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- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
Not really up with these protests.
But I know amongst my liberal friends what bothers people isn't capitalism but unfettered extreme-capitalism and 100% blind faith in the market to self correct.
I sometimes feel as if in the past there was capitalism but there was also a sense of ethics and duty to society. This left a situation where the goal was to make a profit, but where there were some situations where the cost of the profit was considered too extreme and immoral, and in those times the "bosses" or whatever you want to call it did the right thing.
Most people I know have no interest in living under socialism or communism, but they do want a fair go for fair work.
At least here in australia, once if you were loyal and if you worked your life for a company, they'd show you some loyality back. That's often not how it goes around here these days. I've seen people who've given 15 years to a company at low pay be told they have to make themselves into independent contractors rather than employees - so the place can hire them back to do their exact work they do at less pay and with no need for any benifits and stuff like that. I've seen people who were great at their jobs be fired because the company needs to grow 15% a year and if they can't do it in revenue then they have to do it in salary. So those people go home to their kids with no jobs so that the company they've served can post even larger profits.
For a while I worked in retail as a store manager. I once worked 32 days without a day off at all (no weekend, no substitute weekend days off during the week) - because I was told there was not enough money to cover the cost of giving me a weekend at the moment.
But this wasn't a mom and pop store who are close to the breadline - this was a corporation that posted a $43.2 Billion annual revenue. And there's no money for me to have a weekend? Bullshit.
Now the freemarket people would say if I don't like it I leave and when no one does it it corrects. But that's not what happens is it. I do leave because I don't like it - but they just find someone more desperate than me to do it. People can't play on the "if no one likes it" game when they have kids to feed. There's a power imbalance that free market theorists tend to forget. Humans will always blink first before a company because the company doesn't have starving homeless children.
So yeah...I dont want to live in a communist country...and everyone (including the workers) wants the companys to be sucessful...but the question is do we have to have ongoing profit NO MATTER THE COST. Where's the ethical line?
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
But I know amongst my liberal friends what bothers people isn't capitalism but unfettered extreme-capitalism and 100% blind faith in the market to self correct.
This pretty much sums it all up, and is my main issue with business.
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
At least here in australia, once if you were loyal and if you worked your life for a company, they'd show you some loyality back. That's often not how it goes around here these days. I've seen people who've given 15 years to a company at low pay be told they have to make themselves into independent contractors rather than employees - so the place can hire them back to do their exact work they do at less pay and with no need for any benifits and stuff like that. I've seen people who were great at their jobs be fired because the company needs to grow 15% a year and if they can't do it in revenue then they have to do it in salary. So those people go home to their kids with no jobs so that the company they've served can post even larger profits.
To me this is what the protest is about, not any of this strawman bullshit the right wing are claiming.
I think a lot of the anger is rooted in this change for the worse over the last three decades. The corporations have slowly whittled away the worker's benefits to further profits and keep Wall Street happy. What workers were given instead was "free market" solutions (401ks) instead of pensions that guaranteed the worker something at the end. Now they want to get rid of social security and Medicare here in America. They won't do it overnight, but they've already convinced enough people that it's a "ponzi scheme" and they will whittle that away over the next few decades too. They'll get it too I'd imagine, one day it will be 86'd.
It was Wall Street that took these risks that crashed the market, not the everyday people who invested in their 401ks trying to save for retirement. Millions of Americans could not retire once it crashed.
You can't short your retirement portfolio, but the hedge firms certainly can; in other words they win either way. The average American is taught to dollar cost average over time, ride the dips and the peaks and you'll come out ahead. That's a tough line to buy after the last decade. In a normal market yea sure, but in one that is allowed to run riot (do to lax regulation provided by our government which is bought off by WS), then how does the average guy stand a chance at coming out ahead? What I saw is a group of firms who had trillions of dollars (pensions, 401s, retirement funds), financed by middle America and was shamelessly reckless with it. After they burned everything to the ground, they asked for money from the tax payers to keep them afloat. The sad reality is that while I hated (and still hate) the thought of socializing loss, it was necessary to stop everything from going down the toilet. Seeing the DOW get cut in half is one thing, seeing it lose 90% of value is quite another.
The subprime loans that went to shit were financed and then resold by WS. These weren't traditional banks in the way we think of them. They were "home lending" firms set up exclusively by Wall Street, who had no interest in servicing loans, only selling them. Shit loans bundled and sold as premium investments (my segue to point 2.)
Second problem that didn't protect the American workers (and their investments) was the failed ratings system. Moodys etc who gave AAA ratings to these shit investments (bundled sub prime notes.) We never would have gotten off the ground if they had been rated properly. I'd say this is the least talked about issue, and IMO one of the biggest culprits of our economic demise. Again, Goldman Sachs knew they were dogshit, even so much as to short them. So how is that fair to the American public? Surely they knew that the day would come where the house of cards would fall, but why worry? They make money either way. American investors assumed what they thought was normal market risk, not that crazy shit. As America watched it's portfolios burn, Sachs got billions in bailout money. Did anybody from GS go to jail for this shit? Nope. It's hardly a surprise why this would chap people's collective asses.
BOA same thing. Taking bailout money and then (as a way of saying thanks) charging people excessive fees, not working with them on home loan modifications etc. That's fucked up.
Firms today, running lean and mean....and not hiring. They are sitting on record profits, a surplus of cash in the trillions. But no hiring? Do they have to? No they are not obligated to hire anybody. But again, it's not difficult to see why people are pissed.
My father worked for GE for 30 years (or so) and then retired. That was common for a man of his generation. He was able to buy company stock over those three decades at a discount, as well as get a pension when he retired. He had job security up until the last five years, when they were constantly offering him packages to retire early. He was one of the only full time employees with benefits in his office by the time he left. This simply does not happen today for Middle America. Benefits are slashed, your job security is poor, and for retirement you get to give your money to WS and pray it doesn't vanish overnight. All of this is directly related to firms who are beholden to Wall Street; short term profit snuffing out any long term gain for the Middle Class. Of course by the time you hit your prime earning age, 50's, you have a high chance of getting laid off so some kid can replace you for half the salary. Good luck getting a job in your 50's when that happens too.
That's just SOME of the reasons people are pissed.
