Barbara Ehrenreich on OWS

brianlux

The always astute Barbara Ehrenreich:

http://www.progressive.org/one_percent_ ... reich.html

The Guys in the 1% Brought This On

By Barbara Ehrenreich, October 12, 2011

At the risk of being pedantic, let me point out that “99% versus 1%” is not a class analysis, not in any respectable sociological sense. Shave off the top 1% and you’re still left with some awfully steep divides of wealth, income and opportunity. The 99% includes the ordinary rich, for example, who may lack private jets but do have swimming pools and second homes. It also includes the immigrant workers who mow their lawns and clean their houses for them. This is not a class. It’s just the default category left after you subtract the billionaires.

Some of the diversity of the 99% is clearly on display at the variations occupations around the country. I’ve seen occupiers who look like they picked up their camping skills on vacations in the national parks, as well as those who normally make their homes on the streets, even when they’re not protesting. Occupy Wall Street has attracted contingents of airplane pilots, electricians and construction workers -– the latter often from the new World Trade Center being built a block away. You’ll also find schoolteachers, professors, therapists, office workers and, of course, the usual crusty punks of indistinct provenance and profession. In Washington, I met one occupier wearing a crisp blue dress shirt and a tie emblazoned with tiny elephants. He said he was a Republican, a lawyer, and he’d had enough.

Then there are the poorest of the poor – the unemployed, the foreclosed upon, the chronically homeless. In Los Angeles, traditional residents of Skid Row have begun to join the occupation encampment. When about 150 people met to plan their local occupation in a union hall in Fort Wayne earlier this week, they solicited advice from already-homeless people in the crowd, who had first-hand experience of where the police are most heavy-handed and where you’re most likely to find a nutritious dumpster or a public toilet. For the homeless, joining an occupation brings instant upward mobility: free food -- not entirely vegan, I have been relieved to discover -- and, in some cases, Port-a-potties and the rudiments of medical care.

The evident poverty of so many of the occupiers has left the right sputtering for apt denunciations. In the ’60s, neoconservative intellectuals looked at student protesters and saw the political avant-garde of a “new class” or “liberal elite,” bent on taking power and imposing their own twisted combination of sexual libertarianism and Soviet-style Communism. The neocons accused the protestors of being the privileged, “spoiled” children of a “permissive” upper middle class, and utterly alien to salt-of-the-earth working class Americans. There was just enough truth to this accusation to make a few of us young radicals flinch.

I saw one community organizing effort crash on the class divide between earnest Marxist professors, who thought meetings were a good site for “political education,” and blue collar recruits who thought meetings should be social occasions adequately lubricated with alcohol. In the ’70s, Minneapolis was the site of the “twinkie wars,” in which a food co-op was torn apart between the conflicting demands of working class omnivores and middle class organic purists. At the absolute nadir of New Left-working class relations, in 1970, 200 union construction workers attacked a student anti-war protest near Wall Street—not far from where construction workers now take lunch breaks with the protesters in Zuccotti Park.

For decades, as Tom Frank and others have documented, the right exulted in its clever diagnosis: Anyone who raises his or her voice on behalf the downtrodden is in fact an “elitist.” “Real” Americans loyally align themselves with the wealthy and their corporations. And, at least for a couple of years, the Tea Party seemed to make the fantasy come true. Although heavily funded by billionaires and thickly populated by prosperous suburban business owners, the Tea Party did manage to attract some representatives of the unemployed and uninsured, like the financially shaky California man I interviewed in 2009 who told me he would happily forgo health insurance if that’s what he had to do to “stop socialism.”

But today, even the college-educated among the occupiers no longer fit the sloppiest notion of an “elite.” This is the student debt generation, which graduated with five- to six-figure dollar debts and no jobs in sight –- people like thirty-three-year-old Cryn Johannsen, who has MA’s from both Brown and the University of Chicago and now works as an unpaid full-time “warrior for the indentured educated class.” Forty years ago, someone with Cryn’s credentials would be settling into a tenure track academic job, complete with health insurance and maybe even a housing subsidy. When I first met her about two years ago, she was working as a sales clerk in a department store. Now she lives with her in-laws and hustles for bits of money to keep her on the road, organizing occupations.

