The "Occupy" Movement

[Nemo888]

Bankers told politicians how they wanted to be  regulated. To say that it was the other way around is an interesting fable. In Canada they tried the same pressure, but our politicians didn't listen. You do notice we skipped the savings and loan crisis and sub-prime. In the US it's essentially blackmail. If candidate X gets 1 million in campaign funds and candidate Y get 5 million guess who wins. How did some irrelevant Chicago community organizer become President? A 600 million dollar war chest.

 

[aesop081]

Well then.......

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/zuccotti_hell_kitchen_i5biNyYYhpa8MSYIL9xSDL#.Tqk-ZNvnXXk.facebook

Occupy Wall Street kitchen staff protesting fixing food for freeloaders

The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday -- because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.

For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.

They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.


To show they mean business, the kitchen staff refused to serve any food for two hours yesterday in order to meet with organizers to air their grievances, sources said.

As the kitchen workers met with the “General Assembly’’ last night, about 300 demonstrators stormed from the park to Reade Street and Broadway, where they violently clashed with cops.

Officers made at least 10 arrests when rowdy demonstrators refused to get out of the street and stop blocking traffic. A dozen cops on scooters tried to force them back to the sidewalk.
There were no reported injuries.
The demonstrators said they were angry over the violence in Oakland.
After making their way to Union Square, many of the protesters returned to Zuccotti.

The Assembly officially approved the three-day menu crackdown announced earlier in the day -- insisting everybody would be fed something during that period.
Some protesters threatened that the high-end meals could be cut off completely if the vagrants and criminals don’t disperse.
Unhappiness with their unwelcome guests was apparent throughout the day.

“We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out” to curb the influx of derelicts, said Rafael Moreno, a kitchen volunteer.

A security volunteer added that the cooks felt “overworked and underappreciated.”
Many of those being fed “are professional homeless people. They know what they’re doing,” said the guard at the food-storage area.

Today, a limited menu of sandwiches, chips and some hot food will be doled out -- so legitimate protesters will have a day to make arrangements for more upscale weekend meals.

Protesters got their first taste of the revolt within the revolt yesterday when the kitchen staff served only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips after their staff meeting.

Organizers took other steps to police the squatters, who they said were lured in from other parks with the promise of free meals.

A team of 10 security volunteers moved in to the trouble-prone southwest section of Zuccotti Park in a show of force to confront them.
“We’re not going to let some members of this community destroy the whole movement,” a volunteer said.
Some arguments broke out as the security team searched tents -- but no violence erupted.

Overall security at the park had deteriorated to the point where many frightened female protesters had abandoned the increasingly out-of-control occupation, security- team members said.

Rumors swirled that one homeless man had pulled a knife in a dispute the night before -- and that there had been yet another case of groping.
But protesters and a cop on duty told The Post that most of the crime goes unreported, because of a bizarre “stop snitching” rule.
“What’s happening in there is staying in there,” said the cop.

Additional reporting by Josh Saul, Erin Calabrese and Julia Marsh

 

[Scott]

That's awesome!

 

[cupper]

Ken Jennings is the 99%

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/10/26/141738383/former-jeopardy-champ-ken-jennings-i-am-the-99-percent

 

[larry Strong]

The last guy's paper said his 4 person family makes 80K a year....and he needs his parents help with his bills!!!!!!!

 

[cupper]

The last guy's paper said his 4 person family makes 80K a year....and he needs his parents help with his bills!!!!!!!

Not surprising depending on where he lives.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Not surprising depending on where he lives.

Time to move then.

 

[FlyingDutchman]

Time to move then.

Might not get the same income then, catch 22.

 

[Nemo888]

Might not get the same income then, catch 22.

Remember when 80k was a lot of money? With a mortgage in a neighborhood  that you can raise kids in 80k is a few pay checks away from disaster. Maybe they should just rent till the kids are older.

 

[aesop081]

Might not get the same income then, catch 22.

So the solution is to stay in place and do nothing ?

