I had been deceived - My visit to an OWS protest

Originally posted by nyk537
reply to post by shogu666

 

That has nothing to do with it.

They signed a contract when they took out a student loan that was a promise to pay that money back. It doesn't matter who the money came from or who had the authority to lend it. When you agree to do something....you are expected (and should have) to do it.

Trying to find loopholes to get out of contracts are we? Sounds a lot like the big evil businesses these people are protesting against doesn't it.

Ironic much?

Contract based on FRAUD is invalid.

The debt law during Hammurabi was more humane than it is today. Seriously .

reply to post by nyk537


How many companies paid no taxes in 2009 - 2010?

Let's see shall we?

communities.washingtontimes.com...

blogs.suntimes.com...

This is why we are suffering! This is what we fight against.

To attempt to discredit me proves my point.You unfortunately are not going to win here.

reply to post by nyk537

yes, we know, ,we pions should honor our contracts...it's immoral not to..
if we had more at stake though, it would be a strategic default and just a part of good business practices..

and well if you a real big sum at stake, well, then you would be considered "too big to fail"...and money would be taken from us pions to bail you out, either through taxes or inflation.....

something's got to give here!!!

reply to post by AMereCaratGirl


yes, ignorance is bliss.
but i know that burying my head under the sand won't make the problem go away. that's why it's gotten so big in the first place, it was easier to just ignore it.

reply to post by martauk


That is the root of the problem right there, we've had our heads in the sand for far too long as when we came up for air we didn't recognize a thing as everything got changed. See where complacency has gotten us?

reply to post by nyk537


Man, you're like a cartoon character.

I guess it's good that you exist, so that the discussion can actually be more than simply the rest of us agreeing with each other.

That said, you can't possibly believe that you're capable of making an effective argument with a talking point that's been so roundly discredited. Especially when you have to deal with the fact that the 1% and their tax burden - statistically speaking - doesn't include the corporations and business sectors that these folks control, and the inequities that exist within our tax structure that obviously benefit them and even grant them billions in subsidies regardless of the record profit levels they've enjoyed for many years now.

I don't know. Maybe you're serious, and just the most faith-based true believer I've ever seen attempt to debate this issue, but don't be surprised if you never actually sway anyone with your talking points. You've staked out a fairly indefensible position here, and the odds are that you're being ripped off as a result of the unrealistic system that you're trying so hard to defend. Seriously. We both know that you're not a 1%er. We also both know that unless someone is paying you to be so enthusiastic in your defense of those who'd rather that you didn't exist, your position is diametrically at odds with your own best interests as a person who lives in the industrialized world. Hell, not only is your position opposed to any chance at your ever rising beyond a predetermined middle (wealth-wise), it seems determined to obliterate the entire monetary system, which will ultimately evaporate whatever wealth you think you've been able to accumulate and secure. In fact, if this OWS global effort fails, that's probably what will happen, and what you have on hand - for food and clean water - will be more important than whatever it is that your balance sheet shows.

All in all, your efforts seem akin to your putting a gun in your own mouth, as the rest of us try to argue that self destruction isn't salvation, regardless of what your scriptures suggest. In the end, we may not be able to save you, but that we'd even try should cause you some pause in your aggressive defense of those who honestly hold you and your ilk in contempt.

reply to post by NorEaster


He is a cartoon character because he is saying that you have to pay money back that you voluntarily borrow???

I don't think you realize how much of a minority OWS is...you are talking like you really have a 99% consensus and that everyone agrees with your way of thinking.

reply to post by OutKast Searcher


I provided proof that a vast majority of the richest companies in the world pay no taxes. Yet no challenge because there is no challenging the claim as it is TRUE!

Originally posted by TheImmaculateD1
reply to post by OutKast Searcher

 

I provided proof that a vast majority of the richest companies in the world pay no taxes. Yet no challenge because there is no challenging the claim as it is TRUE!

Yes, it is true...and it is legal.

Huge loses domestically, and huge profits globally translated into a tax bill of zero for the United States.


How do you propose we fix that? I would love to hear the answer.

reply to post by OutKast Searcher


Redo the entire tax code so that a select few people and companies pay their fair share. Tax rates should go up across the board on the 1% and should not be shouldered by the 99%. Delete private companies from donating or contributing to campaigns.

