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Author Topic: Occupy Wall Street  (Read 37803 times)

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Brentai

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #20 on: October 20, 2011, 04:58:36 PM »

What people don't understand is that people in the top 30% are still lower middle-class, living-standards wise.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #21 on: October 20, 2011, 08:54:20 PM »

Also, 30% is a subset of 99%.
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Classic

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #22 on: October 20, 2011, 09:04:01 PM »

Classic takes the fun out of something volume 5543.

The way the terms are being used here makes that untrue by definition. One refers to the top 30% and the other refers to the bottom 99%.
This is obvious enough that people without the formal (i.e. High school) training to describe the mistake can identify the semantic error and use it as an excuse to dismiss all of your comments as stupid.


EDIT:
I am not sure why or how but I've wound up in a sour mood and I apologize.
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Brentai

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #23 on: October 20, 2011, 09:24:35 PM »

Also, 30% is a subset of 99%.

Or that 99% doesn't even mean million-dollars-per-year level.  Not even 99.5%.

If the "one percent" are a little ticked off by the treatment they're getting, it's because there's only slightly less disparity between the 99% and the 99.9%.  And when you pare it down to a tenth of a hundredth of the population, and look at who they are, you realize that it's a long list of people who don't do fucking shit for the economy.
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Doom

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #24 on: October 20, 2011, 10:19:34 PM »

I suppose it would be more compelling if you could produce examples of people starving to death in the United States.

Eating in the United States is really easy, no matter how poor you get. Now dying because of your horrifically bad diet and stress leading to health issues you can't afford to treat, that's proudly American.
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Büge

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #25 on: October 21, 2011, 06:30:36 AM »

Eating in the United States is really easy, no matter how poor you get. Now dying because of your horrifically bad diet and stress leading to health issues you can't afford to treat, that's proudly American.

A chicken in every pot and a weird growth on every back.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #26 on: October 21, 2011, 09:16:19 AM »

Or that 99% doesn't even mean million-dollars-per-year level.  Not even 99.5%.

Right.  There's a difference between income and wealth.  And when we're talking about millionaires, I think that's what most people mean: not people who own a million dollars' worth of real estate (because that's, like, three or four houses), but people who MAKE a million dollars a year.

Not to say the guy who owns three or four houses is in bad shape.  But that's comfortable upper-middle-class territory.

If the "one percent" are a little ticked off by the treatment they're getting, it's because there's only slightly less disparity between the 99% and the 99.9%.  And when you pare it down to a tenth of a hundredth of the population, and look at who they are, you realize that it's a long list of people who don't do fucking shit for the economy.

I wouldn't mind seeing a more specific breakdown.  Wikipedia's are all pretty out-of-date.
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Brentai

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #27 on: October 21, 2011, 09:33:43 AM »

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/where-do-you-fall-on-the-income-curve/

Pretty sobering overall view of the income curve wall, and a link to IRS's numbers for it.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #28 on: October 21, 2011, 10:13:54 AM »

Yuck.

Yeah, on the one hand, I can relate to people at the 99th percentile taking issue at being lumped in with the people at the 99.9th.

On the other, if you're making $500K a year and can't afford to pay a couple more percent in taxes, YOU'RE the one who needs a lesson in fiscal responsibility.

(Opposing the specific things the government does with our tax money is, of course, a different matter.  Trouble is, it's the top earners who determine THAT policy, too.)
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Brentai

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #29 on: October 21, 2011, 12:01:52 PM »

Well yeah, it would be pretty fucking dandy if everyone in America suddenly learned how to open up Excel and balance their fucking budget.  Overall though, it's not the 500-1000k people who are creating the problem here (despite their habit of buying houses they can't actually afford (cough)).

Like it or not, our economic structure is fully structured to work on the Reagan model and, believe it or not, that model does work when the "Job Creators" do their fucking part.  I would really like to see somebody call them out on the fact that, you know what, it's okay to be rich, even grotesquely rich, but when you sit and spin on it you're breaking down the system that allows you to stay that way.

(That's just the most politically expedient solution though, since in the final analysis the entire system is terrible for the EXACT SPECIFIC REASON that communism is terrible, e.g. just a slight amount of corruption at the top level causes everyone else to suffer).
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NexAdruin

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #30 on: October 21, 2011, 02:01:43 PM »

On the other, if you're making $500K a year and can't afford to pay a couple more percent in taxes, YOU'RE the one who needs a lesson in fiscal responsibility.

I don't know a whole lot about how income taxes work, and maybe I'm being fed bullshit by rich people trying to stay rich, but there is someone I know who makes about $400k as far as the government is concerned, but only sees about $150k of it. The rest of it is held back by his company (which he is part-owner of) as some kind of massive safety net for the company itself. Although he's definitely doing just fine financially, higher taxes apparently upset the equilibrium pretty quickly. Either he has to start drawing from the safety net, which means a smaller safety net for the company which means it will be less likely to expand and all the things you've heard before from "small business owners," or he has to start paying a lot more of that $150k to the government, which gives him less money to spend and fuel the economy (given his wealth he might just retire or something I don't know).

I'm all for rich people paying more in taxes - everybody's gotta give what they can or society just doesn't fucking work. But it seems to me like a lot of people around that income level would possibly be in, or claim to be in, or believe to be in this same situation where actual income and income reported are tipped in a way that is not favorable to them, and the equilibrium they've found now would fall apart under proposed higher tax plans.