The class contours of American society (and no doubt Greek and Irish and many others as well) have been redrawn since the last great outbreak of mass protest in the ’60s. True, a college education still offers a lifetime earnings advantage; the unemployed lawyer faces a brighter future than the laid-off sanitation and call center workers she confers with at an occupation encampment’s general assembly. But the parts of the middle class once lumped together by the right as a “liberal elite” have been severely eroded, its core occupations go underfunded and exploited. Promising young academics end up as adjuncts earning near the minimum wage; social workers face starting pay in the neighborhood of $12 an hour; lawyers from non-Ivy League law schools may find themselves toiling in basement “legal sweatshops.”

So the “99% versus the 1%” theme is beginning to look like an acute class analysis after all, and it’s the guys in the 1% who made it so. Over the years, they have systematically hollowed out the space around them: destroying the industrial working class with the outsourcings and plant closures of the ’80s, turning on white collar managers in the downsizing wave of the ’90s, clearing large swathes of the middle class with the credit schemes of the ’00’s—the trick mortgages and till-death-do-we-part student loans.

In the ’60s we dreamed of uniting people of all races and collar colors into “one big working class.” But it took the billionaires to make it happen.

aerial

brianlux wrote:

The always astute Barbara Ehrenreich:

http://www.progressive.org/one_percent_ ... reich.html

The Guys in the 1% Brought This On

By Barbara Ehrenreich, October 12, 2011

At the risk of being pedantic, let me point out that “99% versus 1%” is not a class analysis, not in any respectable sociological sense. Shave off the top 1% and you’re still left with some awfully steep divides of wealth, income and opportunity. The 99% includes the ordinary rich, for example, who may lack private jets but do have swimming pools and second homes. It also includes the immigrant workers who mow their lawns and clean their houses for them. This is not a class. It’s just the default category left after you subtract the billionaires.

Some of the diversity of the 99% is clearly on display at the variations occupations around the country. I’ve seen occupiers who look like they picked up their camping skills on vacations in the national parks, as well as those who normally make their homes on the streets, even when they’re not protesting. Occupy Wall Street has attracted contingents of airplane pilots, electricians and construction workers -– the latter often from the new World Trade Center being built a block away. You’ll also find schoolteachers, professors, therapists, office workers and, of course, the usual crusty punks of indistinct provenance and profession. In Washington, I met one occupier wearing a crisp blue dress shirt and a tie emblazoned with tiny elephants. He said he was a Republican, a lawyer, and he’d had enough.

Then there are the poorest of the poor – the unemployed, the foreclosed upon, the chronically homeless. In Los Angeles, traditional residents of Skid Row have begun to join the occupation encampment. When about 150 people met to plan their local occupation in a union hall in Fort Wayne earlier this week, they solicited advice from already-homeless people in the crowd, who had first-hand experience of where the police are most heavy-handed and where you’re most likely to find a nutritious dumpster or a public toilet. For the homeless, joining an occupation brings instant upward mobility: free food -- not entirely vegan, I have been relieved to discover -- and, in some cases, Port-a-potties and the rudiments of medical care.

The evident poverty of so many of the occupiers has left the right sputtering for apt denunciations. In the ’60s, neoconservative intellectuals looked at student protesters and saw the political avant-garde of a “new class” or “liberal elite,” bent on taking power and imposing their own twisted combination of sexual libertarianism and Soviet-style Communism. The neocons accused the protestors of being the privileged, “spoiled” children of a “permissive” upper middle class, and utterly alien to salt-of-the-earth working class Americans. There was just enough truth to this accusation to make a few of us young radicals flinch.

I saw one community organizing effort crash on the class divide between earnest Marxist professors, who thought meetings were a good site for “political education,” and blue collar recruits who thought meetings should be social occasions adequately lubricated with alcohol. In the ’70s, Minneapolis was the site of the “twinkie wars,” in which a food co-op was torn apart between the conflicting demands of working class omnivores and middle class organic purists. At the absolute nadir of New Left-working class relations, in 1970, 200 union construction workers attacked a student anti-war protest near Wall Street—not far from where construction workers now take lunch breaks with the protesters in Zuccotti Park.

