The Demands of Occupy Wall Street

[WinePusher]

People at occupy wall street have released unofficial lists of demands here and there. There are apparently many out there and they don't seem to correspond to eachtother, but here's one unofficial list of demands:

-Demand 1: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending Freetrade by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
-Demand 2: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
-Demand 3: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
-Demand 4: Free college education.
-Demand 5: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
-Demand 6: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
-Demand 7: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of Americas nuclear power plants.
-Demand 8: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
-Demand 9: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
-Demand 10: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
-Demand 11: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the Books. World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the Books. And I dont mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
-Demand 12: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
-Demand 13: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

http://toddkinsey.com/blog/2011/10/08/o ... f-demands/

1) What do you make of these demands? Are they reasonable or unreasonable?
2) In a list of demands seperate from this list, OWS protestors have expressed disapproval towards the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commision. Do you agree or disagree with the ruling?
3) Although absent from the list of demands, OWS have expressed disdainment towards what they percieve to be a growing gap between the top 1% of society and the remaining 99% of society. What is the truth regarding wealth and income inequality?

[WinePusher]

This is a false dichotomy. Your argument is (correct me if Im wrong) that if political speech by corporations is restricted, then we could no longer tax and prosecute corporations. Theres no reason why we (the people) shouldnt be able to do all of the above (limit political contributions, tax, and hold corporations legally liable.)

Actually that's not why. I'm in favor of the Citizens United ruling because of the issue of free political speech, as I already explained in detail. My argument here is to show the absurdity in the uninformed opinions of the wall street protestors because by stripping corporations of the right to be considered people, they strip away the right for government to tax them and for people to sue them.

[chris_brown207]

Do you know what income immobility is? It's when income remains stagnate regardlesss of how much work you put into the labor market. If your income changes income immobility is not possible.

First, drop the attitude. You do not to further your position with unneeded acrimony, and you certainly do not change hearts and minds. If your desire was to brow beat people without the hopes of ever converting - then become a street preacher.

Second, income mobility is a rhetoric term. Theoretically, if your income changes a few dollars every year - then you are not experiencing income mobility. However, if your economic status does not change - i.e. if you are poor, and remain poor no matter what steps are taken - then that would be argument for income mobility.

Before users who don't understand basic economic concepts come running in with the intent to post nonsense, family and household income refers to the same thing.

Another unnecessary post like this - whether you feel it is justified or not, and I will report you.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 38:

...
Only a few times in my working life did my income reach the top 48%, but I had the same opportunities as Bill Gates.

It's good to hear you was born into a wealthy family.

Some others of us weren't.

?????? My father owned a small farm, so we managed to survive the Great Depression without starving, but never did my father's income rise above what is now called the "poverty level."
...

Gate's family was wealthy - his father a "prominent" lawyer and his mother a member of the First Interstate BancSystem and United Way board of directors. That you described your condition as the "same opportunity" is a fault of yours, not mine. The vast majority of folks born into the 1% will remain in that 1%.

Please tell us all about your terrible suffering at your abject poverty level.

I no longer qualify as being in "abject poverty" (your term), but when I did... Diving in trash cans behind restaraunts to eat. Getting clothes at Good Will - after working there to pay for them. Hitting up strangers for a few coins to get a hot cup of coffee in the morning. Picking up discarded cigarettes to fuel my habit. Wrangling 50 cents to buy a paper from the machine, grabbing 'em all and reselling 'em. I could go on and on.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Taken from what I wrote in an earlier post that you ignored:

The problem is you don't measure income according to individual people, you measure income according to households which is fallacious. Household income will rise if the number of people per household rises, and household income will decline if the number of people per household declines. Because of this, household income is not an accurate measurement of income.

Before users who don't understand basic economic concepts come running in with the intent to post nonsense, family and household income refers to the same thing.

So if I am understanding you correctly, you dismiss the statistics because they do not take the number of people per household into account? If so, I think you're mistaken, because the referenced study clearly does take household size into account. I'm not really grasping how you think this makes the numbers inaccurate.

Do you have any other better studies to compare with?

[nygreenguy]

Second, income mobility is a rhetoric term. Theoretically, if your income changes a few dollars every year - then you are not experiencing income mobility. However, if your economic status does not change - i.e. if you are poor, and remain poor no matter what steps are taken - then that would be argument for income mobility.

Income mobility is described (generally) in economics as movement between economic classes so there are discrete levels of income one must attain or fall to in order to say they have "moved". So if WP claims that just changing ones income is mobility, that is only a half truth.

[nygreenguy]

The "hired workers" were paid the market value for their work,

Since the market is not a true free market, we cant really say what the "market value" of ones work is. For the exact same position, for the exact same employee, during the exact same economic conditions, two different employers can pay two totally different amounts. So, if we wish to talk about "market value for work", how can we make a statement when it has zero predictive value?

It is OK to ask them to pay based on actual usage, but anything more is discrimination and robbery. The half of the population who pay no taxes on average use much more of public services than the rich do. Let them pay for their own share of usage!

Are you so sure of that? where is your evidence?

