Ether_Snake
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Karma Kramer said:
I hope the guy gets fired. We shouldn't have to put up with this bullshit on the news in Canada.
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Occupy Wall St - Occupy Everywhere, Occupy Together!
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I hope the guy gets fired. We shouldn't have to put up with this bullshit on the news in Canada.
SolKane said:
What's stupid about it?
If she isn't fibbing, the 99% crowd should try to co-opt the message and say there's room for these folks and their movement is not about hipster slackers who went to college on tax payer's dime now wanting debt relief before they even pay taxes.
epmode said:
Only 53% of Americans have enough gross taxable income to pay income taxes, notwithstanding certain deductions. The number of people who actually file income tax returns is much higher as a percentage, but a large number of people do not have an income tax liability as their income is so low as to not be taxable (therein lies one problem). Then there are households who qualify for tax credits, most of which come from the stimulus bills. And of course they are responsible for payroll taxes at the federal level, so to say they pay no taxes is not only completely disingenuous but false. The number is closer to 10 percent of households who pay no federal taxes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/business/economy/14leonhardt.html
x Power Pad Death Stomp x
Member
Gonaria said:
It sure is.
dead souls
Member
SolKane said:
What you don't want to work 72 hours a week while cancer is slowly killing you?
Sounds like great fun to me. USA! USA!
Deku said:
They want jobs in addition to debt relief. It's not a reasonable expectation to ask them to pay off these loans without any source of income. And as for the stupidity of that image, her sign literally reads: "The cancer still grows. This is the American dream." I don't really know what her point is, in all honesty. Hard work gets you nowhere? As far as I'm concerned it's just naive provocation on her part. Quite frankly she should be one of the people protesting, and I doubt anyone would exclude her.
And the "meme" is stupid because a number of these people don't actually pay income tax themselves. See also:
http://actuallyyourethe47percent.tumblr.com/
SolKane said:
The image in question has the hipster mocking the immigrant father for working while very ill.
That's not unheard of with immigrants, and is really the kind of sentiment I'm objecting to.
If a movement has aspirations to represent 99% of the population then goes out of its way to mock segments of if because they disagree without considering the arguments, they they don't really represent everyone.
Hence my point that they need to break out of the hipsters meme and actually address what an immigrant might care about. I can imagine large swathes of immigrants being offended by it.
Deku said:
I'm totally confused. Are you saying that the above picture is some random hipster making fun of immigrants?
Is that girl even a hipster? She doesn't look like a hipster to me... more like a young daughter of a Croatian immigrant kind of look. Or is the whole Croatian look thing a bit too hipster for you?
empty vessel
Member
jchap said:
You forgot a relevant word. You should include it.
Deku said:
I think everyone sympathizes with the father. They're mocking the daughter's disconnection from reality. What her father accomplished couldn't be done today. Could he even get a loan to start a business? OR get a job to get established long enough to get that loan to start that dream? Not right now, and projections for the future are even worse. It's just stupid, they see the OWSrs as whiners thanks to people calling them whiners and worse, so they're taking an opposing position. It's noble. It's like clock work. "If you have any honor at all you'll defend our fair system." Hard work and fairness always pay off. And if not, at least there's heaven.
Edit. Unless she's being ironic. God. That's going to bug me. You really can read it either way. Either she's sad that this is the American dream, or this would have all been impossible without this country, and she loves America, Btw Cancer.
GillianSeed79
Member
zmoney said:Saw this on Facebook:
This one pisses me off to no end because he's either a monk or uses candles for electricity.
I too graduated college debt free, but I'm going to breakdown why this is bullshit.
Okay, he makes barely above minimum wage, which is about $7.25/hr, and works 30 plus hours a week. I'll be generous and say he makes $10/hr and works 35 hours a week. He's pulling in $700/pay period in net income. Payroll taxes and health insurance taken out, let's say he's taking home $625 per pay period. I live in a state with one of the lowest median incomes and cost of living is low. Let's say his rent is a bargain $450/month. For the first half of his monthly earnings he's left with $175. Seems like a lot, but you are looking at a budget of about $15/day for two weeks if you don't want to go broke before your next pay check. Food and gas leaves little discretionary spending. The next pay check you are looking at bills. I'll be easy on him and low ball these. Car insurance - $100. Electric/utilities - $75. Internet - $50. Cable - $30. Gas/food - $120. Assuming he has no car payment, rarely goes out and buys nothing for himself he's left with a montly nest egg of about $250. Look, that's fucking awesome when you are 23 and fresh out of college. Trust me, I barely made $20K out of college, but you are one car break down or minor health problem away before going into debt and when you still live like a starving college student for the next few years it's nothing to rah rah about.
