Wall street protesters

Since we have quite the international membership here I figured this is the perfect place to ask the world. Wall streets one percenters are hoarding 90% of the money while so many are out of work and the middle class has vanished.

What do you think about Americans protesting wall street?

Can you be more specific what you are concerned about? I haven't watched the news today so if this is in reference to some news story maybe you can give us some of those details as well.

Otherwise, Wall Street is hording anyones money. They are just the middleman for one thing (traders). If you have some extra money and decide to buy a few shares of Apple for instance then you are providing capital for Apple to fund their business. If they do well the value of your few shares go up. If they don't do well your shares go down. You are taking a business risk just like any small business owner. That's way if things do well you get a return that is a little better than if you took a sure thing by going to a bank a buying a CD.

If you are concerned that the people who work on Wall Street make too much money I'll sure they do but it's not a significant drain on the US economy or any different than a Doctor who makes too much or an over paid government worker or whatever. It isn't the cause of the decline in the middle class.

Maybe you have a more specific point that I'm not aware of.

I'm all for a stable Wall Street. I think too many people think that it's just an issue for the rich. Most people has 401k's or own some stock in one way or another. Many people these days no longer have pensions and have to provide for themselves in retirement. Putting all ones savings in the bank isn't going to grow very fast. The idea that the little guy isn't involved in the stock market is incorrect.

It's basically a scape goat issue that occurs when the economy is bad and people are looking for someone to blame. It takes everyones eye off the ball. Wall Street isn't the reason for unemployment. Wall Street is there to funnel money from those with some spare cash to businesses who need it. That's helping the job creation process.

If we are talking about tax rates that is open for discussion of course but there are reasons for capital gains rates. It's all a matter of degree of course.

There are problems on Wall Street of course as fair as fair disclosure and all the rest but it's really got nothing to do with the poor economy or the reason why so many are out of work.

Here is the link it is called the Occupy Wall Street Protest

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/politics/occupy-wall-street/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

This is a protest of income inequality, corporate greed, high unemployment, corruption and a list of other social ills. I was really surprised to see it on the news I figured it would be covered up and not headlined like it is.

I was directly affected by bad political decisions when my job with General Motors was sent to Mexico after the NAFTA agreement. The towns in New England were I live are full of empty manufacturing facilities. We used to make everything from shoes to automotive parts the plants all sit empty now or were converted to condos or apartment complexes.

We need to start manufacturing products in this country again our current economy is unsustainable that is what this is about. People want to work but can't find jobs while the fat cats on wall street rake in multimillion dollar salaries the $20 dollar an hour manufacturing jobs are long gone.

The economy is tough right now and a lot of people are out of work and worried and frustrated and that's what this is about. However a frustrated emotional group marching on Wall Street is not a well informed clear thinking way to make decisions. They are venting steam out of frustration. It's understandable.

If someone thinks a corporate CEO is overpaid then demonstrate in front of that specific companies headquarters. They might also consider how an overpaid CEO has any link to their problems unless they are a shareholder in that particular company.

Some consider NFL players to be overpaid. However if the entire NFL were closed down forever tomorrow it wouldn't help the economy one bit. NAFTA wasn't the problem. Change occurs (and few of us like it) and yet we have to deal with it. NAFTA was trying to deal with change that was occurring anyway.

Everyone in the 1800's more or less used to be a farmer. Change happens. They resisted and just wanted it to be like it was in the past. Then they moved on and got a job in the factories. Now we have change again. People ultimately will have to move on and adapt. There are jobs and people has to get retrained for those jobs.

It's not matter of whether any one person likes that. Whether one likes that or not ultimately that is what will have to happen. The South isn't going to be full on cotton manufacturing plants anymore. Detroit isn't going to supply most of the cars to the world.

What some rich CEO makes in his paycheck isn't affecting most of the rest of us. If he made $1 a year it still wouldn't solve the unemployment problem. If we are looking for jobs it doesn't make sure to protest those who do create jobs even though it's not the jobs everyone wants.

The South went through this first and now there are more high tech jobs there. People resisted but ultimately they have to choice but to accept change and now people are in other industries. At the moment of course the whole country is in a tough economy. Government policies are the major issue. Telling corporations what to do isn't either.

People didn't force the auto makers to make cars in Detroit. They did it because it was a good business decision at the time. What they do now will be for the same reason. It will have to be a good business decision and not Washington passing some subsidy to try to ignore the realities of change.

We've all been laid off before. What Bill Gates makes has no impact on my life whatsoever.

