Thread: Occupy Wall Street around the world.... Your thoughts and feelings about it!

Frankly, I don't know what else I can say that could be constructive. The last two posts I've read were just descriptions of personal fears that were extracted from some pretty general language that certainly didn't target the concepts you two pulled out of them.

The one thing that I can say is, through the wording, it is revealed that Scott feels he's doing okay fiscally. That's good news and I certainly won't want to detract from that.

And given the lack of usefulness discussing political opinion in the face of what seems to be socio-psychological paranoia (basement? huh??) I'm going to save my effort on this topic for a later conversation where all parties are better informed - or, at least, less personally and emotionally tied to the issue.

When I discuss my opinions about politics, I rarely factor my own personal loss/gain into the equation - in my view, it would color my opinions and corrode my concept of what is just. I try to think more macro than this. This morning I've given a lot of thought to this... and I could conceive doing someone an emotional injury by accident, arguing politics when the recipient of my arguments is considering his personal finances. I'll stop for the sake of amicability, though I still support this movement.

And honestly, when I hear the phrase "think that I owe them something" in a political discussion, it's a red flag for me, that the moment of debate has passed, and the moment of right-wing spitball throwing has begun. I leave this arena to Rush and friends.

Originally Posted by kidkboom

Frankly, I don't know what else I can say that could be constructive. The last two posts I've read were just descriptions of personal fears that were extracted from some pretty general language that certainly didn't target the concepts you two pulled out of them.

The one thing that I can say is, through the wording, it is revealed that Scott feels he's doing okay fiscally. That's good news and I certainly won't want to detract from that.

And given the lack of usefulness discussing political opinion in the face of what seems to be socio-psychological paranoia (basement? huh??) I'm going to save my effort on this topic for a later conversation where all parties are better informed - or, at least, less personally and emotionally tied to the issue.

When I discuss my opinions about politics, I rarely factor my own personal loss/gain into the equation - in my view, it would color my opinions and corrode my concept of what is just. I try to think more macro than this. This morning I've given a lot of thought to this... and I could conceive doing someone an emotional injury by accident, arguing politics when the recipient of my arguments is considering his personal finances. I'll stop for the sake of amicability, though I still support this movement.

And honestly, when I hear the phrase "think that I owe them something" in a political discussion, it's a red flag for me, that the moment of debate has passed, and the moment of right-wing spitball throwing has begun. I leave this arena to Rush and friends.

Kidkboom,

OK then can you spare your effort and explain what this movement is about? What would have to happen for this movement to say we've accomplished our goals?

As to your red flag the phrase "think that I owe them something" - how else do you redistribute the wealth as Barack Obama has stated he wants to do without someone owing someone else something (money) by force?

Your comments about my finances are hilarious.

And honestly, when I hear the phrase "I'm going to save my effort on this topic for a later conversation where all parties are better informed - or, at least, less personally and emotionally tied to the issue." please see me first two questions and please inform us.


Scott

Originally Posted by kidkboom

And honestly, when I hear the phrase "think that I owe them something" in a political discussion, it's a red flag for me

Please, don't take that personally, as that seemed to me being a very valid concern: Canadians ‘Occupy’ Toronto, Montreal in Wall Street Protests - Businessweek

About 1,000 people gathered in the heart of Toronto’s financial district beginning at 10 a.m. local time to protest inequality and advocate higher taxes for the wealthy.

One of my socially-oriented friends joined and later on said there were all kind of people there. Some of them were more sober and motivated and others just gathered to plainly smoke pot and hang around.
Also, the taxes in Toronto (a very Liberal city) are quite high, but apparently that's still not enough.

Originally Posted by Lampada

♪♫ "Nobody shouts or talks too loud,
Not in my castle on a cloud..." ♪♫





Seriously, the "snapshot" of the OWS chick getting arrested has to be the most stagiest-est staged photo in the history of staged photos...

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Seriously, the "snapshot" of the OWS chick getting arrested has to be the most stagiest-est staged photo in the history of staged photos...

+1 Though I have to admit that they've picked up a fine looking chick. The stupid cop's face in the background adds something too.