For decades, as Tom Frank and others have documented, the right exulted in its clever diagnosis: Anyone who raises his or her voice on behalf the downtrodden is in fact an “elitist.” “Real” Americans loyally align themselves with the wealthy and their corporations. And, at least for a couple of years, the Tea Party seemed to make the fantasy come true. Although heavily funded by billionaires and thickly populated by prosperous suburban business owners, the Tea Party did manage to attract some representatives of the unemployed and uninsured, like the financially shaky California man I interviewed in 2009 who told me he would happily forgo health insurance if that’s what he had to do to “stop socialism.”

But today, even the college-educated among the occupiers no longer fit the sloppiest notion of an “elite.” This is the student debt generation, which graduated with five- to six-figure dollar debts and no jobs in sight –- people like thirty-three-year-old Cryn Johannsen, who has MA’s from both Brown and the University of Chicago and now works as an unpaid full-time “warrior for the indentured educated class.” Forty years ago, someone with Cryn’s credentials would be settling into a tenure track academic job, complete with health insurance and maybe even a housing subsidy. When I first met her about two years ago, she was working as a sales clerk in a department store. Now she lives with her in-laws and hustles for bits of money to keep her on the road, organizing occupations.

The class contours of American society (and no doubt Greek and Irish and many others as well) have been redrawn since the last great outbreak of mass protest in the ’60s. True, a college education still offers a lifetime earnings advantage; the unemployed lawyer faces a brighter future than the laid-off sanitation and call center workers she confers with at an occupation encampment’s general assembly. But the parts of the middle class once lumped together by the right as a “liberal elite” have been severely eroded, its core occupations go underfunded and exploited. Promising young academics end up as adjuncts earning near the minimum wage; social workers face starting pay in the neighborhood of $12 an hour; lawyers from non-Ivy League law schools may find themselves toiling in basement “legal sweatshops.”

So the “99% versus the 1%” theme is beginning to look like an acute class analysis after all, and it’s the guys in the 1% who made it so. Over the years, they have systematically hollowed out the space around them: destroying the industrial working class with the outsourcings and plant closures of the ’80s, turning on white collar managers in the downsizing wave of the ’90s, clearing large swathes of the middle class with the credit schemes of the ’00’s—the trick mortgages and till-death-do-we-part student loans.

In the ’60s we dreamed of uniting people of all races and collar colors into “one big working class.” But it took the billionaires to make it happen.

Who is supplying the free food?
The march on 9/12 in Washington D.C. there were no freebies for us. That was okay, we did not expect it would be free anyway. We all paid our own way. We brought business and the business owners were happy to see us.

fear4freedom

aerial wrote:

brianlux wrote:

The always astute Barbara Ehrenreich:

http://www.progressive.org/one_percent_ ... reich.html

The Guys in the 1% Brought This On

By Barbara Ehrenreich, October 12, 2011

At the risk of being pedantic, let me point out that “99% versus 1%” is not a class analysis, not in any respectable sociological sense. Shave off the top 1% and you’re still left with some awfully steep divides of wealth, income and opportunity. The 99% includes the ordinary rich, for example, who may lack private jets but do have swimming pools and second homes. It also includes the immigrant workers who mow their lawns and clean their houses for them. This is not a class. It’s just the default category left after you subtract the billionaires.

Some of the diversity of the 99% is clearly on display at the variations occupations around the country. I’ve seen occupiers who look like they picked up their camping skills on vacations in the national parks, as well as those who normally make their homes on the streets, even when they’re not protesting. Occupy Wall Street has attracted contingents of airplane pilots, electricians and construction workers -– the latter often from the new World Trade Center being built a block away. You’ll also find schoolteachers, professors, therapists, office workers and, of course, the usual crusty punks of indistinct provenance and profession. In Washington, I met one occupier wearing a crisp blue dress shirt and a tie emblazoned with tiny elephants. He said he was a Republican, a lawyer, and he’d had enough.

Then there are the poorest of the poor – the unemployed, the foreclosed upon, the chronically homeless. In Los Angeles, traditional residents of Skid Row have begun to join the occupation encampment. When about 150 people met to plan their local occupation in a union hall in Fort Wayne earlier this week, they solicited advice from already-homeless people in the crowd, who had first-hand experience of where the police are most heavy-handed and where you’re most likely to find a nutritious dumpster or a public toilet. For the homeless, joining an occupation brings instant upward mobility: free food -- not entirely vegan, I have been relieved to discover -- and, in some cases, Port-a-potties and the rudiments of medical care.

