So you skipped all the meaty stuff about how world wide redistribution of economic power and wealth is a proximate cause to all this.
Well, I wanted to address the core subject which involved tactics of OWS. If you want to get into an economics discussion, I disagree with you. There is no "worldwide redistribution of economic power and wealth" as that phrase is normally used, no transfer of wealth from the rich nations to the poor ones. Rather, there is a transfer of wealth from most of the people living in rich nations, mostly to the very richest people living in such nations. It could be argued successfully that all of the increased wealth in third-world countries arises from wealth produced in those countries, and is not a transfer.
Very Funny.. Hilarious in fact. The part about "increased wealth in third-world countries arises from wealth produced IN THOSE COUNTRIES and is not a transfer".. You get the irony of that statement considering the 1% implied topic of this thread? How come that works that way for GLOBAL redistribution and not DOMESTIC redistribution? NEVER would YOU consider that the 1% you're endlessly bitchin about created that wealth WITHOUT robbing it from the 99%.. Would ya?
OF COURSE there is a transfer of wealth across nations right now.. It's f'in undeniable. Ever hear of "The World is Flat?"? Ever seen a protest about US JOBS going offshore? Ever hear of "competing with slave wage labor" in Thailand?
And you DON'T do any of that useful stuff because you mistakenly believe that corporations are ALL to blame for Govt/Corp collusion
That's a terribly simplistic statement and not true at all. The problem is excessive influence of corporations on the government, so that a distinction drawn between them becomes almost meaningless. It's not a question of targeting business or targeting the government, rather, it's a matter of targeting the collusion between them. Government should be regulating business, not serving its narrow interests. It isn't doing that because of the influence of campaign financing and lobbyists.
There is a primary cause. And that is the unchecked ability to hand out favors and power. We allow politicians to deal the drugs. We LET GOVT get further involved in picking market winners/losers. Ever hear of "too big to fail"? Who PAID for that concept?
The Power and Money would STILL go out without political contributions. We KNOW THAT FOR A FACT. Because that's how business got conducted even in Communist countries with a ONE party monopoly.
You can't make simple comparisons between countries with such radically different systems, but I will say that the failure of socialism in the Soviet Union came about because they tried to have socialism without democracy, just as the failure of democracy in the U.S. has come about because we've tried to have democracy without socialism. Democracy, an egalitarian political philosophy, is political socialism. Socialism, an egalitarian economic philosophy, is economic democracy. They have to work together.
In the Soviet Union, the system was supposed to make a worker's paradise, with a more or less equal standard of living and prosperity for all. But because they had no democracy, political power concentrated in the hands of a privileged elite (the Communist Party), and this oligarchy served its own needs at the expense of the people. So you got Communist bigwigs living luxurious lifestyles and pouring money into a huge military force to aggrandize their power, while the people's living standards stagnated and declined. Lack of democracy corrupted the socialist ideals the country was founded on.
In the U.S., we have a mirror-image problem. We are supposed to be a democracy "with liberty and justice for all," but because we allow/encourage too much wealth to concentrate in too few hands, and wealth translates into political power, the government serves at the beck and call of the corporate interests rather than answering to the will of the people. Lack of socialism (note that I'm defining socialism by ends rather than means; I don't mean lack of government ownership of the means of production but rather lack of economic equality, regardless of what method is used to bring that about) has undermined our democracy, just as lack of democracy undermined Soviet socialism. I really don't think you can have either one of those successfully without the other.
What we know is that the more unchecked power is concentrated in govt hands -- the larger the patronage problem. This is REGARDLESS of political organization. When it becomes Mussolini's Italy -- it's called corporate fascism. Where the companies are private but DIRECTED by political establishment. SOCIALIZATION of risk (AIG, Solyndra, Fanny/Freddy) but PRIVATIZATION of profit. Sound familiar. You got cause/effect exactly backwards.
Does "work for the people" imply MORE POWER to be doled out?
Not really, just a change of direction. The government MUST set policies in regard to enforcement of labor law, trade agreements, tax policy, and other things affecting the economy, the price of labor, and the distribution of wealth. It doesn't have to do these things any MORE than it does now in order to change our circumstances. It just needs to do them differently.
Maybe.. But it STARTS with turning off the spigots of cash that go out as subsidies, loans, and handouts. NOT -- with cannibalizing the carcass of our stagnant economy.
Either that or you're one of those guys who posts responses to posts you haven't read and know nothing about.