And I forgot to mention fucking taxes. I make roughly $1,600/month. Taxes this year were $700 roughly. When you live paycheck to paycheck that fucks you over every year.
Ether_Snake
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Deku said:
I think you need to go outside, and talk with real people.
Something Wicked
Member
I see a lot of whining from 47%-ers in here.
Do you know what the cancer survival rates among OECD countries are? The top ranking country is #1 by a noticeable margin- want to take a wild guess which country that may be?
ezrarh said:
Do you know what the cancer survival rates among OECD countries are? The top ranking country is #1 by a noticeable margin- want to take a wild guess which country that may be?
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
Something Wicked said:
I think it's pretty well known that, ignoring soaring costs and ever-fussier insurance plans, we have some of the best healthcare technology in the world.
Our healthcare system, however, is an inexcusable mess. And many moneyed interests fight like hell to keep it that way.
Fusion Pizza
Member
BotoxAgent said:saw this at Reddit....
FUCK. YES.
Particularly the last paragraph.
empty vessel
Member
Something Wicked said:
Are you sure? Because it seems like it is the 53%ers who are whining. They complain that their lives suck and propose nothing. The rest of us, most of whom are also part of the 53% who pay federal income taxes, are actually trying to do something about our shitty circumstances. If I have one message for those identifying with the 53%, it would be: stop fucking whining you fucking babies and fucking do something about it.
Karma Kramer
Banned
i'm sorry, but anyone who whines about hipsters, I just can't take them seriously.
akira28 said:
The mocking doesn't help address the bolded part. It's probably just bunker mentality setting in, but when your movement offer no real support to immigrants rather than broadly hating on Wall Street followed up by line item demands written on line paper tailor made for a 20 year old unemployed barista, that's a problem.
Instead of mocking the father for working while dying on cancer, god forbid they bring up Healthcare reform or point out how a lack of UHC is hurting this family rather than helping them.
But that's right this 99% movement doesn't want to get co-opted by the Democrats, so they will continue spinning their wheels in the mud!
bill gonorrhea
Member
There's so much whine being tossed around idk who's whining more
I'm just flabbergasted that the counter-narrative that's emerged is that we should ignore as inconsequential the speech of 47% of the population, and specifically the poorer 47%. 47 fucking percent! Precisely and explicitly! It would be categorized as crude parody if it wasn't actually being attempted as the establishment rallying cry.
SolKane said:
Bottom of page 1 has the image quote quote in question followed by this blurb
Obviously it takes too much effort to dovetail that woman's rant into a discussion about healthcare so it's better attack people who work hard instead.
How the author can be so hostile towards a story that a person with good PR sense can co-opt is a bit surprising on its own, but given many posters here are hostile to the same image makes it less so.
Circle the wagons some more, and you'll fall into the very meme you want to escape.
Keru_Shiri
Member
And on top of that, they rarely address the actual crimes being committed by WS. Their whole point is to paint with a broad brush over an entire movement, to delegitimatize protesters based on nothing more than an assumption about lifestyles.Evlar said:
Ether_Snake
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Deku said:
"The movement". Sorry dude, you are on GAF, talking to Gaffers. Stop fighting windmills.
Karma Kramer
Banned
Keru_Shiri said:
- Kurt Vonnegut
posting one more time for good measure lol...
Deku said:
I really don't get where you think that quote is attacking that guy because he works hard. I really think that you are seeing what you want to see because to me that is just pointing out the shittiness of that situation. The dude should be proud, and the daughter should be proud of her dad, but her not wanting to change that situation beyond lowering taxes and no regulation is, if anything, what the dude is making fun of.