The evident poverty of so many of the occupiers has left the right sputtering for apt denunciations. In the ’60s, neoconservative intellectuals looked at student protesters and saw the political avant-garde of a “new class” or “liberal elite,” bent on taking power and imposing their own twisted combination of sexual libertarianism and Soviet-style Communism. The neocons accused the protestors of being the privileged, “spoiled” children of a “permissive” upper middle class, and utterly alien to salt-of-the-earth working class Americans. There was just enough truth to this accusation to make a few of us young radicals flinch.

I saw one community organizing effort crash on the class divide between earnest Marxist professors, who thought meetings were a good site for “political education,” and blue collar recruits who thought meetings should be social occasions adequately lubricated with alcohol. In the ’70s, Minneapolis was the site of the “twinkie wars,” in which a food co-op was torn apart between the conflicting demands of working class omnivores and middle class organic purists. At the absolute nadir of New Left-working class relations, in 1970, 200 union construction workers attacked a student anti-war protest near Wall Street—not far from where construction workers now take lunch breaks with the protesters in Zuccotti Park.

For decades, as Tom Frank and others have documented, the right exulted in its clever diagnosis: Anyone who raises his or her voice on behalf the downtrodden is in fact an “elitist.” “Real” Americans loyally align themselves with the wealthy and their corporations. And, at least for a couple of years, the Tea Party seemed to make the fantasy come true. Although heavily funded by billionaires and thickly populated by prosperous suburban business owners, the Tea Party did manage to attract some representatives of the unemployed and uninsured, like the financially shaky California man I interviewed in 2009 who told me he would happily forgo health insurance if that’s what he had to do to “stop socialism.”

But today, even the college-educated among the occupiers no longer fit the sloppiest notion of an “elite.” This is the student debt generation, which graduated with five- to six-figure dollar debts and no jobs in sight –- people like thirty-three-year-old Cryn Johannsen, who has MA’s from both Brown and the University of Chicago and now works as an unpaid full-time “warrior for the indentured educated class.” Forty years ago, someone with Cryn’s credentials would be settling into a tenure track academic job, complete with health insurance and maybe even a housing subsidy. When I first met her about two years ago, she was working as a sales clerk in a department store. Now she lives with her in-laws and hustles for bits of money to keep her on the road, organizing occupations.

The class contours of American society (and no doubt Greek and Irish and many others as well) have been redrawn since the last great outbreak of mass protest in the ’60s. True, a college education still offers a lifetime earnings advantage; the unemployed lawyer faces a brighter future than the laid-off sanitation and call center workers she confers with at an occupation encampment’s general assembly. But the parts of the middle class once lumped together by the right as a “liberal elite” have been severely eroded, its core occupations go underfunded and exploited. Promising young academics end up as adjuncts earning near the minimum wage; social workers face starting pay in the neighborhood of $12 an hour; lawyers from non-Ivy League law schools may find themselves toiling in basement “legal sweatshops.”

So the “99% versus the 1%” theme is beginning to look like an acute class analysis after all, and it’s the guys in the 1% who made it so. Over the years, they have systematically hollowed out the space around them: destroying the industrial working class with the outsourcings and plant closures of the ’80s, turning on white collar managers in the downsizing wave of the ’90s, clearing large swathes of the middle class with the credit schemes of the ’00’s—the trick mortgages and till-death-do-we-part student loans.

In the ’60s we dreamed of uniting people of all races and collar colors into “one big working class.” But it took the billionaires to make it happen.

Who is supplying the free food?
The march on 9/12 in Washington D.C. there were no freebies for us. That was okay, we did not expect it would be free anyway. We all paid our own way. We brought business and the business owners were happy to see us.

The march on 9 12 was awesome! Perfect day with a over a million of us! No litter and smart people who have a true platform that makes sense! We were organized, disciplined and righteous! We were respectful! We are the TEA PARTY

brianlux

I'm not sure what that other stuff has to do with Barbara Ehrenreich but I sure to think the world of this wise woman! I wish she would run for president- she'd have my vote any day!

aerial

The students that made a life decision to go to college need to take on responsibility
and find a job. You may not get the one you want but work your way up. Your elite attitude is the reason you do not have more support.
I know a woman with five jobs. There are jobs out there.
Are the students upset that they did not get a high paying job (like the people they protest against)? It looks like jealously.

brianlux

aerial wrote:

The students that made a life decision to go to college need to take on responsibility
and find a job. You may not get the one you want but work your way up. Your elite attitude is the reason you do not have more support.
I know a woman with five jobs. There are jobs out there.
Are the students upset that they did not get a high paying job (like the people they protest against)? It looks like jealously.