Occupy Wall Street - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

People, have care:

Originally Posted by wikipedia

On October 6, Brookfield Office Properties, which owns Zuccotti Park, issued a statement that "Sanitation is a growing concern... Normally the park is cleaned and inspected every weeknight[, but] because the protesters refuse to cooperate ... the park has not been cleaned since Friday, September 16 and as a result, sanitary conditions have reached unacceptable levels."

McDonald's got what it deserves

Originally Posted by wikipedia

Many protesters have taken to using the bathrooms of nearby business establishments; one nearby McDonald's restaurant "has become the movement's unofficial latrine"

And this is rather symbolic, isn't it?

Originally Posted by wikipedia

Demonstrators at Wall Street have complained of thefts of assorted items such as cameras, phones, and laptops. Thieves also stole $2500 of donations that were stored in a makeshift kitchen.

Originally Posted by fortheether

Kidkboom,

OK then can you spare your effort and explain what this movement is about? What would have to happen for this movement to say we've accomplished our goals?

As to your red flag the phrase "think that I owe them something" - how else do you redistribute the wealth as Barack Obama has stated he wants to do without someone owing someone else something (money) by force?

Your comments about my finances are hilarious.

And honestly, when I hear the phrase "I'm going to save my effort on this topic for a later conversation where all parties are better informed - or, at least, less personally and emotionally tied to the issue." please see me first two questions and please inform us.


Scott

It's clear to me that this is less about hearing what everyone has to say, and more about winning an argument, so I'll keep this concise, as i've already put three or four hours worth of work into this thread, and without much to show for it in the way of understanding each other.
In my opinion this movement is about one purpose: to wake people up. Particularly, to wake up people who are saying things similar to what you're saying, and there are many. To respond to the occupy movement by saying: "you need to get a job and move out of mommy's bassement" seems to me to be as biased and ill-informed as telling black plantation slaves in the 1800s to "just get an education and get a real job."
I'm leery to do this again: I swore I wouldn't get in another political debate on MR.com after the last one broke down so similarly - what happens next is, I try to describe the nature of the problem by explaining the common situation a lot of these people are going through; and the token republicans respond by telling me that it doesn't fit the description of THEIR life. I explain that jobs are requisite of education, that public/free education is a joke and doesn't GET jobs, that only those with the familial money to purchase education get tracked toward those jobs; then the republican tokens tell me that they got there through a grant and really hard work. I try to explain that the entire plane of business in america is corrupted and closed-door'd, that new businesses stand literally no hope in the face of these giant corporations that have enshadowed the entire playing field - Apple and the dread pirate Jobs own the cell-tech world, ConAgra owns the lion's share of the world's DNA, DuPont and AP own the world's political and commercial opinions, and so on. Then the republicans tell me about their own small business which they started (skipping neatly over the business college education they got and how it was paid for, and the hand-shaking they had to do with the existing businesses, the unions, the city and state governments, the special interests etc) .. They paint a Joe the Plumber picture that's really an extreme minority, but because somebody stands there and says "This is Everyman" x% of the readership believe him.
I'm saying all this to communicate to you that THERE IS A PROBLEM. Just because the problem has been sitting in one place for awhile, and hasn't moved, it doesn't make it a phantasm - it's real. The people on the OUTSIDE of wall street today don't have Roth IRAs, Harvard degrees, penthouses, pension plans, college savings for their kids and Gerber plans.. The people INSIDE of wall street do. (And it's lost 20-odd% value (oh no!) - that's nothing compared to the guy who lost 100% of his place to live in the same 'wave of recession'.)
At the end of the day, the problem is, capitalism is great, and I love the theory, but in practice - it's trumped by the injustice of a well-to-do individual munching on turkey legs while out the window, people are starving - that he wears italian sportcoats a few pockets shy of enough to hold his wallet, ipod, ipad bluetooth and blackberry; and the people outside keep their heads try with paper bags. The essence of the problem is, if there's no way toward success provided to a certain group of people, they're enslaved. And enslaved people WILL fight, and they'll be perfectly willing to die in the process, since it's often a better option to die fighting than to waste away unseen. It seems to me that if democrats would just accept the supine position of financial inferiority, and die off under the weight of their problems, that would be a fine solution for most republicans. if i had one, that would break my heart.
Until those folks become willing to take the other half of the country on as their responsibility and comrades both, this is just going to be hatfield-and-mccoy stupidity.
For this movement to accomplish goals, I will refrain: it needs a LEADER. I would say it needs a politician willing to represent its goals, and then find that the mob moves to the voting polls in support of this individual; but we got burned last time. I've watched for 4 years as every cotton-pickin thing Obama tried to do got shut down by the Republican army, both through legitimate means, and sneaky ones. And it's a wicked pisser because the whole time I knew that at the end of the four years, this same group would look at Obama's failed attempts as defeats that HE caused, when we all know better, we all watched him battle with the other branches of government in a stalemate that amounted to "blacklist: Obama". These people are a group of moneyed american elitists who never woke up from the H3 dream of the 90s, who wore Bush's tenure as president like a mink coat to protect them against all the madness of the world around them after 9-11, like some collective Scarlett O'Hara coming down the recession stairs in a curtain. And as opposed to join with the rest of their countrymen in achieving A SOLUTION THAT'S WORKABLE FOR EVERYONE, they have spent years throwing the bodies of american youth at the fire of the middle east like some crazed religious sacrifical priests, maybe hoping all the while to dwindle the population numbers that thwart their financial success by demanding those last few coveted pennies be allotted to feeding people who need food, and such other trivial democrat-ish things. Certainly they were hoping that by falling on outdated and defunct 50s-era callbacks like "military tradition" and "family values" that they would somehow revert the messed up world we live in back to the era of riding high on fossil fuel and commandeered assets from third-world countries. Apparently the new definiton of recession is the Hamptons maintain fiscal stasis while Brooklyn starves to death - and it surprises everyone that there's dissent about this?
But it's still a moot point.. We couldn't have a leader now - where would we get one? - unless this went from protest to riot, and then it would be silenced in one quick mortar-blast fired by the 33% of our country who serve in the military and have received military training that employs techniques picked right up out of hitler camps - the sleep deprivation, nutritional deprivation, followed by political indoctrination in a brain-stressed state - so that doesn't lead us anywhere good, either.
And if there was a gandhi in that crowd? well, you wouldn't notice him. you'd be busy assuming he lives in his parent's basement, and telling him to stop trying to get a buck off of you, and go get a haircut and a real job.
Sigh... my sincerest apologies to Lampada for having to read through all my crud. feeling kind of guilty about that.

