Wall Street Freedom Fighters Release Their Demands

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I

I Wear Pants

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Oct 13, 2011 11:31 AM
gut;932103 wrote:Really? I know incompetent and negligent people who don't get fired from their jobs (and not just union members!), much less go to jail - incompetent and negligent doesn't imply or even equate to fraud, people make mistakes or simply aren't good at their job. You can be sued over incompetence and negligence, but you need to commit actual fraud to go to jail. But, I'm sorry, there wasn't this massive fraud and "greed" as you call it. You really think these protesters believe all or most of Wall Street is unethical - is that what you believe, too - or do you think maybe they are just simply associating greed with wealth?

The vast majority of people are not unethical in amassing their fortune, yet that's not what the media and the mobs lead us to believe, is it? That's why I asked what greed is, because the apparent application of the definition is grossly out of touch with reality. My suspicion is ignorant socialists/liberals mistake capitalism/pursuit of profits with "unethical" and "greedy" because they have no concept of value-added or pay for performance, much less basic laws of supply & demand as it applies to wages. It's a demand for "fairness" completely absent consideration of the market value of the contribution.

I didn't cheat on my list (gee, a claim like that no wonder you can throw around terms like greed so loosely) - that's a simple error that doesn't change the inference and implications. Strawman argument - 2004 doesn't really change the fact that what Footwedge said was grossly inaccurate, does it? It's been mostly flat for 24 years or so. A far cry from "not even close to keeping up with inflation".
I thought you meant gross negligence, because you said it. It's a legal concept.

If you mean that you believe that the people responsible for this situation from Wall Street (I put it that way because, no, they aren't the only ones at fault in this) simply made mistakes and aren't good at there jobs then I guess I don't really have much to say to that. I disagree with it but if I were to assume that position was correct then I'd agree that no one should go to jail just because they're bad at their job.
Oct 13, 2011 11:31am
Ty Webb's avatar

Ty Webb

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Oct 13, 2011 11:40 AM
[h=2]"Occupy Wall Street" Twice as Popular as "Tea Party"[/h]The latest Time poll finds the Occupy Wall Street movement has a 54% favorable rating. In contrast, the Tea Party's favorable rating is just 27%.

Greg Sargent: "In fairness, the Tea Party has been in existence since before the 2010 elections, and even has had a seat at the governing table during the debt ceiling and government shutdown debacles, which clearly took their toll on the Tea Party's image. Occupy Wall Street is just getting started. But it does seem clear that a confluence of events -- the protests, Obama's jobs push, Elizabeth Warren's Senate candidacy, and the national backlash from the right all these things have provoked -- are pushing populist issues such as fair taxation and income inequality to the forefront of the national conversation."

Jon Meacham: "The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country. Mobs rarely have good answers to problems, and there is no doubt much to be skeptical about in the crowds making all the noise. But the noise they're making deserves a place in the broad arena of contending forces."
Oct 13, 2011 11:40am
majorspark's avatar

majorspark

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Oct 13, 2011 11:44 AM
Good. I hope the democrats read this jump on board.
Oct 13, 2011 11:44am
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fish82

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Oct 13, 2011 12:05 PM
majorspark;932343 wrote:Good. I hope the democrats read this jump on board.
Agreed. OWS ROCKS!!! ;)
Oct 13, 2011 12:05pm
OneBuckeye's avatar

OneBuckeye

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Oct 13, 2011 12:18 PM
Oct 13, 2011 12:18pm
I

I Wear Pants

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Oct 13, 2011 12:37 PM
Oct 13, 2011 12:37pm
J

jmog

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Oct 13, 2011 1:17 PM
Imagine that, a CEO's pay correlates nearly exactly with the stock market, i.e. if their stock prices go up, then the CEO's get raises...

Why not put average salary in there of a company's workers instead of average production workers salary?
Oct 13, 2011 1:17pm
G

gut

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Oct 13, 2011 1:34 PM
I Wear Pants;932328 wrote:I thought you meant gross negligence, because you said it. It's a legal concept.
You don't go to jail for gross negligence on your job, unless perhaps you're a doctor or bus driver (i.e. a foreseeable result in bodily harm or death). You could get taken to the cleaners in civil court, but it's not otherwise criminal. The difference here is if your financial adviser is merely incompetent, you probably have no legal recourse because that's your own damn fault. If they are gross negligent, you may receive civil damages for their failure to exercise fiduciary responsibility - if he makes a bunch of bad trades and loses your money, you're screwed but if he goes to the Riviera for 3 months while your portfolio melts down then he's gross negligent and you'd be entitled to damages.

