Forum Post: The 13 demands OWS should really have!
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 7, 2011, 2:40 p.m. EST by Calbearz
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End the Federal Reserve System and return to the gold and silver standard. This will return honesty to money and trade, and reward people who save and manage their money responsibly.
End all foreign aid to all countries. The USA is 14 trillion in debt so has no money to give anybody. Enact an amendment to the constitution that prohibits giving away tax dollars to anyone and requires a national surplus of 1% of GDP to allow any loans to any other country for any reason.
End all income tax, and get rid of the IRS. Consumption tax, and tariff only. The government, both federal and state must spend only the money they actually receive from taxes, no more.
End all foreign wars, close all US Military bases on foreign soil, and bring all our troops home. No wars until a foreign aggressor invade US soil. If you choose to do business in foreign countries you must accept the risk that conflict in the country could cause your loss, and you must play by the host country’s rules.
End well fair and food stamps. Provide minimum food and shelter to people in need if, and only if the perform a hard day’s work for that food and shelter every day except Sunday.
End all drug and substance prohibition. Close the DEA. Add narcotic substances to the same regulations that currently control alcohol except no advertising is allowed for any newly added narcotics.
End all government intervention in health care. Health care is a service just like a plumber or accountant. Health care quality has gone down and price up as long as government has been distorting the market. Setup standards of certification that providers can earn and let people decide for themselves who they trust to take care of them.
End all free public education, people value a thing in proportion to what they pay for it, free anything is treated as if it has no value. If people want to eat and have a roof over their head they must be willing to work for it, if they see education as a way to get food and shelter they will work hard in school.
End birth right citizenship, only children born to US citizens are citizens at birth.
End the INS, anybody may come to the US at any time, the just have to be aware there are no handouts, no free medical care, no free schools, no free housing, no free anything. Anyone who is willing to work hard and make our country a better place is welcome.
End all government subsidy of any business; let each company survive on merit.
End all government involvement in retirement; this is a responsibility of each person. Remember on a gold standard there will be no inflation, so a penny saved will truly be a penny earned, planning for retirement will be much easier, if people choose to retire at all. As some say “you get old because you stop working, not stop working because you get old”.
End American laziness, all people between 18 and 30 must serve 2 years in the military or civilian labor corps where they will work hard every day for 2 years to earn their right to be an adult. Required for all people turning 18 for the rest of time. Each person will be paid a nominal wage for this service, some of which will go for their room and board, the rest will go into an account they can use for college or a down payment on a home when they finish their service. The labor of these people will be used to maintain infrastructure, restore environment and habitat, manage any homeless, and improve they country.
If these demands were instituted America would be a better place to live. There is no magic wand that will end poverty on inequity in life.
What about those people who become disabled during their lives. Should we stop providing them with a way to live. I worked for many years and paid into the system before I became disabled and now live on disability. Would you say that I am a drain on the public because I paid into a system that the government has stolen from and expect what I was promised. Your demands to end social programs sound more like a platform for more corporate dominance in an already broken world where the rich believe that are above all that the laws of the land and they don't care about anyone or anything except the millions that they can steal in the name of progress.
No. "We" shouldn't stop providing for them. The govt, run by and for the corporations, should stop playing middle man in our charity.
The only way they "steal" is by appealing to the govt, WHO HAS ALREADY STOLE OUR WEALTH, to bail them out and fund their favored projects. Otherwise people who have money have earned that money by making people happier on the market - no forced involved.
Stop the govt. sponsored corporate welfare and corporate regulation, and the corporations won't have any power to do anything with - they just become wealthy consumers who you can do business with.
Seriously, gt rid of public education! This list is a joke right You must be a Ron Paul Supporter I think only a small amount of the 99% can get behind this list I know I cannot in good faith support your list. Our nation should have a stronger social safety net not none at all. I am for ending the oil wars and the drug wars, so at least one good point on your list.
What if a privately funded social safety net was demonstrably BETTER than one run by the federal govt?
I really support educating the youth (not "schooling" them), and helping the less fortunate get back on their feet, but sending our tax money to D.C. has been an ABJECT FAILURE at performing these tasks. Our schools are worse than ever despite more federal intervention than ever, and there are more people in poverty despite more "safety net" programs than ever.
It's not about doing without social programs, its about recognizing that those suits in D.C. are not part of our social circle and have no business determining our social programs, and they have absolutely no means to actually improve anything by adding corporatist bureaucracy to the path of funds from the haves to the have-nots.
Your notions presume there is no commons, nothing to be jointly invested in, preserved, protected and cared for. I reject those notions. Government should be funded by those who benefit the most. Those who benefit the most are those who make the most and have the most.
Those demands would not be good for the country.
I'm sorry, but these demands range from unworkable to just plain bad. But I see them so often they deserve a refutation, if only for my files.
Somewhere around $1 trillion in paper money is in circulation. Who's going to buy the $1 trillion in gold to replace it? Where does it come from?