:

 

[Edward Campbell]

The business of migrating for economic benefit is well established. Without even considering mass international migrations or those lost in the mists of time, consider:

1. Canada in the 1860s - French Canadians move West;

2. America in the 1920s - Blacks moving North;

3. America in the 1930s - the Okies migrating to California, Oregon and Washington;

4. America in the 1940s - Blacks moving North (again); and

5. China in the 1990s - Chinese from the interior moving to the East coast (quite possible the largest migration in human history).

Why should it be less popular in the 21st century?

 

[aesop081]

ERC, you forgot "Newfoundlanders move to Alberta oil fields" in there somewhere  ;D

 

[PuckChaser]

So the solution is to stay in place and do nothing ?

:

and protest about how the man is dragging you down.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Ah, so THIS is what they want, is it (in Oakland, anyway)?

Excuse me for being pumped up upon hearing that #occupyoakland voted for a general strike on November 2nd. There are also rumors that the Occupy movement as a whole is talking about a nationwide general strike next May.

A general strike is exactly what the people need to be doing to wrest control of our government and our future back from the banksters and corporatists. It's one thing to make noise in the street, but mere noise can be ignored. If we want to exercise real power. Real political power. Real people power... THEN WE MUST FUCK WITH THEIR MONEY.

That means it's time to strike. Shut down the highways. Shut down the ports. Shut down the rail lines. Shut down the airports. Grind the economy to a halt. And make the Gordon Gekkos bleed green until they give us unconditional surrender.

You want to win this war? You've got to strike. Build support for a strike.

But are they REALLY ready?

With people in the Occupy Oakland group calling for a general strike next week, Duke labor historian Robert Korstad said his study of social movements leads him to believe a strike would not succeed now.

"It's a tremendous way of showing solidarity among groups of people, or across different groups of people," Korstad said during a live "Office Hours" webcast interview Thursday, October 27. However, "historically, general strikes take quite a bit of organizing if they are going to be successful." ....

 

[Edward Campbell]

Some thoughtful advice to the "Occupy" movement from a former head of the Congressional Budget Office, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136611/douglas-holtz-eakin/what-occupy-wall-street-gets-wrong-about-inequality?page=show

What Occupy Wall Street Gets Wrong About Inequality
A Better Way to Think About the Bailout, Jobs, and Taxes

Douglas Holtz-Eakin

October 24, 2011

Summary:  The protestors of the Occupy Wall Street complain about the unfairness of the bailout, unemployment, and taxes. But to make the U.S. economy more fair, Washington needs to use the capitalist system, not to destroy it.

DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN is President of the American Action Forum and is a Former Director of the Congressional Budget Office.

The protestors taking part in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations around the country, despite their disparate backgrounds, seem to have settled on a recurring theme: fairness. It is not fair that Wall Street employees got a bailout and still have their jobs while so many workers in the United States have neither. It is not fair that the rich are not taxed at higher rates. It is not fair that some people are far richer than others.

Complaints about the bailout and jobs are ironic, because it did not have to be this way. Indeed, it is a tribute to the bad execution, not the bad intent, of policy that the Occupy Wall Street movement exists in the first place.

In 2008, when it was first conceived, the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP, now simply referred to as "the bailout") was supposed to save jobs across the economy -- not by bailing out banks but by solving the problem of toxic assets, the mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the financial crisis. This did not mean handing taxpayer dollars to banks. At the time, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), then the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, called the proposal "stunning and unprecedented in scope and lack of detail." He went on, "It would allow the Secretary of the Treasury to intervene in our economy by purchasing at least $700 billion of toxic assets. It would allow the Secretary to hold on to those assets for years and to pay millions of dollars to hand-picked firms to manage those assets." Notice that there is no mention of a bailout: the focus was not banks but toxic assets anywhere in the system.

Congress held hearings to consider the TARP proposal, during which Henry Paulson, then Secretary of the Treasury, testified that "the $700 billion program we have proposed is not a spending program. It is an asset purchase program, and the assets which are bought and held will ultimately be resold, with the proceeds coming back to the government." Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve, concurred, saying, "The Federal Reserve supports the Treasury's proposal to buy illiquid assets from financial institutions."

