The above sign carried by one of those crazy OccupyWallStreet hippies with only vague complaints explains why we're seeing friction in our society. The 1% has done ridiculously well over the past thirty years. The top 20% has done quite well. The rest of America... not so much.
Oh those crazy kids and their notion that the gains of economic progress should go to everybody, not just to the 1%'ers... I mean, look at that kid above. Clearly has no demands. That button she's wearing saying "Tax the 1%"? Not a demand, nosirree. The fact that the 1% has an effective tax rate of around 17% while my effective tax rate is around 39% when you account for SSA, sales taxes, property taxes, etc.... gosh, why should I think the 1% aren't paying their fair share? Only silly people would think that, right? Right?!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Disclaimer: I am one of the 20% who have done fairly well over the past 30 years, so I guess that disqualifies me from being a crazy hippy. Unless you're a right-wing moron. Oh wait, that was redundant redundancy in terms, wasn't it? :)
Everyone has some hippie in them even if they don't see it.
ReplyDeleteI get a raise in my SS money next year, it'll amount to about 30 bucks a month. Pfff.
Which?...crazy hippy or right-wing moron? :)
ReplyDeleteI know what my answer is.
BBC,
30 bucks may not be much to you, but thank Progressives that you've even got SS. And to some people, too many people, 30 bucks is a week's worth of food.
Oh, I'll take the 30 bucks of course but I live so cheap that if it wasn't coming I'd still do okay.
ReplyDeleteWho guessed that when they plotted the overthrow of the plutocrats, they'd come up with a time-series plot? (Footnoted, even!)
ReplyDeleteFriction, yea I like that some.
ReplyDeleteWe had some friction in Berkeley back in the mid 60's too.
That was enough of a spark to light a few fires.
How come there is no Fire (and tear Gas)in this era?
Has demostrating actually become acceptable now?
It sure wasn't acceptable then.
I wonder when the hammer will come down on this demostration.
It's a revolt and that is intolerable to the powers that be
same as it always is.
w3ski
w3ski, protests turned into kabuki theater somewhere in the 1970's, where it was fashionable to come out and protest to save the whales, save the Wales, or just have a hippie good time. The Masters of the Universe were happy to have the unseemly peasants merely waving signs around and chanting "hey hey ho ho Ronnie's ray gun's gotta go" rather than doing something effective, so they effectively endorsed the act of protest and codified its parameters so that nobody would get inconvenienced except other peasants, certainly not the Masters of the Universe. The draconian response to protests that would actually inconvenience the MoU's, such as the RNC NYC convention back in '04 and G8/G20 Toronto in '10, pretty much indicates that any protests that would actually inconvenience the MoU's are put down viciously and with extreme prejudice.
ReplyDeleteI think the deal with the OWS protests is that they currently haven't inconvenienced the MoU's personally, so the MoU's are putting up with them as sort of a letting-off-steam exercise. As long as people are merely marching in the streets rather than attacking the Hamptons with pitchforks, torches, and Molotov cocktails to the multi-million-dollar mansions, the MoU's merely laugh from atop their Manhattan skyscrapers and commute home by helicopter in the evening, if they bother going in to the office at all (which is increasingly unnecessary in today's highly wired world). Some of the MoU's minions get inconvenienced, but (shrug) they're minions. Disposable. Who cares about the convenience of minions?
The problem is that as the daily protests continue, it *is* inconveniencing at least one MoU: Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But without other MoU's on his side, videos going onto YouTube in real time, and large media presence, he's reduced to trying to incite a riot by ordering his white shirts to wade into the crowds and cold-cock and club random people. That's not working. The next step will be trying to insert provocateurs into crowds to incite riots. The thing is, Bloomy's white shirts are predominantly white, male, middle aged, and Italian or Irish. They don't fit in with the crowds at all. He's got some younger hipper blue shirts who would fit in, but they're all Civil Service and union, so he can't order them to do something blatantly illegal, they'd report it to their union and file a grievance and all hell would break loose.
That said, if this keeps on keeping on he's going to do *something*. My guess is that the protesters are going to get to see Mr. Truncheon and Mr. Dungeon up close and personal before this is through...