Banning foreign aid would just lead to "lend lease" arrangements, or bad business deals (buying a tiny base for a billion, etc.)
Shifting to consumption tax means that the rich don't pay anything (again). You might buy a rowboat, but a billionaire buys a company and toodles around in the company yacht if he feels like it.
Military isolationism isn't a bad idea, in moderation. But for example the Afghanistan war was started because we were attacked by someone under the Taliban's protection.
Your solution to welfare/food stamps is low paid labor. But unemployment is high, and your low-paid labor might just displace better paid employees - who then need your equivalent of "food stamps". If you're not careful, you end up with your entire population on bread and water, slaving away for the unspecified overlords. I think we tried that - on a limited subpopulation - in the Jim Crow era, and it is not to be recommended.
Alright, I can't argue with that one. But alas, it won't pass any time soon. More pragmatic demands should seek common ground between pro and anti drug legalization believers, by demanding a drug policy that is not finely honed to enrich the cartels by making its sole priority to drive the wholesale price of drugs as high as possible.
You have a point here, and clearly people deserve more freedom to control their own health care. When someone knows he needs a drug, eyeglasses, etc., he should just be able to get it if he wants, not be shaken down for a doctor visit on a regular basis. But that doesn't change the need for guaranteed health care. The better access everyone has to it, the safer the whole country is.
Sentencing children to be illiterate because their parents are poor is not a recipe for success. At least with our current educational system we can hope not to end up worse off than the people of China. Without it, we should look to Haiti for a preview of the future.
Ending birth right citizenship means that at any time people could face losing citizenship because a grandparent was (allegedly) not legal, so their parent wasn't legal, so they aren't legal. At least now the INS can only be backlogged a single generation.
Freedom to migrate is good, but we should not only be the universal recipient. We should have the same right to live and work in all the other countries claiming this liberty. And we still have specific problems when countries like Mexico use us as a way to not deal with their corruption, pollution, crime, and fundamental social inequality.
Often these subsidies are highly suspect, but we could imagine cases where they make some sense.
This is an ideologically simple position, but you still have to answer for what you'd do with indigent old people. Are you going to escort them to your labor camp? What if the fellow with the oxygen cylinder just can't dig the ditch? Are you going to shoot your parents? Or just other people's?
This Rahm Emanuel idea has been a turkey from the start, like the European military draft programs that preceded it. The fundamental idea of the military draft is that you don't like the free market when it comes to paying soldiers a market wage. It's not that soldiers are mercenaries, but if you don't even have the respect needed to pay them a decent wage, why should they serve? No one should have to fight for a country that doesn't respect them and dragoons them off at gunpoint. And in practice, we know that the American military is incredibly effective at what they do - routinely expected to go up against vast forces like the Iraqi army and tear them apart with only minor casualties. That's because they're volunteers, and even if there are unhealthy economic pressures and backdoor drafts, they still aren't draftees.
Demands to return to the gold standard are not only pointless, they're impossible. There is not enough gold and silver IN THE WORLD to back the US economy, period. Done with that now.
Honestly, there should be a single non-negotiable demand and this is it: Separation of Business and State. Full stop. Everything else follows from this.
You have some good points and some terrible ones.
1and 2 are great. 3 is debatable. 4 is fine. 5 is misguided, these should be state programs, not federal, and they should have more restrictions. Some people need help, it happens, we are supposed to be an advanced nation, not savages. 6 is just stupid, you complain about laziness yet you want heroin legal. It is addictive, people will waste their money on it with no choice. Then they will need food stamps. If you want this country to be druggies paradise go right ahead. If anything, they should all be illegal. Alcohol is more dangerous than weed. 7 is okay, as long as, they still control for monopoly like health care services. 8 that sounds great, as long as you end,all property taxes so we can afford it, and raise the minimum wage, and give us 10 years to start saving for school, and make regulations to control pricing. The point of public school is so we aren't a bunch of sunglasses. If it wasn't for public schools, a lot of us would be uneducated. 9 is understandable. 10 is just wrong. If we let anyone in, then we will have thousands of undocumented criminals. We need to have a sorting system or close our terrestrial borders all together. 11 I don't know what you mean by merit, but sure. 12 I agree, we can all plan and save accordingly. But once again there must be time in advance for notice. 13 Fuck that shit! What are we Israel? We have plenty of willing volunteers for the military all ready. We will need even less once they are all brought home, and if that many people are doing the mindless jobs that keep America going 1, we have to pay them with taxes, and 2 we will have no more jobs for the half of the country you denied school for. plus I refuse to have a government tell me what to do like that. So duck you and your crazy authoritarian, yet laissez fair government.
Besides, you ignored the main problems in this country, which are corrupt politicians and corporations controlling laws and stealing from our stem.
You lost me at number six, everything beyond that is.... well quite frankly it's just silly. Thirteen lost me completely.
You realize #13 goes against the already established abolition of slavery? You thinking we should rethink that one I suppose?
Regarding your platform and "End all well fair", do you have any personal thoughts on the Department of Education?