It is a tribute to the bad execution, not the bad intent, of policy that the Occupy Wall Street movement exists in the first place.
At the time, I was the director for domestic and economic policy for John McCain's presidential campaign; I remember the words, intentions, testimony, legislative language, press releases, and promises that Bush administration officials made as to what the Treasury Department needed to counter the shock to the economy. In short, they said that the Treasury Department needed to buy toxic assets to stop the free-fall, not to direct infusions of taxpayer money into the banks that were teetering on collapse.

But this, unfortunately, is exactly what happened. Shortly after TARP was passed into law, Paulson abandoned purchases and elected to direct equity injections into banks. The bailout began. And once the Obama administration took office and Timothy Geithner became Treasury Secretary, Washington announced plans to address toxic assets but then abandoned them. In short, TARP was hijacked by Paulson and Geithner and turned into a bailout for bankers, with no discipline for either the banks or the bankers. This unfairness of bailouts was not the original intention.

Similarly, unemployment -- another central grievance of Occupy Wall Street -- did not have to be so dismal. The 2009 stimulus bill was poorly crafted, with few "shovel-ready" infrastructure jobs, too much waste, and a bevy of ineffective pet programs. In the aftermath of the stimulus, the Obama administration took its eye off job creation and instead prioritized its social agenda (health care reform), green objectives (Waxman-Markey and EPA regulations), labor priorities (National Labor Relations Board agenda), and other legislative and regulatory initiatives that were damaging to economic growth. And as the coup de grâce the administration placed the U.S. government on a dangerous, explosive debt trajectory that invites a return to the worst days of the financial crisis.

The Obama administration should have pushed for reforms to existing tax policy that would have created incentives for businesses and entrepreneurs to base their operations in the United States and to spend at a faster rate on innovation, workers, repairs, and new plants and equipment.

The place to start is the corporate income tax, which harms the United States' international competitiveness in two important ways. First, the current 35 percent rate is far too high: when combined with state-level taxes, U.S. corporations face the highest tax rates among developed countries. The rate should be reduced to 25 percent or lower. Second, the United States remains the only developed country to tax corporations based on their worldwide earnings. Other states follow a territorial approach in which, for example, a German corporation pays taxes to Germany only on its earnings in Germany, to the United States only on its earnings there, and so on. If the United States were to adopt the territorial approach, it would place U.S. firms on a level playing field with their competitors.

Proponents of the worldwide approach used by the United States argue that because it does not let U.S. firms enjoy lower taxes when they invest abroad, it removes a possible incentive to send jobs overseas. Imagine two Ohio firms, they say: one invests $100 million in Ohio, the other $100 million in Brazil. The worldwide approach treats the profits on these two investments equally -- both are taxed at U.S. rates -- giving the company that invests in Brazil no advantage over its competitor that invests in the United States.

But this line of reasoning is misguided and out of date. For starters, because firms all over the world pay lower taxes than the two Ohio-based companies, the likeliest outcome is that both firms would have trouble competing with global rivals. Moreover, when U.S. multinational firms invest in and expand employment abroad, they tend also to invest in and expand employment in the United States. In the end, healthy and competitive firms grow and expand, while uncompetitive firms do not. Washington's goal should be to make sure that U.S. companies do not end up overtaxed, uncompetitive, and eventually out of business. And finally, because the United States is the only holdout still using a worldwide approach, it is less attractive as a headquarters for large global firms. As the United States loses these headquarters, it will also lose the employment, research, and manufacturing that are typically located nearby.

Related to their grievances about both jobs and taxes -- and indeed, to the very notion of fairness as they see it -- the Occupy Wall Street protesters would like to deal with the fallout of the economic collapse by having the rich pay higher taxes. After all, the incomes of the country's wealthiest have continued to rise when much of the labor force is idle. Moreover, they say, the wealthy get much of their current income in the form of capital gains, which are more lightly taxed.

