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Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 2, 2012 12:38:27 GMT -5
I think you're worried about parasites from below but the real parasites are the 400 families that have stashed 32 trillion away overseas. Our nation as a whole could be wealthy but here we go stabbing each other in the back. That's how propaganda and ideology work. They turn us against ourselves so that we never notice that a handful of people just made off with the cake while we scratch and claw over the crumbs they left behind.
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Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 2, 2012 12:41:36 GMT -5
look at it this way: I paid $19K in property tax last year (Hello New York state) and I'm not worried about welfare queens being irresponsible. I'm furious at the irresponsibility of fewer than 500 billionaire or multi-millionaire douche bags who have redesigned the economic and political system to make sure they never have to be responsible toward anything other than their selves. And nobody is lazier than these shit bags. They don't work. Capital gains are classes as "unearned income."
And I'm not worried about lazy people so much as I am about Fortune 500 firms that basically pay zero in taxes now.
Worrying about a broke neighbor getting an undeserved ration of surplus cheese while all this goes on behind our backs is basically absurd and plays right into the shoot-self-in-foot politics of resentment
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mirth
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Post by mirth on Aug 2, 2012 13:11:19 GMT -5
Charisma is the last thing needed. "Charisma" is irrational and OWS doesn't need irrationality. The true meaning of "charisma" is a gift of grace and a charismatic leader is one who is called by god and is in possession of supernatural powers. I doubt that's what you had in mind ;-) OWS may look like a bunch of whining kids but that's how Lamestream media has been ordered to present it. That's just not the truth for the most part. Whining about debt may look like a matter of personal finances but they just don't have the language to move from "me" to "we". It's a long process. They have 500 years of cultural hegemony to overcome. We've all be marinated in bourgeois individualism (your post, Mirth, is full on bourgeois individualism) but that's not the road out of this mess. Not more bourgeois individualism. Most of us were lucky to get careers going when we could. The situation is hellish now. We just don't get what it is like for teens and young adults (kids around here can't even mow lawns, stock shelves, flip burgers, or bag groceries because 30 and 40-something males have been reduced to that and take all their jobs). The entire education finance system has been transformed since I was an undergrad into a vast bloodsucking vampire system of exploitation. I nearly got all my education from undergrad to PhD for free whereas my daughter's undergrad education is going to cost me about 18K per semester. Gulp! I think that's about how much my wife spent on her entire 4 year degree. 20-somethings have been programmed to go to college and hit the job market and they're playing 'the game' just as they've been taught but the rules are totally different now. If I had waited three more years to get my tenure track job I'd be toiling away as an untenured adjunct for the rest of my life. My entire field, like many, just imploded in 2009. The jobs just vanished. There's nothing. Graduate schools are backlogged with, by now, thousands of people with nothing left to do but defend their already-completed dissertations but they can't because there are no jobs and once you get that degree the 'clock' starts ticking and you only have, at best, three years to get a good job. But there are none. So they end up working in the service sector or as an adjunct at some dead end school with zero prospects for a future. Actually, I couldn't tell you what lamestream media had to say about it, as I haven't paid attention to lamestream for many years, mostly because it's lame. My only exposure to the movement is through the people I see supporting it. Most have posted stuff, or mentioned stuff without ever thinking about it. It reminds me of the cult mentality. Most people think they'll never join a cult, but at some point they agree with somebody about something, all of the sudden they lose track of what they believe and just pass on whatever this person they agreed before says, without ever taking the time to decide for themselves. I don't deny my individualism, and desire for it. My optomistic side says that people are smart enough, creative enough, to be individuals, but see that by working together we can make the world better. I don't believe it's through mindlessness that we get out of these situations. That's what got us here in the first place.Living in status quo has got America in this situation. Also, you're probably right on the use of the word "charisma", maybe I should have just said a strong leader (not necessarily a person, but a group of people possibly). It's very disjointed right now. It reminds me of this project I'm on at work where the company we're doing business for has no strong leadership, it's all over the place, decisions can't be made, no one takes responsibility, and it's already getting behind a lot, and it's not even set to be done till 3 years from now, and it will never make that date now because of poor management, poor central leadership. Nothing holds it together. There may be other ways for it to take off, OWS, but I've never seen something without leadership ever be successful. As far as degrees etc...I actually just finished my engineering degree this past year. Did the full time musician thing for awhile. I have tons of debt, but I knew that would happen, either that or flip burgers. That's a good part of the reason I chose engineering. I had pretty much my pick of companies to work for, and I didn't even have that great of grades. I do have about 85,000 dollars in student loan debt, and my wife has about 65,000. If we didn't do engineering and nursing, we'd be fucked. Even with that, I have to talk my wife off a cliff about once a month, and she has a good paying job. So I can definitely see the frustration in people. Still how much responsibility does the student have? I have 3 classes to take to finish my music degree (stupid ones too), but I knew it would give me nothing, I had to change my mind, and make a better decision for me and my family. I actually thought long and hard about the PH.D route in music (where I had all As), but it didn't seem likely to result in a career. Then I see a lot of musician friends who struggle through music school trying to make it...pretty bleak future I think. |
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mirth
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Post by mirth on Aug 2, 2012 13:15:38 GMT -5
look at it this way: I paid $19K in property tax last year (Hello New York state) and I'm not worried about welfare queens being irresponsible. I'm furious at the irresponsibility of fewer than 500 billionaire or multi-millionaire douche bags who have redesigned the economic and political system to make sure they never have to be responsible toward anything other than their selves. And nobody is lazier than these shit bags. They don't work. Capital gains are classes as "unearned income." And I'm not worried about lazy people so much as I am about Fortune 500 firms that basically pay zero in taxes now. Worrying about a broke neighbor getting an undeserved ration of surplus cheese while all this goes on behind our backs is basically absurd and plays right into the shoot-self-in-foot politics of resentment I don't disagree at all. In fact I don't worry about those people, just playing the other side. To me, welfare, medicare, whatever are all worth it, even if only 10 people out of millions are the only one's who need it. |
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Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 2, 2012 13:20:08 GMT -5
Yeah, music, artist, poet, etc., fancy names for dish washing for the most part ;-)
Or, full-time party maniac. LOL
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for individualism and all that but our mainstream cultural notions of individuality run more in the direction of "fuck the other guy" more than real individuality.