Originally Posted by kidkboom

It's clear to me that this is less about hearing what everyone has to say, and more about winning an argument, so I'll keep this concise, as i've already put three or four hours worth of work into this thread, and without much to show for it in the way of understanding each other.
In my opinion this movement is about one purpose: to wake people up. Particularly, to wake up people who are saying things similar to what you're saying, and there are many. To respond to the occupy movement by saying: "you need to get a job and move out of mommy's bassement" seems to me to be as biased and ill-informed as telling black plantation slaves in the 1800s to "just get an education and get a real job."
I'm leery to do this again: I swore I wouldn't get in another political debate on MR.com after the last one broke down so similarly - what happens next is, I try to describe the nature of the problem by explaining the common situation a lot of these people are going through; and the token republicans respond by telling me that it doesn't fit the description of THEIR life. I explain that jobs are requisite of education, that public/free education is a joke and doesn't GET jobs, that only those with the familial money to purchase education get tracked toward those jobs; then the republican tokens tell me that they got there through a grant and really hard work. I try to explain that the entire plane of business in america is corrupted and closed-door'd, that new businesses stand literally no hope in the face of these giant corporations that have enshadowed the entire playing field - Apple and the dread pirate Jobs own the cell-tech world, ConAgra owns the lion's share of the world's DNA, DuPont and AP own the world's political and commercial opinions, and so on. Then the republicans tell me about their own small business which they started (skipping neatly over the business college education they got and how it was paid for, and the hand-shaking they had to do with the existing businesses, the unions, the city and state governments, the special interests etc) .. They paint a Joe the Plumber picture that's really an extreme minority, but because somebody stands there and says "This is Everyman" x% of the readership believe him.
I'm saying all this to communicate to you that THERE IS A PROBLEM. Just because the problem has been sitting in one place for awhile, and hasn't moved, it doesn't make it a phantasm - it's real. The people on the OUTSIDE of wall street today don't have Roth IRAs, Harvard degrees, penthouses, pension plans, college savings for their kids and Gerber plans.. The people INSIDE of wall street do. (And it's lost 20-odd% value (oh no!) - that's nothing compared to the guy who lost 100% of his place to live in the same 'wave of recession'.)
At the end of the day, the problem is, capitalism is great, and I love the theory, but in practice - it's trumped by the injustice of a well-to-do individual munching on turkey legs while out the window, people are starving - that he wears italian sportcoats a few pockets shy of enough to hold his wallet, ipod, ipad bluetooth and blackberry; and the people outside keep their heads try with paper bags. The essence of the problem is, if there's no way toward success provided to a certain group of people, they're enslaved. And enslaved people WILL fight, and they'll be perfectly willing to die in the process, since it's often a better option to die fighting than to waste away unseen. It seems to me that if democrats would just accept the supine position of financial inferiority, and die off under the weight of their problems, that would be a fine solution for most republicans. if i had one, that would break my heart.
Until those folks become willing to take the other half of the country on as their responsibility and comrades both, this is just going to be hatfield-and-mccoy stupidity.
For this movement to accomplish goals, I will refrain: it needs a LEADER. I would say it needs a politician willing to represent its goals, and then find that the mob moves to the voting polls in support of this individual; but we got burned last time. I've watched for 4 years as every cotton-pickin thing Obama tried to do got shut down by the Republican army, both through legitimate means, and sneaky ones. And it's a wicked pisser because the whole time I knew that at the end of the four years, this same group would look at Obama's failed attempts as defeats that HE caused, when we all know better, we all watched him battle with the other branches of government in a stalemate that amounted to "blacklist: Obama". These people are a group of moneyed american elitists who never woke up from the H3 dream of the 90s, who wore Bush's tenure as president like a mink coat to protect them against all the madness of the world around them after 9-11, like some collective Scarlett O'Hara coming down the recession stairs in a curtain. And as opposed to join with the rest of their countrymen in achieving A SOLUTION THAT'S WORKABLE FOR EVERYONE, they have spent years throwing the bodies of american youth at the fire of the middle east like some crazed religious sacrifical priests, maybe hoping all the while to dwindle the population numbers that thwart their financial success by demanding those last few coveted pennies be allotted to feeding people who need food, and such other trivial democrat-ish things. Certainly they were hoping that by falling on outdated and defunct 50s-era callbacks like "military tradition" and "family values" that they would somehow revert the messed up world we live in back to the era of riding high on fossil fuel and commandeered assets from third-world countries. Apparently the new definiton of recession is the Hamptons maintain fiscal stasis while Brooklyn starves to death - and it surprises everyone that there's dissent about this?
But it's still a moot point.. We couldn't have a leader now - where would we get one? - unless this went from protest to riot, and then it would be silenced in one quick mortar-blast fired by the 33% of our country who serve in the military and have received military training that employs techniques picked right up out of hitler camps - the sleep deprivation, nutritional deprivation, followed by political indoctrination in a brain-stressed state - so that doesn't lead us anywhere good, either.
And if there was a gandhi in that crowd? well, you wouldn't notice him. you'd be busy assuming he lives in his parent's basement, and telling him to stop trying to get a buck off of you, and go get a haircut and a real job.
Sigh... my sincerest apologies to Lampada for having to read through all my crud. feeling kind of guilty about that.

I don't want an argument but when you say this:

"I've watched for 4 years as every cotton-pickin thing Obama tried to do got shut down by the Republican army, both through legitimate means, and sneaky ones."

I have to reply. BTW - I'm a registered independent. The makeup of congress for the first 1 year and about 9 months of Obama's presidency was democratic. Both houses. Kind of means Obama was thorted by democrats, eh?


