Forum Post: Where will the occupy movement lead to?
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 5, 2011, 5:21 p.m. EST by VladimirMayakovsky
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Will there be a revolution? Should I start to think about moving to the UK?
There will be a return to representative government and an end to crony capitalism. The government will no longer pick winners and losers in the free market. Corporations and banks wil not have lobbiests writing legislation for them.
OK, but nothing that you say above will end income inequality. Now what?
Incomes will always be unequal. No one is saying that everyone should get paid the exact same. But a representative government will have common sense economic policies that create more prosperity for all.
Like what? And, frankly, I don't think the OWS guys will be happy as long as there is income inequality. Income equality is good when it comes to Chinese and Americans, but bad when it comes to the rich and poor in the American society.
Anyway, I would like to know of some common sense economic policies that would create more prosperity for everyone, and has been shown to work in the past. Educate me please. A few things that have been shown to fail in the past are communism, tariffs and protectionism. Any new thoughts?
Look at the US between the end of WWII and the 60s. Incomes rose for all income brackets. Why? We regulated the banks so in order to make a profit you had to actually produce a product, instead of shuffling money around and hoping that more comes out the other end. Banking used to be a boring business, now its a crap shoot. It used to be that you could take risks with YOUR money, not other peoples. When we allowed commercial banks to invest in "complex financial instruments" instead of you know, banking we set ourselves up for this whole mess.
Instead of allowing the people who made bad investments to lose money, we lent them tax dollars to cover their losses. They "invested" that money in treasury bonds. So the government lent them the money at an ultra low rate and then borrowed it back at a higher rate.
Can that be described as anything other than a scam to rip off the taxpayers?
That was a period of reconstruction for Europe and USA was the only game in town who could assist in that. Once the reconstruction was complete the boom stopped. But you know that and I know that you know that.
Any other examples? Unless you think we should drop the big one of Europe and start rebuilding again.
That was part of the reason, but keeping banks from crashing the economy was another part. Financial regulations make sense.
Sure, I am all for them. But income inequality has not been the result of lack of financial regulations. In a global economy, few win and most lose. That's the nature of the beast.
Income inequality is the result of a political system that favors the people at the very top. Deregulation happened because of the rigged game. This same game causes fraudulent contractors, anti-worker laws, the degredation of the educational system, anti-worker laws, etc. Regular working people pay into the system and get nothing out. The corporations pay next to nothing and get all the benefits.
There will always be winners and losers. Some businesses fail. Factories close because the product they make has become obsolete. A guy loses his job and has to accept a lower paying one. This is fact of life. No one is arguing against it. We just want a government that doesn't tilt the table against us and in favor of a few wealthy, well connected people.
So tell me what this system would look like going forward.
The toilet, courtesy of Los Zetas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwdv9JO6vso