But these arguments ignore the fact that capital gains are already taxed once, when the income is originally earned. And beyond that, the arguments of Occupy Wall Street are especially misleading because they focus only on annual tax payments and ignore the larger picture of federal finances.

The largest tax that most Americans pay each year is the payroll tax, which is dedicated to funding Social Security and Medicare. The vast majority of them will get much more out of these programs than they will ever pay in. In effect, these individuals are subsidized by the payroll and income taxes of the remainder of U.S. taxpayers.

More important, they get their federal government for free. Everything the country's original framers envisioned for the federal government -- national security, infrastructure, basic research, and so on -- is paid for largely by income taxes. Nearly one half of Americans pay no income tax, and the top five percent pay well over 50 percent of the income taxes.

Put another way, when a tiny fraction of Americans is paying for many of the federal services that every American enjoys, why is it fair to make them pay even more? Stepping back further, the major injustice is not who pays what tax rate but that, unless the United States changes course, future generations will inherit broken social safety-net programs, enormous debt, and a crippled economy. Focusing the fairness debate on the income taxes of a handful of Americans simply distracts from the greater injustices in federal fiscal policy.

Finally, some in the Occupy Wall Street movement and its sympathizers question the fundamental fairness of the capitalist system. And indeed, regardless of whether one focuses on the well-being of the least affluent (caring about the social safety net) or on the gap between them and the rich (caring about inequality per se) there is legitimate concern for the outlook for the bottom of the U.S. income distribution.

The solution, however, is to rely more on capitalism. The seminal economic event of the early twenty-first century is not the financial crisis and the recession but the entry to the global labor market of billions of workers in China, India, and elsewhere. The simplest economics suggest that this added competition will lower the relative market earnings of unskilled laborers and raise the return to higher-skilled workers and capital investment.

This is bad news for poor wage-earners and an advantage to those with human and financial capital. Progressives have reacted by calling for pure redistribution, empowering unionized labor, or attempting to close U.S. borders to the flows of goods, capital, and labor. But global market forces will overwhelm such ill-conceived government attempts to reverse economic fundamentals.

A better strategy would be to harness those very market forces by building human and financial capital. Fundamental reforms to the K-12 education system that would emphasize parental choice and reward teacher performance would be a good place to start; among other pluses, Republicans and Democrats now agree on the basic merits of such changes.

But Washington will also need a more thoroughgoing focus on building human capital at every stage of a person's career.

From a budgetary perspective, the United States should not only rein in the over-promises of existing entitlements but also reverse the underlying strategy of focusing more on a person's needs at the end of life than at the beginning. Instead of just providing entitlements for retirement income, health care, and elder assistance, the U.S. government should prioritize entitlements for pre-K schooling, primary education, nutrition, and preventive care.

Similarly, the U.S. government should move away from making unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other low-income programs conditional on low cash flows. Instead, it should integrate those programs with individual accounts that can be managed to accumulate wealth. Such a structure would provide strong incentives for reliance on work and on a timely exit from support.

Occupy Wall Street may be right about one thing: fairness is and should be at the heart of debate over financial policy and economic well-being. But the solution to these questions of fairness -- and to the United States' economic woes -- is to use the capitalist system, not to destroy it.

Something for the occupiers to chew on, but if the ones reported upon in the media are representative of the movement as a whole then I am confident that they are too self absorbed, too poorly informed, too pampered and too lazy to think about what Douglas Holtz-Eakin has to say.

 

[ballz]

ERC, you forgot "Newfoundlanders move to Alberta oil fields" in there somewhere  ;D

1990s - End of time

 

[cupper]

So the solution is to stay in place and do nothing ?

:

May not have a choice. With so many people underwater on their mortgages, they cannot afford to sell at a loss because they'd still owe a huge chunk to whoever holds the sliced and diced mortgage. Yet they are barely able to afford to stay either. And until the new changes in regulations take effect, they can't even refinance, in spite of being current.

