has been on an irrational and unsustainable track, and unless we take real and rational steps to correct it, it will correct itself. History shows that this always ends badly. Wealth imbalances divert money from the real economy and redeploy it in the “financial” economy, which at this stage in the cycle more resembles a rigged casino than an efficient conduit of capital. The last time the financial industry share of GDP spiked was 1929. The reason it has not crashed yet is unparalleled government intervention, which has not fixed the problems, but only delayed the day of reckoning and increased the magnitude of that inevitability if nothing changes.
It is necessary to break the cycle of history. To accomplish this requires three simple things: Federal revenue must go up, Federal outlays must come down and there must be simple but real financial reform. It is not a choice between one and the others. Federal revenue increases should come exclusively from income streams that have enjoyed preferred treatment for a long time, but everyone will have to expect less from the government for expenses to be reduced. It will not be enough to merely balance the budget; we must begin paying down the cumulative debt to remain a dominant economic power. China’s “currency manipulation” is simply a matter of them buying our debt because we create it. For the last ten years the “financial sector” has prospered while the rest of America got saddled with more debt both public and personal. “Cutting taxes” and borrowing the shortfall isn’t really cutting taxes, because the actual tax due increases with the addition of interest, and the burden shifts to people who can’t vote because they are children or haven’t even been born yet. This generational theft is unconscionable. We hear a lot about the right to life of the unborn, but what about their right to liberty? The real price of the financial bailout is that we sold an unborn generation into indentured servitude when the government assumed or guaranteed private debt for which it had no previous obligation, while no attempt was made to “claw back” any money from the perpetrators or to prosecute them for systemic fraud. Instead, they kept their ill-gotten gains, their jobs and their freedom. They also claim they broke no law so the rest of us must have missed the news the day fraud was de-criminalized.
Thanks nice but it doesn't define clearly what we want.
Could you have a look at this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C-EVfFgED4 and let me know what do you think about it ?
Very Interesting video, but as bad as the Fed may be (which is a cartel of big banks), I don't think it is the only problem. As for what "we" might want, this might be a start:
Repeal the 879-page Dodd-Frank act of 2011. Reinstate the 37-page Glass-Stegall act of 1933. G-S worked for 60 years. Despite its length, D-F is still not complete with 243 rules yet to be defined by regulators. The regulators have asked the financial industry to fill in those blanks. Essentially the foxes have been asked to not only guard the henhouse but to build it too. Right now the banks derive only 30% of their income from lending and 70% from gambling, euphemistically referred to as “trading”. One by-product of this is that all the monetary benefit from productivity gains in the last decade accrued exclusively to the “financial sector”. The imperative of a functional financial system is simple: efficient allocation of capital to productive enterprise, because the financial system should support economic activity, not the other way around. Clearly, the titans of finance have failed miserably at this, yet they not only still have jobs, they continue to be richly rewarded for their incompetence.
Stop “C” level executives from looting public companies. Stock options and Golden Parachutes are insidious methods to siphon shareholder equity and encourage outsize risk by executives with no downside personal financial stake. If a “C” level executive is “all that”, then he should be confident enough to buy the stock of his firm and he and his family should be willing to refrain from selling any stock in the company long or short for the duration of his employment or board membership. The sale of company stock by insiders is a direct conflict with their fiduciary obligations to the other shareholders. Paying proprietary scale rewards to people who have no proportionate proprietary risk position is bad business, and this abuse cries out for legislative action since the cronyism of corporate boards seems to be incapable of reasonable self-governance.
Eliminate the preferred rates at which long-term capital gains and inheritances are taxed. Capital gains already enjoy unlimited exemption from tax until they are realized. Make all income including capital gains, gifts, inheritance and trust funds subject to the same marginal rates as ordinary income. Estates should have all the unrealized capital gains taxed before distribution to heirs, and then heirs should pay marginal rates from the first dollar. These preferred rates rate do not create jobs; they only accelerate the acquisition of financial instruments and consolidation of wealth. Lower marginal rates and shorter depreciation schedules can create jobs much more effectively. It’s not a matter of “soaking the rich”, but just bringing the tax rate of all income streams into parity with marginal rates. I would however recommend a much higher tax on the portion of individual inheritances above a certain threshold. There is no economic or social justification for 9 and 10 figure inheritances. We are neither a feudal society nor a caste system. Heavily taxing these kinds of inheritances is an essential component of creating a sustainable economic system. A society that fosters dynastic wealth is on the road to perdition, because the historical destinations are brutal repression, economic catastrophe, or revolution, and more often than not, the heirs of great fortunes are not prudent stewards. These are the facts of history. If death and taxes are both inevitable, it makes sense that they also be concurrent, because the more we pay as a society after death, the less we will have to pay while living. Lower marginal rates provide a superior economic stimulus to preferential treatment of inherited wealth or long-term capital gains. We could ignore history and just let things run their course, but I have to stress that these severe wealth imbalances never end well, unless you are a fan of repression, revolutions or economic calamity. The last time a similar imbalance occurred in our country was 1929. How did that work out for us?
Well said.
Thank you. I added a little bit more in response to the poster's comment.