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Is the OWS against Capitalism?

Is the OWS Movement against Capitalism?

  • Total voters
    69
They are not against capitalism. Their main issue is coporate greed and the income disparity. They want capitalist reforms.
 
Camlon said:
I am talking about right now. Very few on the left want to reverse all of Bush tax cuts, which will be needed to bring finances in order.
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Not true, and we need to do more that merely reverse the bush* tax cuts before we get our fiscal house in order



The numbers I showed you were revenue as a percentage of GDP. That is not affected by more people, or more efficient economy. Revenue has increased. My point is, if there are no political will for change, then revenue tends to be stable.

Spending however, can go out of control. People don't want spending to increase, but it increases anyway. There is a difference.
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Tha'ts an truism of no significance. The same is true of spending. With no political will for changes in spending, it stays the same.

Plenty of peopel DO want spending to increase.


All my numbers are as a percentage of GDP, hence population increase, and efficiency are irrelevant. Spending has increased as a perdentage of GDP, but few are willing to pay higher taxes. Bringing the burden to the rich will not work.
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SO what? That does nothing to support your claim that it's harder to cut spending than it is to raise revenue. And it certainly does not prove anything about raising tax rates on the biggest earners



Some people on the right may want that. I am on the right, and I do not want that. I want income inequality to decrease in the US, because as a start it is hurtful to the conservative agenda, and it is not fair.
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You just claimed that raising the share of taxes paid by the top earners will not work. Now you're arguing that you want to do that :roll:


Actually,this is wrong. Your numbers stop at 2007, there was a massive decrease relative to the rest for the top 1% in 2008-2009, so it goes down to 15%.
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Because the bottom 99% lost a lot of income in the recession while the top 1% continued to earn.

Also, the wealthy pay a much larger portion of the burden.
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I have no idea what you think that chart proves

There are heaps of evidence of this. You can take a look at how Mexicans vote, and if they are voting Republican, they are mainly voting due to their values, and not their economic view. Also, remember Mexicans are more right wing than the rest of South America.

If you take a look at other countries. In Norway, my homeland. The immigrants (mostly asylum seekers) vote overwhelmingly to the left. Same with other countries in Europe. But they come from countries that have barely no welfare state. They didn't choose to have low government spending, they can't afford having high government spending.
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We're talking about the US, and immigrants tend to be fiscally (and morally) conservative.



The reason they live there, is because their family is there and being rich in the third world is quite nice. You can have servants, nice house and if you moved to a rich country, then you wouldn't have those luxuries. They can easily move to neighboring countries.

And if this isn't enough for you. Why are there none white people in Zimbabwe, if they are not mobile. Rich people in poor countries are mobile, hence you can't tax them that much.
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Thanks for proving my point, which is that their immigration patterns are more dependent on the host countries immigration policies than where the immigrants choose to live




Pointless statement, because I didn't talk about a correlation like you did. I just pointed out that some of the worst countries in the world have high governmental spending. I used to illustrate my point that if a poor country tries hard to have high governmental spending, it will probably not be a very nice country. Poor countries can't afford having high governmental spending.
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Pointless statement because ALL of the developed nations have a high level of govt spending when compared to the undeveloped ones. Sure, some undeveloped nations have a lot of govt spending, but when you look at ALL of the nations, developed and undeveloped, it's clear that development requires govt spending.


Yes they are. Singapore don't even have a minimum wage, while Taiwan and Hong Kong have a minimum wage of 3 and 4 USD respectively.
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You're cherry-picking. Wage laws are not the only form of Big Govt.

All of them have a governmental spending of 15%. America has a spending of 40%. And taxes are much lower as well. The labour laws are very lax in Singapore and Hong Kong. The reason Singapore haves public housing (sounds worse than it is) is because they have to. Well, you can do like Hong Kong, and Taiwan, but then you end up with expensive bad housing. And some cities in America has rent control, that is way worse. It is burdensome, and decreases housing investment instead of increasing housing investment. So housing prices go up in the long term.
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More cherry picking. $ of govt spending is not the only sign of Big Govt.