The 99% is being choked to death with the dualopoly of debt and overtaxation.

reply to post by Misoir

Man A works 60 hour weeks, has 2 kids and a wife, and earns $60,000 per year. Man B works 70 hour weeks, has 2 kids and a wife, and earns $100,000,000 per year. That's 1666 times more money than Man A. The ongoing question is whether or not this is fair. Well, first of all, income share fits a power law curve. This is a mathematical term for a exponential curving distribution. A very high number of the values are similar(ish), while very few are extremely, even infinitely high. As far as I know, many other things fit a power law curve, like weather and terrorist attacks (and their associated casualty counts). So, basically, income share is a product of nature, somehow. Most importantly, if the universe is prejudice towards this result then we're helpless to change it. The question about fairness, though, will probably always linger like murder or death.

The net worth of top billionaires is 10's of billions.

As shown here:
www.forbes.com ...

reply to post by jonnywhite


The person who make $60k a year pays about $25k in taxes while the dude who makes $100M a year pays barely pays $10M a year in taxes and all they gotta do is put $10M in a tax shelter such as a charity that benefits none and his tax rate becomes $0! How is this fair? Either that or send that $100M to a tax shelter in The Cayman Islands and the US will never see a cent of that.

It takes integrity and character in a person to admit when their worldview is wrong.

That is intestinal fortitude. Well done OP.

Whether you agree with their motives or not, you must surely believe that there is reason to protest, whatever the 1%ers tax bracket may be.

We, the tax payers, bailed out several companies 'too big to fail.'

By even the most free market capitalist's definition, that is Fascism.

State and Corporate power Combined. Fascist.

The companies then posted incredible profits, and we got nothing.

We are losing everything we have worked so hard for, destroying our environment needlessly, and falling desperately into unending debt.

Meanwhile, Teachers and Soldiers have to have two jobs, and failing CEO's take 13 million when they step down from driving their Company into Bail Out Territory.

I think it is safe to say 99% is a fair estimation of those of us against this continuing any further.

Originally posted by OutKast Searcher
reply to post by NorEaster

 

He is a cartoon character because he is saying that you have to pay money back that you voluntarily borrow???

I don't think you realize how much of a minority OWS is...you are talking like you really have a 99% consensus and that everyone agrees with your way of thinking.

A majority does. In polls, it ranges from over 65% to nearly 80%. Not only that, but the facts speak for themselves. You won't ever be allowed to build a major corporation unless you've been granted that privilege through hiring one of the "management professional" that the 1% has cleared to run your corporation. In fact, you won't even be allowed to compete against any major corporation unless you've signed on with that very specific hiring move. How do I know this? From experience.

Do a Google search on FlexPLM, and discover how it's revolutionized the product development process in the Retail Footwear and Apparel (RFA) Industry. Note that it is poised to transform the way that the Process Industry designs, develops and manufactures its products, and how it's making deep inroads into Biotech and even Consumer Products (like shampoos and non-discrete manufacturing in general). This FlexPLM solution has already been worth hundreds of millions to the corporation that bought it, and the promise is virtually limitless, and yet the small company that actually invented it was forced to sell it (and be dismantled after acquisition) for pennies on the dollar to that corporation or face obliteration by the PLM Industry and its banking partners.

The small company was Aptavis Technologies, and it tried for nearly two years to survive after having Nike, Reebok, Jones NY, Liz Claiborne, Timberland, and a host of smaller brands declare it to be their own future PLM solution with a 15% penetration commitment (standard for any large implementation involving enterprise-wide solutions). That woke up the entire PLM Industry - which had gone 10 full years without even trying to address the RFA non-linear product development process issues with an adequate software solution, alienating that industry completely as a result - and the result was an immediate moratorium on all lines of liquidity capital for this small upstart until "something could be worked out".

This crashed the profile of Aptavis, and caused the OEMs to freeze their projects at 15%, and after some months of real hardship, the role of "savior" was given to the corporation that now owns FlexPLM, and a full year of "managed acquisition" began, which involved efforts to destroy the FlexPLM brand so that the acquisition would actually involve only the "part manager" (basic structure of the product) which could then be slipped into that corporation's flagship solution as an "improvement", causing the FlexPLM product to literally disappear. Of course, buying only a "part" of that solution would be much cheaper than buying an entire company, and naturally, that was the plan. That it was leveraged by collusion between the buyer and all available credit sources (the lifeblood of any business, large, medium or small) was never a legal concern, since laws are one thing and enforcement of laws in quite another thing altogether.

I managed the PR and marketing battle for that little company, and when the acquisition finally occurred, we'd only lost 60% of the product and company value, but we did manage to survive the acquisition whole (much to the irritation of the acquisition management team). I was quickly fired - only after teaching the new bosses how to even address the RFA Industry and repair the damage they'd already done over the years with their dismissal of what's since proven to be their actual salvation as a company.