From:

111th United States Congress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Major events

• January 2009: Two Senate seats were disputed when the Congress convened:
  
  1. An appointment dispute over the Illinois seat vacated by President Barack Obama arose following Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's alleged solicitation of bribes in exchange for an appointment to the Senate. Roland Burris (D) was appointed to the seat on December 31, 2008, his credentials were accepted on January 12, 2009, and he was sworn in to office on January 15, 2009.
  2. An election dispute over the Minnesota seat previously held by Norm Coleman (R), between Coleman and challenger Al Franken (D), was decided in late June 2009 in favor of Franken,^[6] who was sworn in on July 7, 2009.^[7]
• January 8, 2009: Joint session counted the Electoral College votes of the 2008 presidential election.^[8]
• January 20, 2009: Inauguration of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
• September 9, 2009: President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to promote health care reform, which Representative Joe Wilson (R) interrupted by shouting at the President.
• January 25, 2010: 2010 State of the Union Address
• April 20, 2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
• November 2, 2010: 2010 general elections, in which Republicans regained control of the House while the Democrats remained in control of the Senate.

I'm going to read this thread's earlier posts as until recently I didn't care what the Occupiers are about. I became interested when Obama made positive statement's about this movement. I wonder why he made fun of the tea party but suspect the Occupiers also agree with him - yea all that less government and freedom talk.

Kidkboom - thank's for replying and I'll do some reading about this.

Scott

Originally Posted by kidkboom

It's clear to me that this is less about hearing what everyone has to say, and more about winning an argument, so I'll keep this concise, as i've already put three or four hours worth of work into this thread, and without much to show for it in the way of understanding each other.
In my opinion this movement is about one purpose: to wake people up. Particularly, to wake up people who are saying things similar to what you're saying, and there are many. To respond to the occupy movement by saying: "you need to get a job and move out of mommy's bassement" seems to me to be as biased and ill-informed as telling black plantation slaves in the 1800s to "just get an education and get a real job."
I'm leery to do this again: I swore I wouldn't get in another political debate on MR.com after the last one broke down so similarly - what happens next is, I try to describe the nature of the problem by explaining the common situation a lot of these people are going through; and the token republicans respond by telling me that it doesn't fit the description of THEIR life. I explain that jobs are requisite of education, that public/free education is a joke and doesn't GET jobs, that only those with the familial money to purchase education get tracked toward those jobs; then the republican tokens tell me that they got there through a grant and really hard work. I try to explain that the entire plane of business in america is corrupted and closed-door'd, that new businesses stand literally no hope in the face of these giant corporations that have enshadowed the entire playing field - Apple and the dread pirate Jobs own the cell-tech world, ConAgra owns the lion's share of the world's DNA, DuPont and AP own the world's political and commercial opinions, and so on. Then the republicans tell me about their own small business which they started (skipping neatly over the business college education they got and how it was paid for, and the hand-shaking they had to do with the existing businesses, the unions, the city and state governments, the special interests etc) .. They paint a Joe the Plumber picture that's really an extreme minority, but because somebody stands there and says "This is Everyman" x% of the readership believe him.
