Ron de Weijze wrote:The extreme left of Michael Moore and Slavoj Žižek plus no doubt Noam Chomsky and if he could he would arise out of his grave Jacques Derrida, want to, repeat, WANT TO, no NEED TO own this movement. Anything to make it not look like a Tea Party gathering. What happens between people within the group must under NO circumstances be what happens within people between groups. Before that happens, brains must have been washed by the ultra-left. It is okay to deconstruct the fabric of social reality into the nothingness these left elites supposedly live and have lived themselves, but it is not okay not to let people constructively recollect their own backgrounds, pride, joy and happiness (let alone what the Sixties took away from us, our belief in God, Truth, Self and Reality - peace, man!)
Oh please Ron, Moore and Žižek can hardly be called the 'extreme left'! And this idea that the 60's took away "our belief in God, Truth, Self and Reality" is hardly the case as all those things were being challenged as fact from authority long before, not least by our reactions to the world wars.
What solutions would you offer to the obvious anger and frustration that the public are feeling towards finance?
bobevenson wrote:Neither communism nor socialism allows free-market capitalism with full regard to human rights. By the way, they flog people in Singapore, don't they?
They do and they've flogged a couple of Yanks who've transgressed there. They inherited corporeal and capital punishment from the British Empire when it established the place and when we left they decided to keep both. By the way, you still execute people don't you?
Singapore is a mixed socialist and capitalist society and they allowed and worked with free-market capitalism so well that between 1959 and 1999 they grew per capita GDP from US$400 to US$22,000. Its why China took such note of them.
Which human rights are you talking about now? As there are democratic nations that don't fully uphold the UN's Declaration of Human Rights.
Ron de Weijze wrote:The extreme left of Michael Moore and Slavoj Žižek plus no doubt Noam Chomsky and if he could he would arise out of his grave Jacques Derrida, want to, repeat, WANT TO, no NEED TO own this movement. Anything to make it not look like a Tea Party gathering. What happens between people within the group must under NO circumstances be what happens within people between groups. Before that happens, brains must have been washed by the ultra-left. It is okay to deconstruct the fabric of social reality into the nothingness these left elites supposedly live and have lived themselves, but it is not okay not to let people constructively recollect their own backgrounds, pride, joy and happiness (let alone what the Sixties took away from us, our belief in God, Truth, Self and Reality - peace, man!)
Oh please Ron, Moore and Žižek can hardly be called the 'extreme left'! And this idea that the 60's took away "our belief in God, Truth, Self and Reality" is hardly the case as all those things were being challenged as fact from authority long before, not least by our reactions to the world wars.
What solutions would you offer to the obvious anger and frustration that the public are feeling towards finance?
Tell me who are leading the Left more than these guys do, and I will gladly study them. Things challenged as fact from authority long before is true, only to show that they were given independently, especially during the Reformation, which was a war too, more influential to us Europeans than either world war. Having heard the latest debate among aspiring presidents, I would say the feelings towards finance should be addressed to those responsible for the collapse of the system, be it housing market mortgage lending or distributing toxic assets or both. Žižek owes Barney Frank this next step in his career.
Last edited by Ron de Weijze on Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:59 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Bill, I think the following article by economist Walter Williams is appropriate to your "Occupying Wall Street" agenda:
Jewish World Review Oct 19, 2011 Pitting Us Against Each Other
By Walter Williams
President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have led increasingly successful efforts to pit Americans against one another through the politics of hate and envy. Attacking CEO salaries, the president — last year during his Midwest tour — said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
Let's look at CEO salaries, but before doing so, let's look at other salary disparities between those at the bottom and those at the top. According to Forbes' Celebrity 100 list for 2010, Oprah Winfrey earned $290 million. Even if her makeup person or cameraman earned $100,000, she earned thousands of times more than that. Is that fair? Among other celebrities earning hundreds or thousands of times more than the people who work with them are Tyler Perry ($130 million), Jerry Bruckheimer ($113 million), Lady Gaga ($90 million) and Howard Stern ($76 million). According to Forbes, the top 10 celebrities, excluding athletes, earned an average salary of a little more than $100 million in 2010.