My point is that we had everything it takes to be successful in the business world. We had the idea, we had enormous customers who loved us and our product. We had an open lane that no one had ever figured out how to address. The one thing that we didn't do was realize that none of the elite level of business professionals would ever see any short term benefit to themselves in taking our little company on as a growth opportunity. Instead, they decided that it'd be best to rip us to pieces and give our revolutionary solution to one of their own, who was running the company who ultimately won the product for themselves at a bargain basement price.

Because we weren't from that specific business/culture segment, we were not allowed to succeed, and if you think you can succeed without any business line-of-credit, then you just don;t know anything about running a real business.

This is what the OWS is about for the rest of the 99%. Simple fair play without different rules for the top 1% and their kind.

reply to post by TheImmaculateD1

My main point was: isn't Man A working too? Is he 1666x times worse than Man B?

Is anybody 1666x better than someone else? Man B is making 1666 times more money. Do you know anybody that makes that much more than you? It's hard to compute.

Granted, if you make $36 a year then Man A is making 1666x more than you. But if each of you is working a similar number of hours, is his work really 1666x more important?

I think there'll always be a large income gap with disparity.

The question is how close does it get? Not whether it will ever close completely.

If I was Warren Buffet, I wouldn't worry about becoming a millionaire. But I might worry that my 50 billion net worth will go down to 10 billion net worth. And it won't happen smoothly.

If bill gates is 1 in 1,000,000 then is he 1,000,000x better than average?

So does he deserve an income that's 1,000,000x better? Or 500x? Or 5000x? Or 100,000x?

Bill Gates and others like him have us over a barrel. They're rare. We're closer to average. We need them because we need CEO's. CEO's produce jobs by making business.

The median net worth of a 68 year old man that was making about 60,000 per year is about $230,000. The net worth of the top billionaire is 78 billion. That's 339130 times more.

I'm not judging any of this good or bad. I'm not god. I can't say for sure. But I do know that if lower to middle income valued school and money as much as hard work, they'd be rich too.

reply to post by OutKast Searcher


I think their numbers and growth represent well, just how many people want change. For every person that shows up, there's probably another one that's either too busy, or too scared to show up. I think you fail to see the minority that your group represents.

You don't even have an organized opposition to OWS, just a handful of people on a forum. Unimpressive argument.

Originally posted by OutKast Searcher


Huge loses domestically, and huge profits globally translated into a tax bill of zero for the United States.


How do you propose we fix that? I would love to hear the answer.

How about investigating effective fraud, where say Microsoft transfers ownership of the Microsoft Office copyrights to an Ireland/Bermuda/Caymans, when nearly all the producers, managers and designers were in the USA.

If you want to allocate ownership to foreign countries then allocate it by reasonable criteria, like gross wages paid to people involved in its production, with the burden on the companies to show that transfers do not violate common sense and practical reality.

This is a extra right that inanimate corporations seemingly have that natural born people do not.

For instance, suppose I could incorporate my soul in a low-tax Bermuda, then have my body and my mind which produce all my valuable labor simply be 'subcontractors' to the non-taxed Bermudan soul, and only pay tax on the minimum wage that my Bermudan soul sends back to my body.

I too was surprised at the people who showed up to the occupy protests. It was mostly people without a job just down on their luck. Real, honest people that need a change in the way the world works. It definetly made me respect the movement 1000 times more.

I've attended Tea Parties and want to attend a OWS even here locally. What most people fail to understand is both of us have a similar objective. Of course the tables are turned politically when its realize most Tea Partiers are conservative and most OWSers are liberal.

From my experience, it seems there are a lot of extremists on both sides. I got treated like crap by a OWSer simply because he saw I was a republican and listed Christianity as my religion (i dont practice). Same goes for some tea partiers that are a bit on the extreme when it comes to force feeding their relegion and values on them.

Point im getting at, is that unless we find a way to become united, both efforts which seek basically the same ideals will be blips on the radar. The OWSers are focusing more on Wall Street being the problem and the Tea Partiers are talking as if the government is the problem. Truth be told, both are the issue.

The majority of both sides seek the same goals, yet once you start to relate political affiliation to them the name calling begins.

Sounds cliche, but why cant we all just get along? The irony in the media slamming both and supporting one over the other is pathetic.

Glad to see you've realized the true nature of 95% of the OWS protestors, instead of the 5% the media has been focusing on.