Maybe the guy is just full of shit and I'm stupid for listening to him.
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Brentai

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #31 on: October 21, 2011, 02:34:25 PM »

It sounds like he's whining because he doesn't understand the concept of liquid assets.  Either way, he's not doing a whole lot to counter Thad's "upper middle-class people are shitty at economics" claim.
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Classic

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #32 on: October 21, 2011, 02:35:22 PM »

Nex, the description you have of that man's assets is unintelligible to me.
Also anyone who complains that taxes mean there is less money to fuel the economy is an idiot.

Your taxes are someone else's wages or dividends. (That someone might be in China, but hey, one step at a time.)
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Mongrel

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #33 on: October 21, 2011, 09:51:26 PM »

The Occupy protests are kind of weird up here. The one in Toronto has been a hilarious failure so far - the worst kind of "Let's try this leaderless anarchy stuff the kids all talk about!" yuks.

But at the same time, they've had public statements of support/encouragement from the head of the Bank of Canada, the (conservative) Finance Minister, the CEO of the country's second-largest bank (TD), and the last conservative Prime Minister before Harper (of course, he was only a soft conservative and is now pretty much a joke since he turned out to be totally corrupt).
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Büge

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #34 on: October 22, 2011, 05:35:36 AM »

I like how the city told them "You need to leave the park so we can clean it... but you can't bring back any camping equipment." And they said "Nah, don't worry. We'll clean the park for you!"
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sei

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #35 on: October 22, 2011, 11:01:18 AM »

Finally, there's the point (unpleasant to contemplate for some) that income inequality can't increase beyond the level it has already reached today without massive and unpleasant social consequences, some of which may be non-obvious side-effects of the drive towards a security state strong enough to protect the elite. By some estimates, 20-25% of the labour employed in the USA today is guard labour, work devoted to preventing the poor from expropriating the rich.
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Pacobird

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #36 on: October 22, 2011, 11:31:01 AM »

Nex, your friend is investing his money a company he owns.  No one is forcing him to do this, and he keeps possession of the money insofar as he could sell his stake and make the investment back.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #37 on: October 24, 2011, 07:38:16 AM »

Finally, there's the point (unpleasant to contemplate for some) that income inequality can't increase beyond the level it has already reached today without massive and unpleasant social consequences, some of which may be non-obvious side-effects of the drive towards a security state strong enough to protect the elite. By some estimates, 20-25% of the labour employed in the USA today is guard labour, work devoted to preventing the poor from expropriating the rich.

Just got around to reading the whole thing; it's highly recommended.

It's filtered through Stross's latest major topic for discussion -- the viability of space colonization -- but it goes from the launchpad of "Is there anyone alive RIGHT NOW who could afford to be involved in that endeavor?" to a very thorough and well-thought-out analysis of the difference between the 99% and the 1% (though he notes, as we have here, that it's more like 99.5%/0.5%, or 99.9%/0.1% as Brent had it).

For the top bracket, food, clothing, shelter, and transportation are effectively free, and education is trivial; however, they have concerns that the lower brackets don't (like the passage Sei quotes above) and, ultimately, Steve Jobs died not due to any limits on his own resources, but due to limits on the capabilities of modern medicine.  (And, okay, if recent headlines are to be believed, he may have made some poor decisions along the way, but that's quibbling; Charlie's overall point is correct: sooner or later, that cancer was going to kill him no matter what he did.)



EDIT TO ADD: Another great thing about Charlie's blog is the comments section; it's at least worth skimming here.  It bounces from topics like how much better off the poor of today are than 100 years ago (not that it's awesome to be poor, but, as noted earlier in this thread, you're not likely to die of starvation in the US -- or polio, for that matter), to how the workplace would look if nobody actually had to be there, to what true global economic collapse would look like.
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Joxam

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #38 on: October 24, 2011, 08:09:19 AM »

I don't know if you guys watch Bill Maher but the new rules final rule for Friday was absolutely fucking poignant.

Real Time with Bill Maher (10-21-11) - New Rules

Real Time with Bill Maher (10-21-11) - Conservatives Live in the Past [Occupy Wall Street]

The first video leads into the second exactly like the show did, I don't know why the guy broke it up into two videos... 8D
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Mongrel

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #39 on: October 24, 2011, 05:24:03 PM »

I did see a good piece the other day. At first it seemed like a right-wing story, because the argument started out that raising taxes on the wealthy is only going to increase taxes on the poor, but it actually turned out to be making a decent point. The argument went like this:

1) Companies compete intensely to secure top-flight CEOs, Hedge-Fund Managers and the like.
2) As a result of (1), people who have become very wealthy through employment have large amounts of leverage, which they use to obtain that high pay.
3) Competition for these people is not likely to abate.
4) If faced with an increase in taxes, the wealthy will likely demand an increase in pay to retain the same after-tax level of income. This has in fact happened already in England in response to a special 50% bonus surtax. The banks responded by doubling the size of the bonus. Other examples were found elsewhere.
5) That increased cost will be paid for by the employees and customers of the company.
6) Prices will rise and lesser employee wages will take a hit, which in fact exacerbates the exact situation you're trying to solve.

The real argument was not actually against luxury taxes - the author did agree with higher taxes for the wealthy - but that such taxes could not be imposed without analyzing and addressing the root causes that give the rich such leverage in the first place.
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