Thread: Occupy Wall Street?

Occupy Wall Street?


The last issue of Montclarion, a student newspaper at Montclair State University, published an article of Grover Furr, about the Occupy Wall Street movement:


The Montclarion » Blog Archive » Letter to the Editor


Yes, rich people always want to be richer and richer. This is unfortunate; no one knows how to stop this, without taking away constructive motivation. What fraction of Bill Gates' fortune is consumed and what fraction is productively invested? My guess is that the first fraction is much less than 10%, and that he is not a rare exception.


What does Professor Furr have to offer us? Consider a complex machine which works but not perfectly. Anyone can destroy it; no advanced knowledge is usually needed to accomplish this. But one has to be highly knowledgeable in order to repair it, or to design a better replacement. I am thinking about sophisticated engines, airplanes, TV sets, X ray scanners, computers, airconditioners, oil refineries, etc.


The same is true for an economic system. No system is perfect; but some are more efficient than others. Trying to destroy US capitalism without offering something better is likely to create a lot of misery. I am thinking about what Lenin and Stalin did, as decribed in my two short books. These books are now freely available online; the links are at:


Diary of a former Polish communist; two free books on-line


Note that even now, one hundred years after the Soviet revolution, standards of living in Russia are much lower than in the US, and in other western countries.


Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)
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I am not familiar with the guy who wrote the letter but I have been following the occupy wall st story on Russia Today. Firstly, I don't get the impression that this movement is anti capitalist. I think they are there as a result of the obvious and blatant way our politicians are working for corporate heads than for the people. I think they are also there because of the banking crisis and that those who caused it have not been punished but rewarded. Another reason they are there is because the tax payer has had to save those banks that acted irresponsibly and so they presumably feel they have a duty to raise awareness because future generations are going to be saddled with the public debt this has created.

I don't think they want an end to capitalism, that is the western media angle on them. They are calling for regulation of the system as this seems to have been forgotten by our politicians.

What Robdemand said. They are not calling for an end to Capitalism; they are calling for cure for the ugly disease that has infested it.

Saw this picture the other day.



I also think the movement is a general reaction to a flawed economic system where a ridiculous share of the wealth concentrates amongst a select few.

Rapes and crime at #OWS: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Wrestle With Growing Security Concerns (liberal news outlet Huffington Post)

Rapes at Tea Party events = 0 (murders at Tea Party events = 0; robberies at Tea Party events = 0; racism at Tea Party events = 0)

This member caelum has likely never been to a Tea Party event and is just posting something from the internet, and probably (I'm guessing) has not attended an Occupy event, either. The internet is wonderful, because it lets us expound on our ideas without putting them into practice.

Why over-intellectualize it? Attend an event and see for yourself. Otherwise, you don't know. I told my friend who favored #ows to attend the demonstration if he favored them; he refused.

If you only talk about it on the internet, then you don't know. Bring some evidence of your attendance at an OWS event that shows their objectives are workable. (You can't. You've had enough time, but all you bring is text. Bring video or audio that shows this is the people's will. You can't.)

(ADDENDUM: "For each of the 984 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested in New York City between September 18 and October 15, police collected and filed an information sheet recording the arrestee’s name, age, sex, criminal charge, home address and — in most cases — race. The Daily Caller has obtained all of this information from a source in the New York City government.

Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States."

Read more: Occupy Wall Street | Arrest Records | Mansions | Housing | The Daily Caller )

It's funny how those on one side will call attention to the actions of the few as if they are indicative of an entire movement. You want to make a Tea Partier's blood boil? Just call them racist and point to the signs that some of them have made and held in the past to "prove it." Nope, these people don't "represent," the Tea Partier's will loudly proclaim, even though they march and rally right along side them, saying and doing nothing to disapprove of their bigotry ... except when the media calls them out on it afterwards. Yeah, we know, these people are the extremists on the fringe; we get it. But those darn Occupiers -- they're a bunch of violent, raping, law breaking, jobless thugs who hate capitalism. Right?

The Occupy Wall Street people realize something is unfair in our economic system.

I agree with them. But it seems to me this has always been the case and likely always will be the case. I've seen a few of the young people interviewed on TV and I was rather impressed by them. Doing the protest thing still isn't my thing. I still think I - and they - benefit from slave-wage labor of others in developing nations.

We that benefit envy those with more than us. We envy that they made the right choices that have allowed them to prosper even during a nation's economically hard times. I don't hate on the rich because it was always told to me, years ago, by the Occupy Wall Street types, back when everything was "all good" for them, "Don't playa hate." And "Hate the game not the playa."

Which all leads me to believe it is better to have than to not have. It is better to be rich than to be poor. Albeit poverty in the United States is usually relative. Having been crackhead poor and now moving into the great American poor, I now feel rich, and I can become a happy man in the American poor.

I am adamantly in favor of the Occupy Wall Street movement, just as I was/am in favor of the Tea Party Movement. I know that sound like a contradiction, but it is not. What I appreciate about them is the activism, the participation, they stimulate. Much has been written in these forums about what is wrong with the US, how this is a declining power and we are stagnating. I feel that the current upswing in activism at the grass-roots level is a signal that the US still has its mojo. For our system to work people have to be involved. For the past 30 to 35 years the general population of the US has been very complacent, and during that period our leaders have gotten lazy and self-serving because we weren't holding them accountable. Well, things have gotten tough and the sleeping masses are starting to awaken. I don't know where it is going to lead, but the sense of urgency being created and the momentum of discontent will get the cart rolling again.

