Deeper changes are needed, such as a "Robin Hood" tax on financial transactions; reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act in the US; implementing a ban on high-frequency "flash" trading. The "too big to fail" banks must be broken up, downsized and made to serve the people, the economy and society again. The financial fraudsters responsible for the 2008 meltdown must be brought to justice. Then there is the long-term mother of all solutions: a total rethinking of western consumerism that throws into question how we measure progress.posted by overglow at 6:16 PM on September 20, 2011 [11 favorites]
“Raise our allowance!”posted by shii at 8:45 PM on September 20, 2011 [4 favorites]
“Extend summer vacation!”
22 children from Nerima’s Kami-Shakuji Children’s Center in Tokyo took to the streets in a “Children’s Pride” demonstration after writing their own demands on placards.
The Children’s Center is linked to an artist’s studio that helps the children with these activities. The aim, say the artists, is to raise awareness of their feelings in society.
As they approached a yakitori stand on the corner, one child abruptly changed his chant to, “I want to eat yakitori!”, “I want to eat yakitori!”, as adults on the street observed the spectacle warmly.
they lost me ...And we should be surprised why?
posted by H. Roark
In general, the fact that there's no meaningful thing for the average person to do in the midst of what increasingly appears to be a very bad situation is an indictment of American democracy. You can't engage in meaningful direct action, you can't channel your energies into electoral politics, and you can't ignore the problem because it just keeps getting worse.Right exactly. The democratic and republican parties are completely beholden to wallstreet. If you want to do anything about it, well tough luck. In November you get to pick between two wallstreet approved parties, and on the democratic side in 2012 you don't even get to pick a presidential nominee. The game seems rigged, and Wallstreet is the central point of contention.
Hasn't the whole "workers control the means of production" thing been tried before?Wallstreet doesn't produce anything.
posted by vicx at 10:29 PM on September 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
The peasants are revolting.
They most certainly are.
But I wish they were old fashioned revolting peasants like my fathers used to have.
And man oh man, do nerdy white liberals get ever so nervous when that shit really goes down.which might have some kind of goodish intent behind it buuuut really does seem kind of creepy and racist in a way i'm having trouble putting my finger on, and that this dude quoting "pixellante" thinks "[consumerism] gives me cool stuff"? and this shit about marx and the khmer fucking rouge
Right. So they stand for nothing, and everything. They stand for so many things that people who would be sympathetic to some parts of their manifesto might not be sympathetic to others.No no, what the left needs is more complaining about itself
They left needs a sharp, clear messege.
We apologize 4 blocking 'occupywallst.org' It was not intentional & caught by our spam filters. It is resolved, but may be a residual delayposted by TheophileEscargot at 1:35 AM on September 21, 2011
The police will only be able to enforce the Wall Street barricades so long as there are few enough protesters for them to control.Then the mass incarceration starts. Remember the NYC republican convention?
New proposal: lifetime disposable income for members of congress is scaled to median household income. Just get the incentives right...People keep proposing stuff like this. It's really dumb. It will accomplish only three things: Discourage smart people from running for congress when they could be making much better money elsewhere, encourage people who are already rich and don't need extra money to run (although with your variation that wouldn't be a problem) and worst of all, it would make people in congress much, much easier to bribe.
this isn't the place for this, but I'm under the impression that median health outcomes for the 53% of Americans with private healthcare is superior to median health outcomes for people of similar income levels in single-payer systems.Why are you under that impression? Also so what? Why take arbitrary silences of the population and look only at those results?
The privately insured don't go bankrupt unless they lose their insurance.It's called copays bro. Also coverage limits, etc. Medical insurance in the U.S does not pay for everything.
In a general way, Marx’s socialism (communism) as a political programme may be most quickly defined, from the Marxist standpoint, as the complete democratization of society, not merely of political forms. But the democratic movement of the 19th century began by putting the struggle for advanced political forms in the forefront; and so did Marx, in a different programmatic context. For Marx, the fight for democratic forms of government – democratization in the state – was a leading edge of the socialist effort; not its be-all and end-all but an integral part of it all...(Elsewhere, he also looks what Marx meant by dictatorship of the proletariat)
... The characteristic answer to the problem emerging from Marx’s theory was already heralded in his notebook critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right, where he sought to show that “true democracy” requires a new social content – socialism; and it will be rounded off with his analysis of the Paris commune, which showed that a state with a new social content entailed truly democratic forms. Marx's theory moves in the direction of defining consistent democracy in socialist terms, and consistent socialism in democratic terms.
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posted by KokuRyu at 5:21 PM on September 20, 2011 [7 favorites]