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Economies are being dominated again by inherited wealth — increasing the power of a small segment of elite, super-wealthy people and returning many counties to oligarchical governments.
Moderator cut: Against standards of Great Debates Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Cuban, and name your favorite tech billionaire, did not inherit a dime.
And Bill Gates plans to give 99%+ of his wealth away, leaving his children with a nice hunk of change, but far from making them super-wealthy.
Because the Tea Partiers haven't faced a concerted effort by the police and FBI to shut down their movement. Cops didn't assault old Tea Party women in their 80s, but they did out here in Seattle during the Occupy movement.
The Tea Party isn't a threat to the powers that be. Occupy was. It called out all the corporate malfeasance that's destroying our economy and our nation, and the corporate fat cats didn't like that. They own the politicians, so all they had to do was pull a few strings to make the whole thing go away.
If that were true, then who didn't the 99% support and walk with them? Lots of people here say hey supported the idea but didn't know what specifics to support or what specific things to do. Yes, cops were involved but the majority of Americans stayed silent and went on with their lives.
Ah, the magical world of the boostrapper. Works great if you have no one showing favoritism in hiring practices, or if no jobs are being offshored, or if so many people weren't actively fighting against a living wage, or if companies weren't ending pensions and other benefits their employees worked hard to earn. Unfortunately, all those things do exist, the rich-poor gap is wider than it's ever been, and you have people with master's degrees pouring coffee at Starbucks because the jobs just aren't there anymore.
That's what Occupy was fighting against. Economic and social injustice.
This still sounds like an expression of personal frustration and evaluation of reality. If a masters degree holder is working at Starbucks, then maybe he or she needs to look at their degree's value, acquire skills, network, and many other things. The thing is these things always existed, and people always took an effort. This generation refuses to work on here things. Students in china and India have far less, yet they score higher on tests and knowledge exams.
All of that is perfectly true, and may well have undone OWS in due time. But let's remember what actually happened. OWS was violently dispersed by government forces. They were not allowed to simply implode due to their own weaknesses.
Dissent is more tolerated in other parts of the world, but don't try it here! I once read that, in France, the gov't looks upon protests, despite the inconveniences, and damage to the economy, as healthy for the people, to vent their anger, even if they gain nothing! There's so much to protest in this country, why isn't there a dozen different protests going on simultaneously? The corruption in our medical establishments, there's one that calls for a massive protest alone!
If you want to see how protests can happen, with quick change, look south to Latin America! Eat your hearts out, OWS'ers!
Not too long ago, they raised the bus fares in Brazil, which brought the country down to its knees with protests! And did they accomplish anything, you bet!
I was traveling in Bolivia during protests there. Yes, inconvenienced, at times, when I couldn't travel to the next city because the roads were blockaded with boulders in the roads, but the government listened and they won!
My last trip to Argentina, the farmers were protesting, blocking roads all over the country, increasingly barren shelves in the grocery stores, no beef available (isn't that why you go to Argentina to have a juicy steak?), and the government listened! Some Argentinians apologized to me for the inconveniences, but I told them: I'm enjoy this! In our country, these protesters would be in prison or shot! Americans just won't tolerate any inconveniences to their daily lives!
One of the biggest downfalls of OWS, IMO, was lack of imagination, and not resorting to secretive mysterious/random acts of irritation, and injections of comedy/laughter!
I interpret OWS' essential goal as preventing the stock market and other larger businesses from "gaming the system" by insider/manipulative trading tactics, outsourcing jobs, offshoring profits and non-performance-based executive compensation.
The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements had common ground on at least one issue: allowing "too big to fail" banks and financial institutions to actually fail. It was just that the TP emphasized their opposition to government bailouts while OWS focused on the idea CEO's and other top executives being civilly and criminally liable for their indiscretions.
As explained by Jukesgrrl among others, the OWS was and is much more than stereotypical trust-fund babies and slackers leaving a mess behind. On the other hand, while the TP protestors may be more efficient with picking up after themselves, some elements not related to the core goal of reducing taxes and spending can be rather "dirty".
In any event, it's unfortunate that the more "professional" side of OWS could not have joined forces with TP to focus on making top banking/business execs more accountable when they fail. Then again, there's still time.
Not to mention the TEA Party wants an actual change that reduces this oligarchy behavior.
No they feel they are Taxed Enough Already and want to remove the IRS (guess what, that WILL remove "gubmint" jobs as well as tax accountants), balancing the budget (again remove more "gubmint" jobs) and lowered tax rates for "all" (there are two different ideals such as the Fair Tax (a lie) and the Flat Tax) (again this will require the country to lower the budget and again remove more "gubmint" jobs.) Nothing in there about the oligarchy issues. If anything, their policies FURTHER an oligarchy.
Moderator cut: Against standards of Great Debates Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Cuban, and name your favorite tech billionaire, did not inherit a dime.
And Bill Gates plans to give 99%+ of his wealth away, leaving his children with a nice hunk of change, but far from making them super-wealthy.
Moderator cut: rude
Regarding the last sentence, yeah, I don't think you quite understand the math, but when you give away 99%, or even "99+"%, of 76 billion dollars...his kids may in fact be super-wealthy. If he keeps .01% of his wealth, his kids will be wealthy, and in my opinion, "super-wealthy". All this because he happened to be in the right place at the right time (read "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell for more information about Gates' luck...the 10,000 hour rule chapter specifically). Moderator cut: off topic
We all know the famous slogan of the occupy movement. The argument is that the movement represents the 99%. There was a lot of buzz in the media. Finally the 99% had their own "tea party movement".
So why the OWS began after the tea party and ended earlier? Why didn't the American public pour more support to OWS? Where did the 99% go?
Mainstream media blackout for one, mainstream media also made fun of it when they could and made those people out to be crazies. OWS got infiltrated, some got injured pretty badly due to extreme use of force by police.
OWS failed due to a lack of clear message and leadership. And it failed because most Americans are ignorant to just how much power the 1% have in this country. Example, we're just as vulnerable to another collapse like that in 08' because the banks have successfully lobbied congress to prevent any meaningful regulations. The American tax-payers bailed out corrupt bankers, who only got a slap on the wrist. When the Supreme Court rules that corporations are people too, it obvious that the government is in bed with the 1%.
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