Another point is that Hong Kong and Singapore, are ranked as 1 and 2 respectively in both Heritage and Fraser economic freedom ranking. US is ranked 9 in Heritage and 10 in Fraser. Taiwan is further down, because they love regulations, but not governmental spending.
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Those are nonsense indicators from biased institutions. The fact remains that both have Big Govt policies that would make both those institutions scream if enacted in theUS.

Regulations are a form of Big Govt.

Pretty much. You are wrong that high governmental spending is required to be a developed nation. The reason developing nations are lower, is because they can't afford higher taxes.
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Once again, you are conflating "high spending' with "Big Govt"
 
Camlon said:
There is no contridiction. If you actually understood my point, then you would have realized that I used those countries to illustrate that not all poor countries have low governmental spending.

And that if a poor country tries to have high revenue, without high enough productivity, it will probably end miserably.
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No one said that ALL poor countries have low govt spending
 
RDS said:
They are not against capitalism. Their main issue is coporate greed and the income disparity. They want capitalist reforms.
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How do you know?
 
DaveFagan said:
Why do you think they call it Occupy Wall Street instead of Occupy Main Street?
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Ever heard of propaganda? That 99% slogan is some of the worst bull**** propaganda I've ever seen, and when you consider that I have photos of North Korean and Soviet propaganda posters, that is huge
 
RDS said:
Read about their demands since the movement began in September.
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Yes...I have. They are all over the place. They don't have any consensus on WHAT they want.

DaveFagan said:
Why do you think they call it Occupy Wall Street instead of Occupy Main Street?
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They could call it "Occupy Anything". They STILL won't know what they want.


But, hey...that's what y'all get for listening to useful idiots. Idiocy.
 
Mycroft said:
Yes...I have. They are all over the place. They don't have any consensus on WHAT they want.



They could call it "Occupy Anything". They STILL won't know what they want.


But, hey...that's what y'all get for listening to useful idiots. Idiocy.
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Sounds a lot like the teabaggers
 
Thunder said:
I don't think you understand the meaning of the term "useful idiot".
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I certainly do...and the term fits like a glove.
 
sangha said:
Sounds a lot like the teabaggers
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shrug...

I have no love for the Tea Party, but they DID succeed in getting great political support for their agenda.

OWS hasn't.
 
RDS said:
They are not against capitalism. Their main issue is coporate greed and the income disparity. They want capitalist reforms.
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I'm impressed, you know more what's going on with the mass protest in this country than many do who are living here now.
 
Mycroft said:
How do you know?
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Because that is what they have told us for 3 months. Have you not seen their official Mission Statement?
 
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Catawba said:
Because that is what they have told us for 3 months. Have you not seen their official Mission Statement?
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sigh...

Here we go again...

Which "official Mission Statement" are you referring to? Which particular group are you referring to?
 
Mycroft said:
sigh...

Here we go again...

Which "official Mission Statement" are you referring to? Which particular group are you referring to?
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I am talking about the "official Mission Statement", the only position that has been approved by the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly, of which all the other Occupy protests around the country have joined.
 
Catawba said:
I am talking about the "official Mission Statement", the only position that has been approved by the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly, of which all the other Occupy protests around the country have joined.
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And what makes you think they are the final word? What makes you consider them more important or relevant than any of the other OWS organizations?

What makes you think they are more deserving to be listened to than...say...these guys: About Us | OccupyWallSt.org
 
Mycroft said:
And what makes you think they are the final word? What makes you consider them more important or relevant than any of the other OWS organizations?

What makes you think they are more deserving to be listened to than...say...these guys: About Us | OccupyWallSt.org
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Because it was the OWS Mission Statement that all the other Occupy groups around the country signed onto.

What you linked to is a web site on behalf of OWS, however, the OWS General Assembly is where all official statements originate for the OWS movement.
 
I don't know. As was said before, they're a diverse group of people, as usually comes with such kind of movements.

But what's "capitalism" anyway? Does capitalism always come with corporate greed, powerful rent seekers (economic actors buying political influence) hijacking the political process, even legally so?