I'm saying all this to communicate to you that THERE IS A PROBLEM. Just because the problem has been sitting in one place for awhile, and hasn't moved, it doesn't make it a phantasm - it's real. The people on the OUTSIDE of wall street today don't have Roth IRAs, Harvard degrees, penthouses, pension plans, college savings for their kids and Gerber plans.. The people INSIDE of wall street do. (And it's lost 20-odd% value (oh no!) - that's nothing compared to the guy who lost 100% of his place to live in the same 'wave of recession'.)
At the end of the day, the problem is, capitalism is great, and I love the theory, but in practice - it's trumped by the injustice of a well-to-do individual munching on turkey legs while out the window, people are starving - that he wears italian sportcoats a few pockets shy of enough to hold his wallet, ipod, ipad bluetooth and blackberry; and the people outside keep their heads try with paper bags. The essence of the problem is, if there's no way toward success provided to a certain group of people, they're enslaved. And enslaved people WILL fight, and they'll be perfectly willing to die in the process, since it's often a better option to die fighting than to waste away unseen. It seems to me that if democrats would just accept the supine position of financial inferiority, and die off under the weight of their problems, that would be a fine solution for most republicans. if i had one, that would break my heart.
Until those folks become willing to take the other half of the country on as their responsibility and comrades both, this is just going to be hatfield-and-mccoy stupidity.
For this movement to accomplish goals, I will refrain: it needs a LEADER. I would say it needs a politician willing to represent its goals, and then find that the mob moves to the voting polls in support of this individual; but we got burned last time. I've watched for 4 years as every cotton-pickin thing Obama tried to do got shut down by the Republican army, both through legitimate means, and sneaky ones. And it's a wicked pisser because the whole time I knew that at the end of the four years, this same group would look at Obama's failed attempts as defeats that HE caused, when we all know better, we all watched him battle with the other branches of government in a stalemate that amounted to "blacklist: Obama". These people are a group of moneyed american elitists who never woke up from the H3 dream of the 90s, who wore Bush's tenure as president like a mink coat to protect them against all the madness of the world around them after 9-11, like some collective Scarlett O'Hara coming down the recession stairs in a curtain. And as opposed to join with the rest of their countrymen in achieving A SOLUTION THAT'S WORKABLE FOR EVERYONE, they have spent years throwing the bodies of american youth at the fire of the middle east like some crazed religious sacrifical priests, maybe hoping all the while to dwindle the population numbers that thwart their financial success by demanding those last few coveted pennies be allotted to feeding people who need food, and such other trivial democrat-ish things. Certainly they were hoping that by falling on outdated and defunct 50s-era callbacks like "military tradition" and "family values" that they would somehow revert the messed up world we live in back to the era of riding high on fossil fuel and commandeered assets from third-world countries. Apparently the new definiton of recession is the Hamptons maintain fiscal stasis while Brooklyn starves to death - and it surprises everyone that there's dissent about this?
But it's still a moot point.. We couldn't have a leader now - where would we get one? - unless this went from protest to riot, and then it would be silenced in one quick mortar-blast fired by the 33% of our country who serve in the military and have received military training that employs techniques picked right up out of hitler camps - the sleep deprivation, nutritional deprivation, followed by political indoctrination in a brain-stressed state - so that doesn't lead us anywhere good, either.
And if there was a gandhi in that crowd? well, you wouldn't notice him. you'd be busy assuming he lives in his parent's basement, and telling him to stop trying to get a buck off of you, and go get a haircut and a real job.
Sigh... my sincerest apologies to Lampada for having to read through all my crud. feeling kind of guilty about that.