The main problem is we as a people will never be able to get over the mentality of "i want what he/she has." Someone with less always wants what someone with more has. Here's the way I look at the world now, and it helps me cope: EVERYTHING you don't do yourself is a luxury so be grateful. That means the toast you eat in the morning, or the socks you wear to work, or the batteries that power your flashlights - the list it too long to keep track of - are all luxuries because you don't manufacture them yourself. I say if you kill and grow all of your food, manufacture your own clothes, provide materials for your dwelling, and you're still being crapped on by 'others who have more' then you truly have a reason to gripe. But nowadays we take nearly everything for granted and we've become an entitlement society. Don't get me wrong, I don't condone the greed one bit. But that's money for you. Money truly is a root of all evil. I'm not saying it's THE root, but it's at least a part of that root. Life will always be filled with people who have more than you. We should take that as motivation to accomplish more instead of taking away from others. The USA still is a land of opportunities. Don't let the confused and agenda oriented media make you believe otherwise.

And by the way, I think it's completely asinine that professional athletes make millions of dollars to play a game, and actors can make even more just because they got discovered. That's why I don't really support pro sport anymore. My 'protest' is simply not supporting them with my money or viewership.

A word from Dylan Ratigan

Slightly unrelated but Steve Jobs died

People want the "good" union jobs back but to an extent they never were sustainable.

If someone is a mechanic and works on an assembly line for GM and makes $60k/year (just as an example) and if GM goes away and the best job available for that mechanic is now in the service department of the local GM dealership lets say at $30k/year then the old job wasn't sustainable.

When you are paying someone twice what anyone else will pay them that situation is not going to prevail over time.

It's not good for the overall economy either. It's good for the GM worker only because it's twice as much as anyone else will pay him. It's not good for everyone who doesn't work at GM however. If the goal is for everyone to have a "good" union job then that would mean that all mechanics would make $60k and all other workers would more or less double their salaries as well.

If that occurred no one would be any better off because everything would cost twice as much and your living standard wouldn't have changed. For anyone whose salary doesn't now double they are much worse off.

What do you think will happen to an NFL football player if cities suddenly decide to quit subsidizing stadiums and if ticket prices get so high that no one can afford to attend games in person? People will lose interest and not watch as much on TV. Advertisers won't pay as much for ad time and the league will go away.

So, an average bench warming football player who is now making $5 million a year will have to investigate his next best option which would be a high school football coach making $60k/year.

He will wish the old days with the good jobs will come back but they won't because it wasn't sustainable. When your next best job option is drastically different than your current job that job isn't sustainable.

Its kind of a copy of the start of the tea party movement but on the far opposite political spectrum. Like the tea party, I think its too divisive. Everyone is too extreme one direction or another and that's why nothing is getting done. Both political parties have pushed their agenda too far in one direction or another and created the mess. This new movement is only going to make this problem worse rather than help as there are too many far left democrats in office that will feel new empowerment and there won't be enough moderates left in either party to actually accomplish anything. The original stimulus bill was a bust because there was way too many handouts and breaks in it when all that money should have gone to building infrastructure. Obama's new plan is sort of trying to go that direction, but why the heck didn't he do it on his previous attempt? Now the nation doesn't have enough money to do the new plan. I know people hated TARP and I agree it was mismanaged, however, people forget that most of the TARP money was loans and a good majority of what was spent on TARP has been paid back and some with interest. It was a heck of a lot more effective than the Obama stimulus and it cost far less than in the end than what the original payout was. The Obama health plan is a bust and will be unsustainable. With the courts striking down the mandated insurance part of it, there is no way to fund it. It would be better to repeal the whole thing and start from scratch.

To the tea partiers, the nation is too far in debt to balance the budget without some tax increases. Its common sense. There's far too many breaks and loopholes in current tax law. And yes, health care still needs to be fixed even if the Obama bill was a horrible way of trying to do it.

You make some good points, gcbryan.

If you live in a small or mid-sized city, take a look at around at many of the upper class or even "elite" upper class in terms of wealth. Most of them are owners of a local business they probably worked day and night to get to be as successful as it is. They're not a "fat cat" or "Wall Streeter" or a trust fund baby. They seized the "American Dream" and now they have a successful business that earns them a lot of money. They also provide several jobs for local residents. You have to include these people in that 1% figure. It's just that some of that 1% have much more than the rest and also might be much more greedy.

