Regards — Cliff
Monday, October 24, 2011
OWS vs TP
Some have suggested that the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party movement are really the same thing. Over at the Althouse blog we have this Venn Diagram, showing the overlap and the differences.
The source for this diagram is Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic. But then that source links to this source, Mr James Sinclair, at How Conservatives Drove Me Away. Note that Mr Sinclair is a lawyer.
Regards — Cliff
Regards — Cliff
By the logic of the diagram, both ovals should overlap completely. What I think is important about both movements is their expressed frustration about losing power that is rightfully theirs to govern themselves. There is a balance to be struck between the corporate and government entities, but only when the people have become the sole arbiter--not as a monolith, but with equal input from every citizen.
ReplyDeleteObserving that big business buys and thus creates the politicians who create big government, the practical issue is to get both sides seeing that they should not feel themselves in opposition to each other.
ReplyDeleteI find rank and file Republican (i.e. not the 1%) support for economic freedom (i.e. the freedom to become the 1%) to be without proper perspective on how obscenely unfair the current economic system is. The thing holding back the 2-through-50%'ers isn't the bottom 50 not paying taxes, it's the 1%'ers having all the wealth and accumulating more while using that wealth to (via their corporate control) buy politicians and keep things in favor of the oligarchy.
There are too few Warren Buffets out there to call it like it is.
Folks, get to know Lawrence Lessig.
ReplyDeleteI think this is important: Rootstrikers
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I haven't viewed the full 25 minutes of the Jack Mitchell linked video. That said, I am in full agreement that copyright and trademark and patents and other restraints on free trade go on for far too long. The economy will move forward better if we get rid of the "Mickey Mouse" extension to copyright laws.
ReplyDeleteAs for Kad's points, I don't think that every politician is a wholly owned subsidiary of one or more corporations. On the other hand, that is trickle down economics. The money is being reinvested in the economy. Am I concerned about high paychecks that don't represent economic value? Absolutely. How do we fix that? I would say that stock options should be advantaged if held for long periods of time, thus encouraging strategic thinking on the part of corporate leaders. Also, we should make corporate boards (1) more accountable to the stockholders and (2) more open to being appointed by coalitions of stockholders.
I sometimes think that the poor in these United States are not as poorly off as the average person in some other nations. My sympathy for the poor is large, but I think that we are distorting the facts. Not everyone should live in a quarter of a million dollar house. On the other hand, we should be allowing entrepreneurs to find better ways to build cheaper houses. Houses more folks can afford. And, we should be thinking about restructuring work. As an aside, while I think the nation has benefited, overall, from large numbers of women entering the work force, what do we think have been the social costs of the displacement of men. There is no free lunch out there and thinking that we can squeeze the "1%" to fix everything is to engage in magical thinking.
Regards —&nbps; Cliff
Just a "minor" observation about Kad's elevation of warren Buffet to hero status. This is the same Warren Buffet whose corporation has still not paid its multimillion dollar tax bill.....it being contested for being "too much."
ReplyDeleteYeah...you go Warren. His altruistic store front is certainly impressive, coming from one of the richest men in the world, but when you wipe the BS off of the windows....the picture is much different. He doesn't pass the sniff test. How did he GET all that money??? You can bet your farm that it wasn't by being Citizen of the Year.
Everybody has an agenda.....and that is their talking base.....