A friend of mine is a die-hard libertarian, as pro-capitalist as could be. Yet he too despises the system as it is, powerful corporations buying political power and politicians being not much more than puppets on their strings. Corporations using their connections to get subsidies, tax exemptions and public contracts -- that's extremely anti-capitalist in his eyes. It's certainly not free-market.

I have not looked too deeply into the OWS movement, but I understand those things are their main concern. Do some of them believe these grievances are inevitable consequences of capitalism in general? I am sure not few do. But not necessarily so. Maybe some are just fed up with the system and its flaws as it is, not with capitalism in general.

If you ask me, I am not sure where I am standing on this. I'm way too conservative to have sympathies for violent, radical change aka revolution, because history tells us that most of the time, people throw out the baby with the bathwater and no matter how good the intentions, the consequences are horrid. That said, I believe we do need a radical change, but an evolutionary one, out of the current system.

I just hope our current system has this capacity for reform. Because if it doesn't, we're up for shaky times. You can hold nice speeches all day, that such an attitude is morally or ethically wrong, or simply stupid, but that won't change anything: Once there are years of recession, rising unemployment and a drastically widening gap between few rich and many poor people, people *will* riot. If this massive widening of inequality is not stopped, you'll have uprisings faster than you can say "class warfare", regardless if you think that's justified or smart.

So if for no other reasons, I'd recommend taking these protests seriously, for pragmatic reasons. If things continue as they did so far, and it looks like they will, OWS is just the beginning.
 
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Catawba said:
Because it was the OWS Mission Statement that all the other Occupy groups around the country signed onto.

What you linked to is a web site on behalf of OWS, however, the OWS General Assembly is where all official statements originate for the OWS movement.
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Do you really think all the other Occupy groups are signing on to the NYCGA? I haven't seen this.

The web site I linked to seem to have their own agenda...they state in the link I provided that "We're not a subcommittee of the NYCGA nor affiliated with Adbusters, anonymous or any other organization.".

Heck, the following site...not affiliated with NYCGA seems to have as much relevance: Occupy Wall Street Demands - coupmedia.org And even THEY don't speak for anyone.


Look, these guys all pride themselves on being leaderless. That means you can't point to any one group and call them the official word. The utterances of any one particular group applies to that group only.
 
German guy said:
I don't know. As was said before, they're a diverse group of people, as usually comes with such kind of movements.

But what's "capitalism" anyway? Does capitalism always come with corporate greed, powerful rent seekers (economic actors buying political influence) hijacking the political process, even legally so?

A friend of mine is a die-hard libertarian, as pro-capitalist as could be. Yet he too despises the system as it is, powerful corporations buying political power and politicians being not much more than puppets on their strings. Corporations using their connections to get subsidies, tax exemptions and public contracts -- that's extremely anti-capitalist in his eyes. It's certainly not free-market.

I have not looked too deeply into the OWS movement, but I understand those things are their main concern. Do some of them believe these grievances are inevitable consequences of capitalism in general? I am sure not few do. But not necessarily so. Maybe some are just fed up with the system and its flaws as it is, not with capitalism in general.

If you ask me, I am not sure where I am standing on this. I'm way too conservative to have sympathies for violent, radical change aka revolution, because history tells us that most of the time, people throw out the baby with the bathwater and no matter how good the intentions, the consequences are horrid. That said, I believe we do need a radical change, but an evolutionary one, out of the current system.

I just hope our current system has this capacity for reform. Because if it doesn't, we're up for shaky times. You can hold nice speeches all day, that such an attitude is morally or ethically wrong, or simply stupid, but that won't change anything: Once there are years of recession, rising unemployment and a drastically widening gap between few rich and many poor people, people *will* riot. If this massively widening of inequality is not stopped, you'll have uprisings faster than you can say "class warfare", regardless if you think that's justified or smart.

So if for no other reasons, I'd recommend taking these protests seriously, for pragmatic reasons. If things continue as they did so far, and it looks like they will, OWS is just the beginning.
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My only suggestion to you would be to ignore the rantings, ravings and useless actions of the various Occupy groups and look to those who influence, direct and control them. They have their own agenda and it is most assuredly an anti-capitalist agenda.
 
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