But we've also become dependent on jobs. We depend on being employed by a large company and we're at the mercy of factors that are, for all intents and purposes, out of our control. You seize more control when you gain more independence. It took droughts and famine to wipe out the economy long ago whereas now a slight hiccup can disrupt thousands and even millions of lives when millions more are thriving just fine. Of course, we can't all be business owners otherwise we'd essentially be a bartering society, which I've actually joked about returning to with coworkers. That was one of the few topics concerning the economy an anti-capitalist type coworker friend would agree on. Let's get rid of paper wealth and bring on the old ways of bartering! :D

Bartering is interesting but inefficient on a large scale. If you organize bartering on a large scale you end up with money again :)

Our system works pretty well until you don't have a job and then it falls apart to a large degree. I agree with you there.

The problem isn't the rich. I read a book once called "You can't eat the rich". You can be jealous of Bill Gates and his wealth but the pie is larger because of him not smaller. His wealth took nothing away from me or society.

Actually it's the social safety net that is missing in our society. That's a fine line however as it can be abused easily enough but it's still an issue.

As they say, the test of a civilized society is how it (society) treats its least advantaged members.

I see the share market as a form of gambling. Problem is I am affected by what goes on in the US and other countries.

I'm glad you guys aren't in charge ..it would be worse :P

All americans will be receiving their stimulus flashlight in the mail ..a surefire

It may feel like gambling from an individuals point of view, particularly if you invest for the long term and need to take it out in the short term if the market is down.

However, the purpose of the stock market is to raise capital for large companies...the ones that most people work for...the companies that everyone wants to create jobs. So, it's strange to protest that the economy is bad but then blame in on companies?

I would guess that most of the people who are protesting don't really understand the issues and are instead just angry, frustrated and are lashing out at the usual scapegoats.

If there is a particular law or regulation that is unjust then lobby Congress and get it changed but protesting on Wall Street and complaining about such vague concepts as greedy corporations is just ignorant for the most part.

It always amazes me how people have such a passionate, opinionated viewpoint on subjects that they know nothing about.

If I had an opinionated viewpoint on the military strategy for a particular battle in Afghanistan it would be just as ridiculous as I have no knowledge or expertise in that area.

even down here in Australia (AKA "The Lucky Country") despite a fairly healthy economy with 5% unemployment, a generous wage structure (min ~$590 per week) and State funded retirement and unemployment payments you'll find many people complaining about Government, business and "the rich".

I go one further... the greedy bastards with the huge salaries that are responsible for this need to hang from light poles in public, period.

Under Hitler's Germany this kind of crap was outlawed. He was right!

Rich

What are they truly protesting? Meaning, what are they expecting to be done as a reaction to their protests?

What I don't get is how some unions band together to direct their anger and frustration towards "Wall Street" because they take advantage of hard working Americans, when just about every top union boss in this country is doing exactly that to the union's very own members. There's a lot of corruption in the top ranks of unions but that's not included in this protest?

I'm passionate about all this, too, but I don't feel shouting and finger pointing is going to lead to resolution. Instead, we need to focus our attention on one thing at a time (e.g. health care, banking industry) and pick apart the flaws and fix them. Otherwise it'll just end up like the Tea Party, which was a great concept in the beginning but then it got too watered down and eventually allowed attention to be focused on the radicals.

It's also interesting that people get more worked up over this than the blatant corruption and misuse of tax dollars in our government. Something of this scale going on within our governing body should be much more important than it happening in the private sector. I'd rather focus my attention on that because someone in the private sector will never have the kind of power and force our government can obtain and use on us.

This is exactly why I posted this to stimulate conversation I neither agree or disagree with the protesters. I don't fully understand the problem I know people are mad about the multi billion dollar wall street/bankers bailout. What exactly do the protesters plan on achieving, I have no idea. Good stuff here.

http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/

I'll just leave this here.......

Sorry for the language.

What?! I can't even take that list seriously until it includes Free Ice Cream Tuesdays and hover cars for everyone. That's all they could come up with? Shoot, we can have this fixed by Thanksgiving. Just in time for the Free Turkey's for Everyone initiative :)

to motivate the downtrodden to rise up and revolt ..the end result will be that the establishment will break out the artillary and put down any and all opposing voices. fighting the establishment is harder than it looks since they hire out their thugs and going to war is only killing the kids they hired to protect them .. so it's a lose lose situation . the quickest way to change is to VOTE and I mean vote with you buck $$$.. sitting in the street doesn't mean a thing to anyone ..it merely gives the protester the false sense that he has done something when he has just had a street picnic and camped out with like minded losers... don't vote for people who offer change and then show up with zero leadership skills .This is obviously above his paygrade too .