My "elite attitude"?
I'm lacking in support?

nospokenwords

aerial wrote:

The students that made a life decision to go to college need to take on responsibility
and find a job. You may not get the one you want but work your way up. Your elite attitude is the reason you do not have more support.
I know a woman with five jobs. There are jobs out there.
Are the students upset that they did not get a high paying job (like the people they protest against)? It looks like jealously.

I have a problem with somebody needing 5 jobs to survive.

josevolution

It's not just students who are at OWS , it's every kind of folks you could imagine ...

pjhawks

josevolution wrote:

It's not just students who are at OWS , it's every kind of folks you could imagine ...

and i'd willing to bet that at least 90% of them have their big business smart phones, Ipads, Ipods, etc. while protesting big buiness.

"I dont question, our existence, i just question, our modern needs"

brianlux

pjhawks wrote:

josevolution wrote:

It's not just students who are at OWS , it's every kind of folks you could imagine ...

and i'd willing to bet that at least 90% of them have their big business smart phones, Ipads, Ipods, etc. while protesting big buiness.

"I dont question, our existence, i just question, our modern needs"

pjhawks, the idea of living totally big-buisness free sounds like a grand experiment... but one that would be very difficult to achieve. For example, during the two plus years I was semi-homeless (due to no fault of my own) I:
Lived in a big business vehicle,
Got my news from a big business portable radio,
Told time on my big business watch,
Cooked on my big business camp stove,
and kept what little money I had in a big business bank.

So I guess it is even more damned hypocritcal of me to protest big business today as I write this on my big business laptop.

pjhawks

brianlux wrote:

pjhawks wrote:

josevolution wrote:

It's not just students who are at OWS , it's every kind of folks you could imagine ...

and i'd willing to bet that at least 90% of them have their big business smart phones, Ipads, Ipods, etc. while protesting big buiness.

"I dont question, our existence, i just question, our modern needs"

pjhawks, the idea of living totally big-buisness free sounds like a grand experiment... but one that would be very difficult to achieve. For example, during the two plus years I was semi-homeless (due to no fault of my own) I:
Lived in a big business vehicle,
Got my news from a big business portable radio,
Told time on my big business watch,
Cooked on my big business camp stove,
and kept what little money I had in a big business bank.

So I guess it is even more damned hypocritcal of me to protest big business today as I write this on my big business laptop.

the only way to hurt a business is to hurt their bottom line. you can't really be against something if you are supporting it BY CHOICE (as opposed to government taxes which are mandated by law). all i'm saying is making a blanket statement condemning big business while using big business products is hypocritical. if you and/or the protesters want to target specific big business companies then i don't have a problem with that.if you have a problem with Bank of America's ATM charges then say you are against Bank of America, don't condemn all big business because some suck. as someone said above or in another thread, what is the target for these protesters?

brianlux

pjhawks wrote:

the only way to hurt a business is to hurt their bottom line. you can't really be against something if you are supporting it BY CHOICE (as opposed to government taxes which are mandated by law). all i'm saying is making a blanket statement condemning big business while using big business products is hypocritical. if you and/or the protesters want to target specific big business companies then i don't have a problem with that.if you have a problem with Bank of America's ATM charges then say you are against Bank of America, don't condemn all big business because some suck. as someone said above or in another thread, what is the target for these protesters?

"the only way to hurt a business is to hurt their bottom line." I agree- I think you said it earlier: vote with your dollars. The only problem is that some of the things you mention, cells phones and such are standard forms of communication and the companies that produce them and provide services are pretty much owned by the same few corporations that are all about profit for the wealthy (the only acception I can think of off-hand is Credo). In fact, the same few corporations run and porduce most everything we use and living corporation free, as I said is very difficult.