I didnt look at the picture since I dont want to bother finding the link, so who knows, that actually might be offensive
Keru_Shiri
Member
I agree. I also thought the gaffer above who likened the 53% movement to Stockholm Syndrome was spot on as well.Karma Kramer said:
Gonaria said:
And I don't think it's a matter of interpretation as well. Immigrants who choose to immigrate to a country also don't like being mocked for choosing the country or working insane hours and days to save so that their kids can go to school. But since we're going in circles, I'm not going to keep insisting on making that point.
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Deku said:
Wait. Is she boasting that her Dad got ahead through hard work or mad that he has to still work 12 hour days while dieing of cancer?
Her sign has printing that is small and hard to read. It's also hard to concentrate on any message as she's cute and you can almost see a line of cleavage.
Four_Chamber
Member
I read her whole little thing there and expected to see a 99% reference there. Makes no fucking sense
Something Wicked
Member
empty vessel said:
Yeah, "getting Wall Street and the banks in court or sending them to jail" isn't a solution.
"Let's gather the millions of people working for commercial banks, investment banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, currency trading firms, day trading firms, online trading firms, insurance firms, etc. and put them all on trial. Which specific laws did all of these people break, you ask?... Well, we don't exactly know... but we bet they broke something."
Also, I have been providing solutions to lessen market volatility, which has been a major deterrent for companies utilizing their capital and hiring more. Stratify cap gains taxes by a higher degree- raise them on short-term trades (a very tax of say 60% for the highest income bracket(s) for day trades , 50% for a week, 40% for a month), and lower them for longer term investments (20% for a year, 10% for two years, 5% for three years, etc). I would also tax trades on commodities, particularly petroleum, at higher rates as well (as we already do with gold). The above would actually hurt much of Wall Street (there's everyone's payback), though help many others on Wall Street would benefit to such tax reform as well (guess what? our financial industry is not some homogeneous mob which operates with the absolute same goals).
Simply yelling "higher taxes" isn't a helpful solution. Intelligent solutions specify which taxes, and which rates for which brackets.
empty vessel
Member
Deku said:
Nobody likes being mocked for anything. That fact doesn't make her objectively less of a fool for being proud of suffering when the option to fight for a better life is readily available. She is more than welcome to join the people in the streets seeking a better life. She is saying she prefers to suffer rather than to work for something better. It isn't honorable nor worthy of praise.
Deku said:
And I don't think it's a matter of interpretation as well. Immigrants who choose to immigrate to a country also don't like being mocked for choosing the country or working insane hours and days to save so that their kids can go to school. But since we're going in circles, I'm not going to keep insisting on making that point.
wait, that girl is your evil hipster? How'd you come up with that? Seems a whole lot more reasonable to assume that that girl is the daughter.
Oh, and you really need to get this through your head, most people here aren't making fun of the guy for working insanely hard. They are making fun of the girl because she doesnt want to change her situation for the better.
Foxtastical
Member
I'm hoping this all ends with the destruction of neoliberalism.
Methinks you don't understand this protest.Something Wicked said:
These people aren't in the streets because they're concerned about market volatility or even the lack of jobs. They're in the streets because they feel disenfranchised. They feel that they don't have a voice anymore. They feel their leaders are bought and paid for, and that the their (the protestors) voice doesn't mean shit. They see their taxes to mind boggingly huge bail outs after yet when they are crippled by student debt or unemployment they get told to eat cake. They see CEOs trash companies and bail with golden parachutes after they've laid off the protestor's family members. These people feel like the problems of the nation have been balanced on their back while the rich are being pampered lest they take their jobs elsewhere. They see someone who stole a carton of cigarettes go to jail for a decade, but corporate criminals steal millions and get a tax break. These people are pissed, I wouldn't be surprised if violence erupted soon.
Nice that you found a way to make things less volatile. But, really it's sorta like that Simpson's episode where Lisa ran out to the BBQ and said "Everyone it's OK! I made enough gazpacho for everybody!" Sure people shout for higher taxes and to arrest Wall Street, but it's much deeper than that.
Certainly your ideas are good, but you don't make friends with salad. Obama should implemented your ideas 3 years ago, now it's a bit too late for these people.
timetokill
Banned
ronito said:
Did you mean: gazpacho
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