I know from personal experience that job mobility has come to a screeching halt. My company has more than enough work to keep our staff of engineers working 60 to 70 hour weeks and still have a backlog of work. We've been trying to hire engineers and CAD Technicians for the past two years with no luck. We get lots of resumes from people looking to come to the US to get a work visa or green card. But to get someone with relevant experience already in the US, is near impossible. Either they want way more than the market rate to relocate or they lack the amount of experience we are looking for.

We have a couple of engineers working for us as part of an agreement with another firm out west where they split  time between our company and the other. We've made offers to them to come to DC and work full time for us, and they can't afford to take the loss on their homes. Both bought at the peak when interest rates were low, and both had standard 30 year fixed mortgages. But when the bubble burst both lost 40% to 50% in value, because their area was one of the hardest hit.

 

[cupper]

2. America in the 1920s - Blacks moving North;

This was mainly due to the racial climate in the South, particularly with the prevalence of lynchings, Jim Crow Laws and lack of ability for Blacks to obtain an education or find a better life in the agriculturally dominant South. Yes, the industrialized North had a better economic oppourtunity, the main driving force was still the social and cultural conditions of race.

Why should it be less popular in the 21st century?

Today, people go where the jobs go. and unfortunately, the majority of manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. The textile industry that drove the Southern economy for many years has all but died due to the influx of cheaper goods from Asia. The Rust belt is in it's final death throes as those jobs have migrated to Mexico, or China.

Any migration taking place within the US is mainly companies moving from one state to another to get more favorable tax breaks, less regulation or right to work laws. This is why Rick Perry claims to have created a Texas miracle, through stealing jobs from other regions.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This was mainly due to the racial climate in the South, particularly with the prevalence of lynchings, Jim Crow Laws and lack of ability for Blacks to obtain an education or find a better life in the agriculturally dominant South. Yes, the industrialized North had a better economic oppourtunity, the main driving force was still the social and cultural conditions of race.

I don't agree and I also don't think there is any empirical evidence to support your claim. There is no doubt that social conditions in the South were poor for blacks, but people do not, typically, move for social reasons. Economics explains migration.

Today, people go where the jobs go. and unfortunately, the majority of manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. The textile industry that drove the Southern economy for many years has all but died due to the influx of cheaper goods from Asia. The Rust belt is in it's final death throes as those jobs have migrated to Mexico, or China.

As long as transportation remains cheap wages will determine factory location.

Any migration taking place within the US is mainly companies moving from one state to another to get more favorable tax breaks, less regulation or right to work laws. This is why Rick Perry claims to have created a Texas miracle, through stealing jobs from other regions.

There was/is more than just taxes in the mix that caused the rapid expansion of the "sun belt" after the 1950s.

 

[cupper]

I don't agree and I also don't think there is any empirical evidence to support your claim.

Perhaps I may have put more emphasis on racial issues than economic, but you do have to agree that racial factors were significant. All of the background I have read on the subject credits both economic and racial factors as the motivation for the northerly migration from 1910 to 1930.

But one thing you don't take into account was that the majority of the Black population still remained in the South, regardless of better oppourtunities in the North. There was however a migration of Blacks from rural to urban communities. This was due to economic oppourtunities.

The migration from 1945 to 1970's was certainly economic driven. However the reverse migration from North to South that has occurred since is cultural, as Blacks are returning to family roots.

Economics explains migration.

Then how do you explain refugees from war torn areas, severe drought and famine or ethnic discrimination?

As long as transportation remains cheap wages will determine factory location.

And how many Americans migrated to Mexico and China to keep their old higher wage jobs? Cheap transportation and cheap wages can be counteracted with tarriffs on imported goods, and disincentives on companies that choose to move their operations overseas in favour of cheap labour at the loss of jobs at home. (Not that the WTO makes this an easy prospect, and consequences of lost overseas trade and higher costs for goods only available from foreign markets)

There was/is more than just taxes in the mix that caused the rapid expansion of the "sun belt" after the 1950s.

Like I said, favourable tax incentives, less regulation, right to work laws all go together to lure companies from one state to another.