It's true that not all big business is bad and making such a statement may not be accurate or useful. Yvon Chouinard, founder of the outdoor wear and gear company, Patagonia, has proven big business can be fair- good for the people who work there and good for the environment. I highly, highly recommend his book Let My People Go Surfing. (I even know a few conservative business folks who have read this book and agree with Chouinard's premises and found them useful.) But again, this is the acception. I think it's fair to say that in general, the corporate world is geared toward making the top tier wealthy even more wealthy while the average person (that's most of us) have to struggle more and more to get by. Maybe some of us here are on easy street- maybe some of those here who disagree with the protest are unfamiliar with struggling to get by. I don't mean to offend anybody by saying that- I just don't know why else someone would support the growing inequity- the growing gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us. I can't think of anyone I know who isn't struggling to make ends meet one way or another- maybe a few of our book customers, but we sell used books so not many elites come our way.

pjhawks

brianlux wrote:

pjhawks wrote:

the only way to hurt a business is to hurt their bottom line. you can't really be against something if you are supporting it BY CHOICE (as opposed to government taxes which are mandated by law). all i'm saying is making a blanket statement condemning big business while using big business products is hypocritical. if you and/or the protesters want to target specific big business companies then i don't have a problem with that.if you have a problem with Bank of America's ATM charges then say you are against Bank of America, don't condemn all big business because some suck. as someone said above or in another thread, what is the target for these protesters?

"the only way to hurt a business is to hurt their bottom line." I agree- I think you said it earlier: vote with your dollars. The only problem is that some of the things you mention, cells phones and such are standard forms of communication and the companies that produce them and provide services are pretty much owned by the same few corporations that are all about profit for the wealthy (the only acception I can think of off-hand is Credo). In fact, the same few corporations run and porduce most everything we use and living corporation free, as I said is very difficult.

It's true that not all big business is bad and making such a statement may not be accurate or useful. Yvon Chouinard, founder of the outdoor wear and gear company, Patagonia, has proven big business can be fair- good for the people who work there and good for the environment. I highly, highly recommend his book Let My People Go Surfing. (I even know a few conservative business folks who have read this book and agree with Chouinard's premises and found them useful.) But again, this is the acception. I think it's fair to say that in general, the corporate world is geared toward making the top tier wealthy even more wealthy while the average person (that's most of us) have to struggle more and more to get by. Maybe some of us here are on easy street- maybe some of those here who disagree with the protest are unfamiliar with struggling to get by. I don't mean to offend anybody by saying that- I just don't know why else someone would support the growing inequity- the growing gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us. I can't think of anyone I know who isn't struggling to make ends meet one way or another- maybe a few of our book customers, but we sell used books so not many elites come our way.

Brian I can't say I disagree with what you are saying here but the bottom line as long as people continue to buy big business products we will be lining the pockets of the very wealthy. By no means am i saying i agree with the growing inequity between the very rich and the rest of us. it is a catch-22 though because despite what some might believe we do need big business in this country.

brianlux

pjhawks wrote:

Brian I can't say I disagree with what you are saying here but the bottom line as long as people continue to buy big business products we will be lining the pockets of the very wealthy. By no means am i saying i agree with the growing inequity between the very rich and the rest of us. it is a catch-22 though because despite what some might believe we do need big business in this country.

pjhawk, I'm going to respond to your post on my clay tablet. Damn, where'd I put my chisel?
Just kidding!

I agree- it is a catch-22. Until we resume local economies (another theory I ascribe to) as the standard, you're right, we will continue to rely on big business. Yet if other big businesses would follow the same theories Chouinard runs his very successful business by (he's not kidding- when the surfs up, his employees often hit their boards) there likely be no need for an OWS movement.

aerial

A good start would be to limit the politician’s income as a qualification to run. $300,000 a year max. Including all there assets. We need to have a two-year period after leaving office before being hired buy any businesses that may have been involved.

brianlux

aerial wrote:

A good start would be to limit the politician’s income as a qualification to run. $300,000 a year max. Including all there assets. We need to have a two-year period after leaving office before being hired buy any businesses that may have been involved.

I had a poli. sci. prof once who said, "We expect our representatives to do a million dollar job so we should pay them a million dollars." I like your idea much better!

kenny olav

nospokenwords wrote:

aerial wrote:

The students that made a life decision to go to college need to take on responsibility
and find a job. You may not get the one you want but work your way up. Your elite attitude is the reason you do not have more support.
I know a woman with five jobs. There are jobs out there.
Are the students upset that they did not get a high paying job (like the people they protest against)? It looks like jealously.

