Lloyd Hart, master occupier talks about Occupy movement's demands on radio

[oreo]

Why do you believe US corporations are the only viable model?

In the mid-70s the richest 1% of Germans earned about 11% of total German income every year. The richest 1% in this country earned about 8% of aggregate US income at that time. Today the US elites earn nearly 25% of total US income while their economic peers in Germany still take home the same 11%.

That occurred because German unions had (and still have) voting members sitting on their corporations' Boards of Directors. When German capitalists tried to outsource their factories to China, German workers said, "No way, Adolph."

Reforms like that one could work here.
OWS knows that much.

Too bad you are the first one I've seen say that...

There are no stone tablets decreeing that only the richest shareholders and their boards of directors are qualified to make key decisions about what, how and where to produce and most importantly what to do with the profits.

If workers voted on these goals, it's not likely they would cast their ballots in favor of reducing their jobs and wages. I think OWS gets that part better than most of the 99%.

AMERICANS own Wall Street. They are common shareholders--aka (owners) of these corporations--through their 401K's--kids college tuition etc. and every year they are sent a ballot to vote on who will be the CEO--and it is they that determine salaries of CEO's.

 

[georgephillip]

Too bad you are the first one I've seen say that...

There are no stone tablets decreeing that only the richest shareholders and their boards of directors are qualified to make key decisions about what, how and where to produce and most importantly what to do with the profits.


....

Of course! Don't have the owners decide.

Take that free will and right to self-realization away!


That's the authoritarian and fascist way.

Nationalize!

The goals of the owners include providing high and rising salaries, stock options and bonuses to executives and rising dividends and share prices to shareholders. This comes at the direct expense of workers who actually produce what the corporation sells. Americans are brainwashed into believing democracy stops at the door of their workplace. It doesn't have to.

The last surviving edifice of 20th century Fascism is the corporation.
It's top-down, unitary and a direct descendent of European feudalism.
Hard to understand why any American would ever support that.

 

[georgephillip]

Too bad you are the first one I've seen say that...

There are no stone tablets decreeing that only the richest shareholders and their boards of directors are qualified to make key decisions about what, how and where to produce and most importantly what to do with the profits.

If workers voted on these goals, it's not likely they would cast their ballots in favor of reducing their jobs and wages. I think OWS gets that part better than most of the 99%.

AMERICANS own Wall Street. They are common shareholders--aka (owners) of these corporations--through their 401K's--kids college tuition etc. and every year they are sent a ballot to vote on who will be the CEO--and it is they that determine salaries of CEO's.

Who counts the ballots?
Ken Lay's ghost??

 

[Si modo]

There are no stone tablets decreeing that only the richest shareholders and their boards of directors are qualified to make key decisions about what, how and where to produce and most importantly what to do with the profits.

If workers voted on these goals, it's not likely they would cast their ballots in favor of reducing their jobs and wages. I think OWS gets that part better than most of the 99%.

AMERICANS own Wall Street. They are common shareholders--aka (owners) of these corporations--through their 401K's--kids college tuition etc. and every year they are sent a ballot to vote on who will be the CEO--and it is they that determine salaries of CEO's.

Who counts the ballots?
Ken Lay's ghost??

Ballots have nothing to do with ownership.

Ownership does.

But, I know - you want what others have but don't want to to work for it, like others have.

 

[georgephillip]

Too bad you are the first one I've seen say that...

There are no stone tablets decreeing that only the richest shareholders and their boards of directors are qualified to make key decisions about what, how and where to produce and most importantly what to do with the profits.

If workers voted on these goals, it's not likely they would cast their ballots in favor of reducing their jobs and wages. I think OWS gets that part better than most of the 99%.

Isn't that what the Big unions did? That's why a guy who sweeps a floor for GM gets $23 an hour........ Which is why Mr Average American cannot afford a new car but every 10 years. If they ever get a new car.

$23 an hour is about $46,000 a year. If the average worker has four members in her household that doesn't sound like an exorbitant lifestyle especially when it's compared to the executive compensation packages that run into the tens of millions of dollars.

If American unions had been able to prevent American capitalists from shipping millions of high paying jobs to China over the last two decades, a lot more Americans would be able to afford new cars today.

 

[georgephillip]

AMERICANS own Wall Street. They are common shareholders--aka (owners) of these corporations--through their 401K's--kids college tuition etc. and every year they are sent a ballot to vote on who will be the CEO--and it is they that determine salaries of CEO's.

Who counts the ballots?
Ken Lay's ghost??

Ballots have nothing to do with ownership.

Ownership does.

But, I know - you want what others have but don't want to to work for it, like others have.

Money controls ownership and politics in the USA.

That's clear by the complete absence of prosecutions for the rampant control accounting fraud that crashed the economy in 2008. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the Savings and Loan looting of the late 1980s; however, hundreds of bankers were charged, prosecuted and convicted for frauds that were orders of magnitude smaller than 2008.

In about a single generation corporate money bought enough of the US Congress and Executive Branch to steal trillion$ and get off without as much as an apology.

The only thing I want is to make sure they don't get away with it again.
And they are coming back for more since neither elected Republicans nor Democrats have the slightest incentive to stop them.