According to The Wall Street Journal Survey of CEO Compensation (November 2010), Gregory Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, earned $87 million, Oracle's Lawrence Ellison ($68 million) and rounding out the top 10 CEOs was McKesson's John Hammergren, earning $24 million. It turns out that the top 10 CEOs have an average salary of $43 million, which pales in comparison with America's top 10 celebrities, who earn an average salary of $100 million.
When you recognize that celebrities earn salaries that are some multiples of CEO salaries, you have to ask: Why is it that rich CEOs are demonized and not celebrities? A clue might be found if you asked: Who's doing the demonizing? It turns out that the demonizing is led by politicians and leftists with the help of the news media, and like sheep, the public often goes along. Why demonize CEOs? My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell explained it in his brand-new book, "The Thomas Sowell Reader." One of his readings, titled "Ivan and Boris — and Us," starts off with a fable of two poor Russian peasants. Ivan finds a magic lamp and rubs it, and the jinni grants him one wish. As it turns out, Boris has a goat, but Ivan doesn't. Ivan's wish is for Boris' goat to die. That vision reflects the feelings of too many Americans. If all CEOs worked for nothing, it would mean absolutely little or nothing to the average American's bottom line.
For politicians, it's another story: Demonize people whose power you want to usurp. That's the typical way totalitarians gain power. They give the masses someone to hate. In 18th-century France, it was Maximilien Robespierre's promoting hatred of the aristocracy that was the key to his acquiring more dictatorial power than the aristocracy had ever had. In the 20th century, the communists gained power by promoting public hatred of the czars and capitalists. In Germany, Adolf Hitler gained power by promoting hatred of Jews and Bolsheviks. In each case, the power gained led to greater misery and bloodshed than anything the old regime could have done.
Let me be clear: I'm not equating America's liberals with Robespierre, Josef Stalin and Hitler. I am saying that promoting jealousy, fear and hate is an effective strategy for politicians and their liberal followers to control and micromanage businesses. It's not about the amount of money people earn. If it were, politicians and leftists would be promoting jealousy, fear and hate toward multimillionaire Hollywood and celebrities and sports stars, such as LeBron James ($48 million), Tiger Woods ($75 million) and Peyton Manning ($38 million). But there is no way that politicians could take over the roles of Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and LeBron James. That means celebrities can make any amount of money they want and it matters not one iota politically.
The Occupy Wall Street crowd shouldn't focus its anger at wealthy CEOs. A far more appropriate target would be the U.S. Congress.
I'm not sure the Occupy Wall Street movement is about left or right.
It encompasses both and all. The 99% refers to us. You and me, and anyone who reads this.
Occupy Wall Street is not pitting us against each other. The movement is making a statement about corruption, greed and excess. This is a uniting movement with themes that all good people can use to rally together.
bobevenson wrote:Bill, I think the following article by economist Walter Williams is appropriate to your "Occupying Wall Street" agenda:
Jewish World Review Oct 19, 2011 Pitting Us Against Each Other
By Walter Williams
...
Lets be fair, politicians go with the public sentiment if it appears strong. No-one was slagging the CEO's of all companies, mainly the Banks and Wall Street institutions. And its not that they get paid so much, as $24,000,000 is not chicken feed by anyones standards, its that they still appear to be in their jobs when they have failed disastrously for the rest of us. The celebs mentioned would be out on their ear if they did as badly and then expected the viewer to pay for it.
I agree they should be looking at their elected representatives and in particular the funding and lobby system that the CEO's of the finance institutions use to keep things their way. But there is nothing 'totalitarian' about demonstrating against those demonstratively failed in their roles, if not culpably colluded, and still wish the public to bail them out whilst retaining their salaries. The rest of us would have been fired tout-suite.
I used to watch my local protests here. On one freezing November day five or six regulars were protesting THE MILITARIZATION OF SPACE. They became upset when I started to laugh after reading their placards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjSzyt8R7og
Lets be fair, politicians go with the public sentiment if it appears strong. No-one was slagging the CEO's of all companies, mainly the Banks and Wall Street institutions. And its not that they get paid so much, as $24,000,000 is not chicken feed by anyones standards, its that they still appear to be in their jobs when they have failed disastrously for the rest of us. The celebs mentioned would be out on their ear if they did as badly and then expected the viewer to pay for it.