[nursebenjamin]

This is a false dichotomy. Your argument is (correct me if Im wrong) that if political speech by corporations is restricted, then we could no longer tax and prosecute corporations. Theres no reason why we (the people) shouldnt be able to do all of the above (limit political contributions, tax, and hold corporations legally liable.)

Actually that's not why. I'm in favor of the Citizens United ruling because of the issue of free political speech, as I already explained in detail. My argument here is to show the absurdity in the uninformed opinions of the wall street protestors because by stripping corporations of the right to be considered people, they strip away the right for government to tax them and for people to sue them.

And I've explained why limiting the political influence of corporations does not limit our right to tax or sue them. "Legal personality" is a definition created by our legal system, which means that the definition is subject to change.

Generally, legal persons do not have all the same rights as real people do, such as having human rights (including the right to free speech.) A legal person can not marry, vote, or hold public office. Would you be OK with a corporation running for and holding a Senate Seat? Can a corporation apply for citizenship? Why or why not? If corporations are people, than they should be able to do everything that real people do, right?

If anyone have examples of how other countries deal with the issue of corporations influencing government policy, then Im be happy to hear them. Its my understanding that only in the United States, have corporations been given an unrestricted right of free speech, and this as result of judicial activism.

The bottom line is that most people feel that corporations have too much influence over government policy and that this is a serious threat to our Republican form of government. Our government is said to exist of the people, for the people, and by the people, with people referring to real people, not some legal personality. Youve provided no rebuttal (other than to say nuh-uh) to the fact that money plays an important role in who wins or who loses an election and political influence comes to those who make large monetary contributions. Ive given examples of money and political influence: the number of lobbyists running around Washington, why we are unable to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations even though the vast majority of Americans support such move, and the recent debate over health insurance reform.*

*The Health Care Acts of 2010 mandate that Americans buy private insurance. Guess who contributes large sums of money to the campaigns of key Democrats? For some reason, single-payer and a public option were never seriously discussed.

[JohnPaul]

This is a false dichotomy. Your argument is (correct me if Im wrong) that if political speech by corporations is restricted, then we could no longer tax and prosecute corporations. Theres no reason why we (the people) shouldnt be able to do all of the above (limit political contributions, tax, and hold corporations legally liable.)

Actually that's not why. I'm in favor of the Citizens United ruling because of the issue of free political speech, as I already explained in detail. My argument here is to show the absurdity in the uninformed opinions of the wall street protestors because by stripping corporations of the right to be considered people, they strip away the right for government to tax them and for people to sue them.

Liberals may squeal like stuck pigs over the recent court decision, but it did not create anything new, but merely reaffirmed the centuries-old legal principle of the "personhood" of corporations. This principle is absolutely essential to the operation of any business larger than a mom-and-pop store, and built America's economy into a world power.

nursebenjamin claims that "the people" should be able to do anything they want. I believe this is called anarchy or the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Rule of Law is a long-established principle necessary for the survival of any democracy.

Of course, we know from history that governments sometimes do anything they want. The government could simply issue an edict declaring that corporations are not only artificial persons, they are artificial JEWISH persons, and therefore their rights may not only be restricted, but eliminated completely and their property looted.

John

[WinePusher]

So if I am understanding you correctly, you dismiss the statistics because they do not take the number of people per household into account? If so, I think you're mistaken, because the referenced study clearly does take household size into account. I'm not really grasping how you think this makes the numbers inaccurate.

Do you have any other better studies to compare with?

Even if they did factor in the number of people per household, it still would be an inaccurate measure because households are not

[JohnPaul]

From Post 38:

...
Only a few times in my working life did my income reach the top 48%, but I had the same opportunities as Bill Gates.

It's good to hear you was born into a wealthy family.

Some others of us weren't.

?????? My father owned a small farm, so we managed to survive the Great Depression without starving, but never did my father's income rise above what is now called the "poverty level."
...

Gate's family was wealthy - his father a "prominent" lawyer and his mother a member of the First Interstate BancSystem and United Way board of directors. That you described your condition as the "same opportunity" is a fault of yours, not mine. The vast majority of folks born into the 1% will remain in that 1%.

Please tell us all about your terrible suffering at your abject poverty level.

I no longer qualify as being in "abject poverty" (your term), but when I did... Diving in trash cans behind restaraunts to eat. Getting clothes at Good Will - after working there to pay for them. Hitting up strangers for a few coins to get a hot cup of coffee in the morning. Picking up discarded cigarettes to fuel my habit. Wrangling 50 cents to buy a paper from the machine, grabbing 'em all and reselling 'em. I could go on and on.

Gates' family may have been wealthy in comparison to my own father, but what Bill Gates did, he did on his own. I don't believe his father's position as a "prominent lawyer" helped Bill Gates to design and build computers in his garage and develop software for them. I played with electronics in my garage, but the fact that it did not make me a billionaire is my own fault, not my father's.

Congratulations on your rise out of "abject" poverty. I assume you did it in spite of the opposition of the evil 1% who were desperately trying to hold you down, and you are now being very careful not to allow your success to move you into the 1%.

John