I expect the next election to be a well attended party with some interesting results. This country works best when its citizens are involved, so if the Occupy forces, and the Tea Partiers are an indication that people are getting involved again, then we are going to be OK. Our founding fathers put into place a system where the branches of government were expected to be at odds with one another (checks and balances), but the motivating force for the direction of the country was to be the people. Sometimes the people get lazy . . . get spoiled, but when the nap ends it's still the voters who are in control.

What's funny is, whenever anyone wants to show how racist the Tea Party movement is, out of the hundreds of rallies and demonstrations they've staged over the past couple of years -- they have to keep posting the same for 4 or 5 pictures.

I am British and I'm not familiar with the tea party and what they are calling for but I saw a video on YouTube where a woman protester had to put a CNN news reporter right about what they were protesting about. The CNN woman said they were republicans against Obama, but after the filming the protester told her they were out protesting against all of congress and both republican and democrat politicians. The CNN reporter looked embarrassed. So my impression is that people all over are getting fed up with taxes being used for things that are out of the electorates control.

I would say that in Britain we have such a huge deficit purely because we have been at war for over 10 years in several countries, and we had to rescue the banks. Both of which the British public had no say in. So it looks to me like a unified cause that is growing across the world.

But the press are still trying to ridicule it all.

What's funny is, whenever anyone wants to show how racist the Tea Party movement is, out of the hundreds of rallies and demonstrations they've staged over the past couple of years -- they have to keep posting the same for 4 or 5 pictures.

Exactly the point I was trying to make; so why do the same thing to the OWS protestors? Why try to make the actions of the few, indicative of the entire movement? This is exactly what conservatives and Tea Partiers, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, have already started to do. In order to defeat and deligitamize them, they focus on the ones who look like hippies or the ones who get arrested, which make up .00001 percent of the entire movement. If the Tea Partiers and the GOP don't like the receiving end of others' generalization, then why be hypocrits?

I got your point the first time. And actually Beck and Rush Limbaugh don't focus all that much on the ones "who look like hippies or the ones who get arrested" -- as much as the ones who sound like they don't have a clue -- which of course isn't fair either. The problem is, the mainstream media also has a hard time finding people who can clearly articulate the purpose of the movement -- which is a big problem for them.

Originally Posted by JosephB

I got your point the first time. And actually Beck and Rush Limbaugh don't focus all that much on the ones "who look like hippies or the ones who get arrested" -- as much as the ones who sound like they don't have a clue -- which of course isn't fair either. The problem is, the mainstream media also has a hard time finding people who can clearly articulate the purpose of the movement -- which is a big problem for them.

I think it may be because the movement doesn't yet have a clear focus. "It's not fair," and "greed is bad" are both correct statements, but without potential solutions it just sounds like ranting -- which it is. I think the message of the movement will evolve over time and come into clearer focus. It was much the same in the '60s with the anti-war movement (oops! Now I've dated myself), what started out as simple rage eventually coalesced into political action. Of course that message -- get out of southeast asia -- was more defined and more easily accomplished.

It always starts with an expression of rage -- I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore! -- and then metamorphoses into defined action.

You could at least say that the political process has been utterly corrupted by corporate and financial interests -- we want the power taken away from special interests and put back into the hands of the people.

How about something like that instead of, "Uuhh, like, it's not fair, man." Some of these people seem be going out of their way to not have any sort of coherent message. Can't somebody print some cards and pass them out? Or they could check out what Ralph Nader has been saying for years.

I think that this is the time for change. With thousands of cities openly defying the economical catastrophes and inhumane hoarding of money, I hope that the governments take note. What happened in 2008 was a real shame, and the top 1%, mostly the bankers, are to blame. How do they move to remedy this problem? They support right wing, ignorant, anti-occupy campaigns like 'we are the 53%' that stop them from receiving a 4 percent tax increase, that's right. When you hear a republican or a right winger say 'taxes are too damn high', kick them. Taxes on rich are the lowest in 100 years, 35%.

To me that anyone who is not in the 1% would not be behind these occupy campaigners is troubling. I do agree with some of the other posts that some people there may be misinformed but I am of the opinion that there is enough of a coherent message that the government should take note. Businesses should have no say in policy. The rich have too much money while America doesn't even have a modicum of the social luxuries of Europe.

The bottom line of this debate is this, they should not have this much money. Not when there are 45000 people dying due to lack of healthcare every year. Not when they were the ones who messed things up in the first place. Not when college students are anchored down with debt and have to live at home until they're 26. Not when there is a war on. And the most important reason, to me, is that it's just plain wrong. How are we not united on this?

Capitalism is good, it raised millions of people from poverty in the 1800s in America and made it the country it is today. But why not add a sprinkling of socialism in there? Really people, it's not that bad. The rich pay a few more bucks to uncle Sam, the poor don't have to die from lack of health care, the poor don't have to be tethered to masses of debt, fairness prevales. What is the issue? They don't need all this money, they do no need 43% of the wealth. They need to pay their way. It's as simple as that.