But you're not going to jail for mere gross negligence when a criminal act has not been committed. And fraud would be fraud, whether a result of incompetence or gross negligence or not.
Oct 13, 2011 1:34pm
I

I Wear Pants

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Oct 13, 2011 1:38 PM
jmog;932459 wrote:Imagine that, a CEO's pay correlates nearly exactly with the stock market, i.e. if their stock prices go up, then the CEO's get raises...

Why not put average salary in there of a company's workers instead of average production workers salary?
The point was that every number went up drastically except for the wages of most people.
Oct 13, 2011 1:38pm
G

gut

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Oct 13, 2011 1:38 PM
jmog;932459 wrote:Imagine that, a CEO's pay correlates nearly exactly with the stock market, i.e. if their stock prices go up, then the CEO's get raises...

Why not put average salary in there of a company's workers instead of average production workers salary?
It's true that CEO's are overpaid, especially vs. Europe and elsewhere. It's also true that CEO's are accountable to shareholders - not the gubmit and certainly not the Occupiers.
Oct 13, 2011 1:38pm
G

gut

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Oct 13, 2011 1:42 PM
I Wear Pants;932496 wrote:The point was that every number went up drastically except for the wages of most people.
Meaning what, exactly? That the average line worker doesn't get stock options?
Oct 13, 2011 1:42pm
A

Altor

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Oct 13, 2011 1:49 PM
I Wear Pants;932496 wrote:The point was that every number went up drastically except for the wages of most people.
The graph shows an average. It fails to take into account that there were likely more people being paid those averages while the number of CEOs stayed the same.
Oct 13, 2011 1:49pm
J

jmog

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Oct 13, 2011 3:52 PM
I Wear Pants;932496 wrote:The point was that every number went up drastically except for the wages of most people.
Not true, unless you are suggesting that most people still work on production lines in the US. My personal experience is the opposite. Typical businesses in the US now have much more educated positions in the.US branches and more production jobs are going overseas. So yes production salaries maybe stagnant but not necessarily average employee salary as educated professionals salaries were going up as.well.
Oct 13, 2011 3:52pm
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OneBuckeye

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Oct 13, 2011 3:55 PM
I would also argue what is considered a "production worker" you can include or exclude so many groups of people and label it as such to make the statistic show what ever you want.
Oct 13, 2011 3:55pm
F

Footwedge

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Oct 13, 2011 5:51 PM
jmog;932459 wrote:Imagine that, a CEO's pay correlates nearly exactly with the stock market, i.e. if their stock prices go up, then the CEO's get raises...

Why not put average salary in there of a company's workers instead of average production workers salary?
No...not at all. Not even close. The Dow sits today at the exact same perch it did.....11,000 or so.....just as it did when W took office in 01. CEO's were not making 60-80 million a year in 01. Some of these CEO's were peddling derivatives and SIW's and begging the gubmint for their bailout checks just a few years ago.

Why people defend these scumbags is really quite remarkable in my view.
Oct 13, 2011 5:51pm
F

Footwedge

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Oct 13, 2011 5:58 PM
gut;932497 wrote:It's true that CEO's are overpaid, especially vs. Europe and elsewhere. It's also true that CEO's are accountable to shareholders - not the gubmit and certainly not the Occupiers.
Aren't the European CEO's accountable to their shareholders as well? I wish IWP's chart showed the numbers through 2011. The Top CEO's today make a lot more than the CEO's did in 01....yet the market is perched at the same plateau today as it was in 01.
Oct 13, 2011 5:58pm
F

Footwedge

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Oct 13, 2011 6:03 PM
OneBuckeye;932595 wrote:I would also argue what is considered a "production worker" you can include or exclude so many groups of people and label it as such to make the statistic show what ever you want.
Why shouldn't blue collar workers income levels increase...if the company they work for is successful? Point number 2...and I probably should have listed this under jmog's post above....the white collar "salaried" purchasing power has been just as stagnant as the blue collars.
Oct 13, 2011 6:03pm
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Writerbuckeye