Let's help you find a leader. If you ran an ad on Craig's list for a leader, what would it say?

Scott

Originally Posted by fortheether

Let's help you find a leader. If you ran an ad on Craig's list for a leader, what would it say?

Scott

It's seems others are not clear in the goals either:

Most Americans Uncertain About "Occupy Wall Street" Goals


Scott

Originally Posted by fortheether

It's seems others are not clear in the goals either

Well-well, I guess the goal is pretty clear: to get the steam out of the tank. It's all about the banks conspiracy, you know...

You best get a leader and goals ASAP - I watched about 15 minutes of this:

OccupyPhiladelphia - live streaming video powered by Livestream

and most of the speakers are about their funding for school. Telling moment, when a Ron Paul supporter spoke and gave a time frame that a voter has to be registered in order to vote for Ron Paul. The very next speaker said if you had a brain that you wouldn't vote for Ron Paul - there was lot's of clapping for that speaker. Who's the name callers?

Scott

If they're against wall street, they support who for president?

Obama’s raised more money for Democrats from Wall Street donors than all Republican candidates combined

Interesting, eh?

Scott

Originally Posted by fortheether

You best get a leader and goals ASAP - I watched about 15 minutes of this:

OccupyPhiladelphia - live streaming video powered by Livestream

and most of the speakers are about their funding for school. Telling moment, when a Ron Paul supporter spoke and gave a time frame that a voter has to be registered in order to vote for Ron Paul. The very next speaker said if you had a brain that you wouldn't vote for Ron Paul - there was lot's of clapping for that speaker. Who's the name callers?

Scott

I'm not heading the movement, nor am I directly involved; I live in Arizona, about as far as you can get from NY stateside. I simply feel some sympathy and support toward the movement. That sentiment seems to be largely mixed in the world right now.

You can direct your advice to their official website, where their leaders or whatever can be found.. Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for American Revolution

Thanks for engaging me in debate and being willing to research all this info and share it with me. I appreciate it and I wish you the very best of luck.

