- with the young ones. Always the young ones.
The under 30 crowd is starting to protest again. At first I waited to see if this was just a flash in the pan, but the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be gaining momentum. I say so not because of the increasing number of cities that are seeing demonstrations. After all, if you don't have a coherent message, the chance that a movement will crystallize is remote.
But, there is something going on concurrently with all this, it is the We Are the 99 Percent movement. They are feeling the real deal. The played by the economic rules, worked hard, studied, did all the right things, and they are homeless, bankrupt, bereft of a decent job and a dignified way to earn monies, and pissed off about it. Who can blame them?
But it's even worse than that. By not working, by sitting idle, the country is losing a vast and valuable opportunity and resource. I would think even the most heartless capitalist stooge should recognize that an idled mind and hands is a waste of both capital and labor. It is a devastating loss of time, talents, and monies - a loss to the individuals, to the community, to business, to country, to the world.
Now, you would think the responsible so-called "job creators" would be taking notice. If (ha) they actually were job creators, then they have to be thinking to themselves "God we really are doing a terrible fucking job aren't we? I feel awful at being such an incompetent fuckhead. Maybe I'd better go take a few laps in my champagne-filled Olympic-sized swimming pool and de-stress".
But no, the right wing media is instead getting both puzzled and scared. The tone has changed from sarcasm to just a bit of quaver in the voice, and perhaps a little tiny squirt of brown liquid shit in the silk panties to go with that.
One can hope.
I know the clueless assholes on Wall Street are frustrated. "Wha - well, those kids should be marching on Washington! They should be protesting Congress and the White House! Don't they know that's where all the troubles began?" God damn boys, clue yourselves in for a change. If you boneheads can't figure this out, one has to wonder why we don't have a financial meltdown every other week.
I suspect Warren Buffet has got it figured out. He seems a smart enough guy. I take him for a student of history, and being able to recognize the consequences of being on the wrong side of it.
Because, if this continues, Warren knows its his head in the wicker basket.
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you know that's the same mentality that kept women marginalized for 5000 years. just think where we would be if we had used all the brain power available to us. but yeah, how stupid can they get when their reaction is to tell those protestors to 'go get a job and work for what you want'. really? as if there are jobs out there languishing because nobody is applying. dude! those people would love to have a job, preferably one that paid a living wage.
ReplyDeletemeanwhile, tell me again how money traders 'work' for their money?
It has been estimated that fully half of the Long Boom can be traced to the addition of women to the work force. Prior to that, we were doing things with one hand tied behind our back.
ReplyDeleteI would estimate that this "lost generation' has set the progress of the country back a good thirty years. And it is the dipshit billionaires who are holding us back. Talk about cutting their nose to spite their faces. Had the current generation been gainfully employed, those dumbass billionaires would be trillionaires. I've said it before and I'll say it again:
"Money is too important to be left to the rich".
One other thing:
ReplyDelete"Privatize the Gains, Socialize the Losses" seems to be the motto of the Wall Street Crooks. and consider, from "Everything is Obvious" by Duncan Watts:
"But imagine for a moment what the banking industry profits would have been in 2009 absent the several hundred billion dollars of government funds from which they benefited both directly and indirectly. We can never know for sure, of course, because we didn't run that experiment, but we can make some educated guesses. AIG, for one, would probably not exist and its various counterparties, including Goldman Sachs, would be short several tens of billions of dollars that were funneled to them through AIG. Citigroup might well have collapsed, and Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers might all have been dissolved rather than merged with other banks. All told, the banking industry might have lost tens of billions of dollars in 2009 - quite the opposite of the tens of billions of dollars they actually made - and many thousands of bankers who in realty received bonuses would instead have been out of work. Now imagine that in the fall of 2008 the leaders of Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan, Citigroup, and the like were offered a choice between the "systemic support" world in which they were guaranteed government support and the "libertarian" world in which they would be left hung out to dry. Forget for a moment the devastation that would have been wreaked on the rest of the economy, and ask how much of their future compensation the banks would have been willing to concede in order to not be allowed to fail? Again, it's a hypothetical question, but with their very survival in the balance it seems safe to assume that they would have agreed to commit more than the face value of their direct loans. That the banks and their allies have instead managed to portray themselves as victims of stifling government intervention and political populism run amok is therefore disingenuous, and not only for the obvious reason that the banks benefited from considerable government largess other than direct loans. The real reason is philosophical consistency. When times are good, banks wish to be perceived as independent risk-taking entities, entitled to the full fruits of their hard-won labors. But during a crisis they wish to be treated as critical elements in a larger system to which their failure would pose an existential threat. ...The real point is that either they are libertarians... or they are not. They should not be allowed to switch philosophies at their convenience".