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Occupy Wall Street Protests
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Post by
Azazel
Go poor people.
Don't mind me, just continue your 5.000 word essays in each post..
Post by
ElhonnaDS
One third of a cake is still better than 75% of a cookie, and if you don't give people a reason to bake the cake, then all you're going to have are cookies.
I love you.
We've gone over this :P
I know. I just felt it bore repeating. Would it be better if I said I wanted to have your
babies
cookies?
EDIT: Probably would be considered advertising, so I'll take it down. But my cookies are available online.
Post by
91278
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
Not in anything less than a pallet-load. How do you feel about 1,000 lbs. of cookies?
Post by
91278
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
It's probably for the best. If I did sell them to you, you'd know who I was. And I feel like fiance would have an issue with me sending contact info to strangers online who say they love me.
Post by
91278
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I pulled this off of Failblog. Anecdotes aren't statistics, I realize, but it does go towards illustrating my point about how many people join causes without really grasping them.
http://failbook.failblog.org/2011/10/18/funny-facebook-fails-ows-youre-doing-it-wrong/
Post by
91278
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
gamerunknown
That's like saying that a welfare recipient shouldn't be allowed to spend their money on luxury goods like alcohol, holidays, ice cream, etc.. Now, I happen to agree with that view - I think that a company should be repaying taxpayer money if it's a loan (note that in the case of a number of the bank bailouts as far as I'm aware, it's an investment in shares, and the government receives the benefit of partial ownership / dividends), and that welfare recipients should be restricted to spend 80+% of it on core necessities or save it. But having said that, I'm not sure you'll agree with me, despite it being the only non-hypocritical conclusion.
I do agree with you. I also think that it'd be reasonable of the government to subsidise working where possible, so those that want to work could do so without costing their employer the full minimum wage. That way they'd have some experience and may seek to become less dependent on the government. But just because I could have been hypocritical doesn't mean the first premise wasn't sound, that'd be a tu quoque fallacy.
Wrong. They go overseas to avoid the regulations, because said regulations give them a profit motivator to avoid tax.
They'd want to avoid any form of taxation, large or small. Companies consistently do whatever they can to externalise costs.
I'm not - I'm criticising the middle-class component of them.
Well, I think I misinterpreted this passage then:
“There are only a few people who can really claim to be in pain, and they're mutually exclusive with the middle class. Occupy Wall Street claims to be the 99%, but I really couldn't care less about those in the 10-99%, despite being one of them. “
The reason I even brought up the fact that some of the people in the bottom 10% could not attend the OWS wall street riots is because I thought the sentiment that the majority of OWS would be in the 10-99% could be true. As for whether they care about the 2b people that have it significantly worse than them? I can't speak for the 99%, but I'm sure that some of them believe in international human solidarity. I see more evidence for that than with many Wall Street traded companies, at any rate.
1) It's 10 years old, and not reflective of the position today (when executive pay is skyrocketing).2) It's a survey, and is prone to bias.
Fair criticisms. If you watch “Wal-Mart, the High Costs of Low Prices” though, you can see that even some of the highest paid executives in the country don't have any motivation to donate to charity. Here's a more recent survey:
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=78856
.
3) The people who give more, as reported by the Guardian, shows that they earned less than 5k, i.e. aren't even on welfare. These aren't representative of the bottom 10%.
If you re-read the paragraph, I'm talking about the 10-99%.
I'm not sure how Church attendance is relevant. Perhaps it's just the case that the top earning 1% in the country are atheists (research shows they donate less of their time and money to charity than the religious). What was the Seneca quote on religion again? I know the burden of proof is on me, but do you have any evidence contravening it? Given I've shown two surveys.
They should not get into them in the first place. What you're suggesting is that thin people should subsidise the cost of fat people's health dilemmas. Or, in fact, that it's okay for the government to assist the banks who are in financial predicament. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Well, unfortunately the banks and the people have become enmeshed in a financial crisis, so “don't do that” isn't an option. It's the same reason shops aren't permitted to sell explosives to people: when an individual makes a disastrous mess of something that can be used for legitimate reasons, the seller is complicit. Your second metaphor is a little mixed: health problems cannot be directly translated to “subsidising”. But should we attempt to salvage it? The bankers are McDonalds, except they're sneakily eating the product on the side (and sometimes storing exercise equipment in a great big hole, so that the cops wouldn't find it to give to the overweight homeless people). They're also betting on who will die of a heart attack and who will go on a diet and take up an exercise problem. The policeman comes by and says that they're allowed to put crack in the food and that they no longer have to check whether a person is obese when asking whether they want to supersize their meal. Eventually some people get so fat that they can't leave their house any more, so they have liver failure. Eventually it turns out that betting on the health of other people wasn't as sound an investment as investing in exercise bikes, so the McDonalds workers succumb to coronary heart disease at about the same time as the people. The policeman decides to carry some heavy equipment with him: the fat help where they can, the very skinny put on a parka and pretend to be incapable of helping out. So he arrives and sees a fat customer dying of liver failure and some fat McDonalds workers dying of heart attacks and decides to bust out the defibrillator, because without McDonalds people would starve. So McDonalds is revived, hale and happy and decides to celebrate by eating a burger paid for by the people carrying the equipment and continues to sell burgers to obese people.