Short term profits killed the economy. The "Greed is good" mentality.
Americans have a short term outlook and memory. Double digit profits don't happen every year and when they do, a collapse will follow (see housing).
We used to make a lot of "things" here. Short term profit sent the manufacturing overseas. A less expensive product (then cheaper) = better profits but no one to buy the products.
Henry Ford might have been a a real SOB but he knew that paying his workers allowed them to buy his product and kept a stable an loyal workforce.
I worked in plastics for 30 years, primarily shoes and other consumer goods. The footwear industry is gone. Not just a couple companies, all of it. A few bookkeepers, accountants and designers remain with upper management. All of the lower level production and assembly, mid level management, tooling (me) are gone and I doubt they will come back.

I worked for years learning and developing my skills to make a quality product at a fair price. I used to make some things that can be done without like fishing lures and golf trinkets but they kept companies alive that also made packaging, printing, raw and manufacture materials.

My resume is a graveyard of companies that were made to fail over a percentage point or two.
See Is "Walmart Good for America?". Transcript | Is Wal-Mart Good For America? | FRONTLINE | PBS

They did the same thing to Dr. Scholl's; one of my former clients. Collective Brands (Collective Brands, Inc.) sent all their manufacturing overseas. Not some, all. And took the profits. I could take you for a ride about an hour from my home and spend 3 hours showing you all the empty buildings where businesses once were.

We gave it all away for cheap crap and short term profits.

The stuff we get from China is no less expensive in terms of price but far greater in the long term.

China is thinking long term.

That's the root cause. Immediate gratification.

Originally Posted by capecoddah

I worked for years learning and developing my skills to make a quality product at a fair price. I used to make some things that can be done without like fishing lures and golf trinkets but they kept companies alive that also made packaging, printing, raw and manufacture materials.

That is an excellent point! The totally 'unregulated' free market is fundamentally based on the idea of the 'agile workers', the ones who would move from one employment to another and acquire new skills fairly quickly. But the reality is that concept has limited applications. That's why we need some balance. We shouldn't let the extremes of either way (right or left) to rule the country. And especially we shouldn't let those who need blood for their social experiments to rule the country. Regardless of how passionate they are in their desire to hang the wrong guys.

The "social justice" deals with the problem of slicing the pie more equally, but the Western-style capitalism deals [most of the time] with how to create a larger pie. But, there should be some limits and stoppers on that process to make it more humane.

Bill Black: #OccupyWallStreet A Counter to White-Collar Fraud | AmpedStatus.
.
AmpedStatus - Knowledge Is Power.

That we should get jobs now [...]

That's all nice, but HOW? WHO would create the jobs? The first option is - the entrepreneurs. The second option - the government.

The first option means someone should make a profit out of those people in the mob as well as bear all the risks of dealing with them. With all the due respect, only certain part of that crowd would qualify.

The second option means the rest of the public (i.e. not those who participate in the Wall Street gathering) should bear the risks and try to make profit (or know they would not make any profit) by doing what the private entrepreneurs consider too risky. Why would the rest of the public do that? Only to help those in need, correct? But, what fundamental difference would it make comparing with presently keeping those guys on relief? For the to-be employees that would obviously bring in more money and self-respect, but for the rest of the public that would equally be more expensive. Unless, of course, that the new enterprises would make a profit. But, what chance do have to make a profit? I'm inclined to say the chances are pretty slim. Otherwise, the private investment groups (who are constantly looking for the new ways of making money) would pick it up. A part of their job is to evaluate risks. So, that means the public is pushed forcefully into an enterprise which is likely to fail and pay more INDIRECTLY to get those people out of their basements. Speaking of the fair, is that fair?

Clearly, the CEOs are overpaid. Sure thing. So, become a CEO would you? Oh, it's difficult? Too much competition with lots of risks? Being legally liable to just about any word or action? Not a problem, but why to make those CEOs to be responsible for all the failures? Ok, so the recent recession was due to the banks handing out money with no diligent verification of income. Sure, but someone was bought into the idea of owning a property without the real ability to pay for it. And who that was? The CEOs? No. The bankers? No. It was the general public who took on a risky enterprise and failed. So, why not to gather around a corner of Elm Street and Pine Avenue and start protesting that the owners of those homes took too much risk and/or knowingly overpaid for their properties in an auction and let the prices go loose?

Fair is fair, right?

Glass–Steagall Act

Glass–Steagall Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A good place to start.