I have a problem with somebody needing 5 jobs to survive.

That was the first thought I had too when I read this.

Don't we all want to live in a country where no one has to work more than 1 full-time job to get by? I don't understand why we act like it's a rite of passage to work all your living days away so that one day, maybe, you can work a well-paying cushy 40 hour a week, 9-5 M-F job like the average wealthy kid gets right after college.

But of course many college kids are not wealthy, and they are saddled with debt. It's definitely not their fault that the economy collapsed around them. And they are generally smart enough to understand why it collapsed, and if you don't understand that's it's the fault of Wall Street deregulation and the lack of proper government oversight, then you need to take a real honest look at it, and get yourself an education.

Hard work should be awarded immediately. Our economy is currently engineered to benefit the well-connected few. If you can't see the economic injustice all around, then you need to open your eyes.

gimmesometruth27

kenny olav wrote:

That was the first thought I had too when I read this.

Don't we all want to live in a country where no one has to work more than 1 full-time job to get by? I don't understand why we act like it's a rite of passage to work all your living days away so that one day, maybe, you can work a well-paying cushy 40 hour a week, 9-5 M-F job like the average wealthy kid gets right after college.

But of course many college kids are not wealthy, and they are saddled with debt. It's definitely not their fault that the economy collapsed around them. And they are generally smart enough to understand why it collapsed, and if you don't understand that's it's the fault of Wall Street deregulation and the lack of proper government oversight, then you need to take a real honest look at it, and get yourself an education.

Hard work should be awarded immediately. Our economy is currently engineered to benefit the well-connected few. If you can't see the economic injustice all around, then you need to open your eyes.

well stated..

my second thought after what was your first thought was "how the hell is is humanly possible for one person to legitimately work 5 jobs??" with travel time and many jobs requiring a minimum number of hours (usually at least 12-15 hours a week) to be worked to be employed, the only way i can see it being possible is if somebody does not sleep, and we all know that people have to sleep at least 5 hours a day...

aerial

brianlux wrote:

aerial wrote:

A good start would be to limit the politician’s income as a qualification to run. $300,000 a year max. Including all there assets. We need to have a two-year period after leaving office before being hired buy any businesses that may have been involved.

I had a poli. sci. prof once who said, "We expect our representatives to do a million dollar job so we should pay them a million dollars." I like your idea much better!

The girl I am talking about is in her early twenties, with a degree in the arts. She can not find a job so she still Nannies, which is were the majority of her income comes from ,she also works for venders setting displays, she does sampling, and I do not remember the others. The girl is my boss’s girlfriend. Point being is she is young and being responsible doing what she has to do to earn an income. She is not crying because she cannot find a high paying job with her degree. Of course she dose not work all jobs every day but she is making a livable wage.
Do the students protesting feel it is there right to be placed in a high paying job as soon as they graduate?
When you are young, you should have to struggle and work your way into a position that pays well, or even if it does not pay as much as you would like just getting a job that you enjoy is a major accomplishment.
People need that sense of accomplishment.

gimmesometruth27

aerial wrote:

brianlux wrote:

aerial wrote:

A good start would be to limit the politician’s income as a qualification to run. $300,000 a year max. Including all there assets. We need to have a two-year period after leaving office before being hired buy any businesses that may have been involved.

I had a poli. sci. prof once who said, "We expect our representatives to do a million dollar job so we should pay them a million dollars." I like your idea much better!

The girl I am talking about is in her early twenties, with a degree in the arts. She can not find a job so she still Nannies, which is were the majority of her income comes from ,she also works for venders setting displays, she does sampling, and I do not remember the others. The girl is my boss’s girlfriend. Point being is she is young and being responsible doing what she has to do to earn an income. She is not crying because she cannot find a high paying job with her degree. Of course she dose not work all jobs every day but she is making a livable wage.
Do the students protesting feel it is there right to be placed in a high paying job as soon as they graduate?
When you are young, you should have to struggle and work your way into a position that pays well, or even if it does not pay as much as you would like just getting a job that you enjoy is a major accomplishment.
People need that sense of accomplishment.

a sense of accomplishment does not pay the bills...