OWS is, admittedly, a pile of shit right now but anything can happen. I think people can be 'excused' for acting cult-like because they get swept up in the collective excitement. And, really, you can't have leadership unless you have the majority who enthusiastically follow orders, no?
Not going to have a movement if it's 10 million critical egoists all debating and questioning. It would go nowhere. All thought and no action? Will not work.
All action and no thought? Likewise, will not work. Look, I'm really the last guy to get involved in anything because I can't get beyond critique. I see failure everywhere. I'm poor movement fodder and I don't want to lead anybody either.
I'm just a sideline guy keeping score.
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Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 2, 2012 13:21:54 GMT -5
look at it this way: I paid $19K in property tax last year (Hello New York state) and I'm not worried about welfare queens being irresponsible. I'm furious at the irresponsibility of fewer than 500 billionaire or multi-millionaire douche bags who have redesigned the economic and political system to make sure they never have to be responsible toward anything other than their selves. And nobody is lazier than these shit bags. They don't work. Capital gains are classes as "unearned income." And I'm not worried about lazy people so much as I am about Fortune 500 firms that basically pay zero in taxes now. Worrying about a broke neighbor getting an undeserved ration of surplus cheese while all this goes on behind our backs is basically absurd and plays right into the shoot-self-in-foot politics of resentment I don't disagree at all. In fact I don't worry about those people, just playing the other side. To me, welfare, medicare, whatever are all worth it, even if only 10 people out of millions are the only one's who need it. I propose the new slogan for OWS should be: "Let the surplus cheese flow like freedom from on high mountain and rain down upon our heads!" ;D |
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mirth
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Post by mirth on Aug 2, 2012 13:28:11 GMT -5
I don't disagree at all. In fact I don't worry about those people, just playing the other side. To me, welfare, medicare, whatever are all worth it, even if only 10 people out of millions are the only one's who need it. I propose the new slogan for OWS should be: "Let the surplus cheese flow like freedom from on high mountain and rain down upon our heads!" ;D  |
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Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 2, 2012 13:29:26 GMT -5
"The return of the repressed"  Romney family attempting to spell its name Oops This shit head pays a %14 tax rate (that's even less than the capital gains rate) Attachments:
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Post by dasein on Aug 2, 2012 14:43:08 GMT -5
The problem, I think, is with two assumptions:
- that people who are wealthy acquired their wealth through hard work
- that a welfare state would encourage laziness
With the first one, let's think about Steve Jobs for a second.
Steve Jobs was a guy who, by his own admission, had very limited computer programming experience. But he was charismatic, he was ruthless, he was ambitious, and he happened to run into a guy named Steve Wozniak who was everything he was not: a brilliant programmer who was weird, insular, and not particularly cutthroat.
Wozniak designed the first Apple computers, Jobs really had nothing to do with their invention. Really, Jobs never had a hand in ANYTHING Apple created. But there he was giving those presentations in black turtlenecks, showing the new fancy hardware his employees designed while the world fell over themselves to praise his genius.
I guess you could make the argument that Apple's products were a result of Jobs' "vision"... but hey, I could have a vision to make a working Starship Enterprise complete with matter transporter, but if I have no clue how to do it then it doesn't do me much good.
This doesn't even include the actual workers who had to construct all those iPads and Macbooks... without them, Apple doesn't make a dime, and it's only by not paying them the full value of their labor that Apple makes any sort of profit.
All sorts of people misrecognized Steve Jobs as the force behind Apple, but in reality he was little more than a vampire... the force that kept Apple going were the thousands of nameless employees whose labor he leeched off.
Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who don't directly make commodities are important, but not essential.* It's possible to imagine a world where there were only factory owners and factory workers... the economy would still run, even though life would be "nasty, brutish, and short." But you can't have an economy that's just doctors and lawyers, that wouldn't last a day.
*Productive labor vs. unproductive labor in Marxist terminology, although the example of doctors working hospitals is an interesting example of how even if a profession doesn't directly produce a commodity, it can still come to resemble a factory.
The real money and capital is made through the surplus value that capitalists acquire from workers. And in this day and age in America, the workers are mostly overseas in Third World Countries, while the CEOs are all in America half a world away. The rest of us are basically just support for them... we help them find clothes, heal them, entertain them, and just as importantly we buy their commodities... but we're still just leeching off the workers at the end of the day. And of course there's finance...which is basically just magic, creating value out of thin air, dependent almost entirely on faith, performing a kind of necromancy on the whole system.
We're taught that it's the Fords, the Rockefellers, the Gates and Jobs that move America forward, titans of industry and men of genius, but the reality is that America was built by steel workers, assembly line workers, construction crews, and all the countless other workers. Without them, Ford is just a sad little anti-Semite. The only way they've "earned" their wealth is through a system that enables them to accrue it from others.
Second, I don't think a welfare state would promote laziness. Yes, there will always be a few sociopaths whose sole purpose in life is to game the system, but they're the exception not the rule. The overwhelming majority of people on welfare right now are employed, they just simply can't make enough to make ends meet.
We're not talking about providing everyone with iPods and BMWs... that's not even possible given the amount of resources we have. But providing food, shelter, basic clothing, healthcare... this is all entirely possible, and would not only save lives, stabilize countless families, improve quality of life for countless people, but relieve the near unbearable fear and tension that's part and parcel of living under capitalism.
And if we're going to talk about laziness, think about this: if you are a worker, and you don't own what you're producing (the boss you're working for does), and you get paid by the hour in a form of the wage, what incentive do you have to do anything but the minimum amount of work necessary to stay hired? Your financial success doesn't depend on it, and there's no joy or pride in your work, you're alienated from the products of your own labor.
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Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 2, 2012 14:56:37 GMT -5
Couldn't have said it better.
One thing: finance. Once we unhitched from the gold standard and we shifted to a floating currency and went berzerk on price trading and derivatives we enter the realm of "fictional value" in a way that eclipsed anything imaginable prior to the 70s but it's more than magic, it's actually the DoD that coerces allies and partners to continue buying T-Bills allowing for nearly unlimited deficit spending.
Marx's categories of use-value and exchange-value need to be augmented with categories of uselessness-value and fear-value or maybe terror plain and simple.
You might like my next book.
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Post by chrissh on Aug 2, 2012 15:42:59 GMT -5
Can any of you concisely describe for me the ultimate purpose of inflation?
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mirth
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Post by mirth on Aug 2, 2012 15:43:49 GMT -5
Another reason the OWS is going to have a hard time I think is if it actually does get a strong, possibly charismatic leader is that leader will probably quickly become the 1%. Let’s say for instance IE became the unofficial spokesman of the OWS movement, made a couple compelling speeches, and don’t you know it, you start selling your books.
Book after book sells, now you’ve sold 20 million copies of each book, and even sell millions of downloads of your music. You get offered 6 figures just to do a speech at a liberal university, and that’s just the beginning. Your popularity sores to the point you’ve become important to the world. You need bulletproof limousines, bodyguards, and fortress of a house, just to protect your family. You have a press agent, just to get the word out on some new idea. Your kids have to be protected at school, because you’ve become a threat to powerful people. Your money is in large banks, and even if you took it to a small bank, you’ve just made them much larger. Maybe you hold it at your house, but you need a multimillion dollar security system to protect that kind of change.
Maybe you give away a million dollars to support some relief fund etc…because a million dollars is a lot of money, but compared to your wealth at this point, it’s hardly anything, and the movement takes notice. They see you buy some Jeff Beck guitar that costs 100 grand, and they begin to question you.
Things changed…you’re now one of them. You might even give a lot of money away, but when people see you on TV, you’re always going around places in limos, helicopters, private jets, just to protect yourself, but it looks like you’ve alienated your “people”.
Alright, this is probably not likely, but it was fun to write. Better get on it IE, could be some nice guitars coming your way.
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mirth
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Post by mirth on Aug 2, 2012 15:45:12 GMT -5
Can any of you concisely describe for me the ultimate purpose of inflation? When you control the printing/creation of money, and you can't pay your bills...make dollar bills! ;D |
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Post by Infinite Ego on Aug 2, 2012 15:49:21 GMT -5
If that happened to me I assure you my billions would be stored in offshore accounts where the tax man couldn't get to me
LOL
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Post by chrissh on Aug 2, 2012 15:50:46 GMT -5
the near unbearable fear and tension Nothing good can happen with this at the foundation. |
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