The Just World Theory is precisely that - a theory. Funnily enough, it's the corollary of itself - its existence as a theory symbolises the tendency to want to believe that the world is injust and that everyone is against you.
The latter part of that sentence constitutes an ad hominem. The world is observably unjust, so it is useful to refer to the theory (backed up by significant amounts of research) when encountering people that believe that it isn't so and act based on that assumption. For example, those that believe fraud is justifiable because the victim had to lapse.
That aside, are you trying to say that the world is deterministic and we can't change anything?
To a degree. Conscious choice is an illusion. Our reaction to this discussion is based on our genes and our environment up to this point, including the very last letter that you just read. Check out Daniel Dennett's “Consciousness Explained”.
No, the bank manager just loses their job, can't repay their own home loan and they lose their home too. It does swing both ways, and that's entirely the point of the irony :P
The teller may, but Fred Goodwin doesn't.
Post by
gamerunknown
In a truly competetive market, something like medical insurance should never have happened- the cost of medicine and medical care should have scaled normally with inflation and been limited by the laws of supply and demand. Without insurance, medical practices would have had to keep prices in line with what most people could afford to pay, because they would not have gotten enough daily business to keep their doors open, and because competition would have sent people to more affordable facilities. However, since insurance is covering he majority of the costs, the entire industry took off in a direction that leave us now with a large number of people who cannot afford healthcare, because the pricing is so unreasonable compared to the normal wages of people.
Except when comparing quality of life outcomes and cost, public healthcare wins hands down. Perhaps it's because a private model where competition is based on a per case scenario rather than an overall insurance policy hasn't been tried, but that argument wouldn't hold up for policing (premium policing! We have a strict victim policy! If you were mugged for $100 or less, you're trash!) or firefighting.(discount firefighting! We don't actually have an engine, but we do have some rugs and a bicycle... ).
As offensive as the lifestyle of the top 1% seems to you- that's how offensive your lifestyle would seem to someone who actually has nothing, especially if they knew that you felt like you were victimized.
Difference between a foreigner hating my lifestyle and those of the top 1% is that I don't employ their kid for 10 cents an hour to do my lecture notes or grind for me.
Edit: Neglected to mention, what's your opinion on inheritance?
Post by
ElhonnaDS
@Gamer
I'm not opposed to having medical care regulated or even provided by the government. I think, like road building, firefighting, educating and protecting the peace, it's a necessity to a well-functioning society. Government funds and regulates the other three in that list, and I could see them implementing the 4th. However, the current state of affairs is that all medical supplies are so overpriced, compared to the material and labor costs, that it's going to be hard for the government to pay for even basic care. And the reason it's so jacked up is the insurance system.
Your right that you don't employ them directly, but if you buy products made by companies that do, because it's cheaper, then the money saved and funding your lifestyle is money you saved because their kid did the work for 10 cents an hour.
Plus, most people who throw around figures like "ten cents an hour" do so in a manner that seems to indicate that they think 10 cents is worth the same there as it is here. If 10 dollars an hour here will fund a basic standard of living, and allow you to put food on the table and have a roof over your head, and ten cents (not that I think it actually is 10 cents most of the time, but we'll use your figure) will do the same thing in country X, how is that so much more a crime than a company that pays 2 dollars an hour less in Reno than they do in New York because the cost of living varies between places? People like to list things in absolutes, again, rather than look at them as they relate to the rest of the world. Lets say that, instead of money, people were being paid in new cars. If I give the same quality of car to person A as person B, and they get the same use out of it, does it matter if I paid more for one than the other?
Edit- per inheritance: Once I have earned the money, I have the right to give it away as i choose. I understand the taxation of inheritance as it passes from one person to another, but if you're asking if I think that all possessions should go back into some kind of pool when someone dies, I'd say that's asinine.
Post by
Heckler
I must be more cynical than you, Heckler.
To be honest, I force myself to be less cynical than a logical assessment would warrant. It's just too depressing. The sad truth is... While I do consider myself pretty well informed, and I tend to reserve judgement on any subject until I've done enough research to convince myself I deserve the privilege of rendering judgment.... Even in the topics I know the most about, I know almost nothing compared to what there is to know -- and I really try.
What hope does someone who half-asses it have? And if people can't be expected to give more than half an ass... what's the point of this whole democracy thing?
So instead, I prefer to delude myself slightly, and pretend that someday, people will have a strong desire to learn, and pay attention, and take advantage of the amazing level of political power their birthplace in the timeline of humanity has given them -- and if that motivates me to push the system ever-so-slightly closer to that place through my own effort, then the self-delusion was worth it.
Post by
MyTie
Protest comparison picture.
Post by
gamerunknown
Protest comparison picture.
Not very useful. In terms of flags, patriotism stifles useful discussion. Government handouts I'll skip over. Arrests just indicate that whichever group is against the particular orthodoxy. A bunch of anti-abortion protestors were actually assaulted and arrested by the police, there's a documentary about it if one cares to check up on it.
but if you're asking if I think that all possessions should go back into some kind of pool when someone dies, I'd say that's asinine.
My asking is asinine? Or the idea itself is? Why would it be, by the way? The two envisionings of Utopia I can think of, Plato's and Thomas More's, both have a shared inheritance. Why? Because inherited wealth is one of the ways in which wealth does not track merit - perhaps the main environmental way, if one includes the benefits of having a wealthy family raise one. Should it be abolished, the only differentiation would be based on genetics. I go into this in more detail
here
.
Your right that you don't employ them directly, but if you buy products made by companies that do, because it's cheaper, then the money saved and funding your lifestyle is money you saved because their kid did the work for 10 cents an hour.
Wherever possible, I don't. I think that's probably a primary focus of the OWS protest too, disinvestment from companies that perpetrate such things (in solidarity with those worse off in society). Chomsky argues that it is more useful to actually try to engage in discourse with the people that instigate such things, as boycotting Gap wont
really help the kid making the clothes
. But since the practice is utilised in the macro by the civilised nations, I think it's worth pursuing on a small scale.
Plus, most people who throw around figures like "ten cents an hour" do so in a manner that seems to indicate that they think 10 cents is worth the same there as it is here. If 10 dollars an hour here will fund a basic standard of living, and allow you to put food on the table and have a roof over your head, and ten cents (not that I think it actually is 10 cents most of the time, but we'll use your figure) will do the same thing in country X, how is that so much more a crime than a company that pays 2 dollars an hour less in Reno than they do in New York because the cost of living varies between places?
10 cents means exactly the same thing to the person providing employment, whether they're employing someone from Reno or Honduras. While the purchasing power may be different, it's certainly true that multinationals trading in America have provided sub-poverty level wages (
here's
more info). They also get away with things that wouldn't fly in America. Coca-Cola's actions in Columbia against those joining unions, or BPs in Nigeria against journalists. They also have no desire to allow the worker the sweat off their own back (a non-negligible percentage of the value of the product). I really do mean "kids", by the way. The US outlawed child labour decades ago, but permits US companies to employ children.
Post by
MyTie
patriotism stifles useful discussion
explain
Post by
gamerunknown
Oh, I posted a reply last night but I got a sending failed and when I hit backspace it ate my message.
I was just going to post about outgroup discrimination and how it's more useful to judge a person by their actions and their ideas in a dialogue than by their professed admiration for a certain state. This is especially the case when a person criticises an aspect of the country they're living in. They could have a profound admiration for the Constitution and love the quality of life there and their neighbours, but completely disagree with the government's stance on energy or foreign policy. It's too easy to decry them as not being patriotic if they refuse to pledge an oath to the flag.
Post by
gnomerdon
1 Marine vs. 30 Cops
Post by
MyTie
Oh, I posted a reply last night but I got a sending failed and when I hit backspace it ate my message.
I was just going to post about outgroup discrimination and how it's more useful to judge a person by their actions and their ideas in a dialogue than by their professed admiration for a certain state. This is especially the case when a person criticises an aspect of the country they're living in. They could have a profound admiration for the Constitution and love the quality of life there and their neighbours, but completely disagree with the government's stance on energy or foreign policy. It's too easy to decry them as not being patriotic if they refuse to pledge an oath to the flag.
Which part is inconsistent with energy or foreign policy?
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.
Where in this pledge does it say that the country is perfect, or unquestionable? I feel that anyone who really has the best interest in the country shouldn't have a problem pledging allegiance to it, because really all it is doing is declaring oneself to be an ally. I also don't feel that allying oneself with a country makes that person by default discriminatory against other countries, or judgemental. I can understand leaving off "under God" if you don't believe in God, but the flag, patriotism, and allegiance themselves do not stifle useful discussion. Jingoism might, but that's not what we are talking about. Don't you see how I would draw into question anyone who wants to change US policy or economic structure, and at the same time, refuses to pronounce themselves an ally of the US?
Post by
Heckler
1 Marine vs. 30 Cops
Surprising Like/Dislike ratio on that video, considering the number of views. Thanks for posting this.
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