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Oct 13, 2011 6:53 PM
NBC did a loving piece on the OWS protests tonight. It's amazing what good PR can do for poll ratings.
Oct 13, 2011 6:53pm
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majorspark

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Oct 13, 2011 7:08 PM
HitsRus;932745 wrote:....reported that NYC is going to clear them out at 7AM tomorrow (Friday)
This should be interesting.
Oct 13, 2011 7:08pm
G

gut

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Oct 13, 2011 7:12 PM
Footwedge;932684 wrote:Aren't the European CEO's accountable to their shareholders as well? I wish IWP's chart showed the numbers through 2011. The Top CEO's today make a lot more than the CEO's did in 01....yet the market is perched at the same plateau today as it was in 01.
They are. I don't understand why the huge gap, but the shareholders control the board which controls CEO comp. There is some cronyism there, and often the pensions and mutual funds that usually make-up the bulk of voting shares just rubber stamp the CEO board picks. So point your finger there. And they tend not to be activist types, meaning they don't exercise much influence over CEO comp. The greedy, evil hedge funds have done far more on that front than those guys, but a fund manager holding a stock for even 2 years just isn't going to invest his time to change the comp, much less the CEO.

I don't know if they make a lot more today than they did in '01, it's going to track the market which hasn't done too well as of late. That's part of the problem with equity based compensation because a lousy CEO will see his shares perform largely in lockstep with the industry (approx. 80% of returns are correlated with the industry or sector, implying a CEO only impacts 20% of share performance).
Oct 13, 2011 7:12pm
G

gut

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Oct 13, 2011 7:19 PM
Footwedge;932687 wrote:Why shouldn't blue collar workers income levels increase...if the company they work for is successful? Point number 2...and I probably should have listed this under jmog's post above....the white collar "salaried" purchasing power has been just as stagnant as the blue collars.
Not sure of the exact numbers, but past recoveries have seen like 50%(?) of productivity gains go to the workers. The last 10 years that number is much lower, guessing maybe 5-10%. Don't blame outsourcing, either, because that's a drop in the bucket. The post-internet bubble was a "jobless" recovery, and the most recent I suppose you could call a "job loss" recovery. So the excess labor supply is preventing upward pressure on wages you would normally get with an expanding economy. You also have unions making wage and healthcare concessions to protect jobs, so it sucks for all of them rather than just 10% who get laid off.

Personally it's tough dealing with the global wage deflation. Rather than raise (or lower) corporate rates I'd increase the deduction for wages below $100k or whatever. I think that would be a win-win, and far more productive than the govt attempting to be a middle man redistributing wealth. But a temporary credit isn't going to work.
Oct 13, 2011 7:19pm
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O-Trap

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Oct 13, 2011 7:19 PM
Footwedge;932687 wrote:Why shouldn't blue collar workers income levels increase...if the company they work for is successful?
Perhaps more people get hired instead? It would increase the spending ON that demographic of the work force, but not necessarily the average pay by much.

It is rather common to hire more production workers when business allows for it. It is NOT common to hire more CEOs. As such, the spending on each level as a whole might be more equitable, but the pay per position is going to be different because of that.
HitsRus;932745 wrote:....reported that NYC is going to clear them out at 7AM tomorrow (Friday)

http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/13/ows-on-zuccotti-park-clean-up-this-is-an-occupation-not-a-permitted-picnic/

to clean the park....after which park 'occupiers' must follow the rules.
Oct 13, 2011 7:19pm
G

gut

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Oct 13, 2011 7:27 PM
HitsRus;932745 wrote:....reported that NYC is going to clear them out at 7AM tomorrow (Friday)

http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/13/ows-on-zuccotti-park-clean-up-this-is-an-occupation-not-a-permitted-picnic/

to clean the park....after which park 'occupiers' must follow the rules.
It's been almost 4 weeks?...They were going to have to leave sooner or later to pick-up and cash their monthly gubmit check.
Oct 13, 2011 7:27pm
B

BoatShoes

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Oct 13, 2011 8:57 PM
gut;932752 wrote:Personally it's tough dealing with the global wage deflation. Rather than raise (or lower) corporate rates I'd increase the deduction for wages below $100k or whatever. I think that would be a win-win, and far more productive than the govt attempting to be a middle man redistributing wealth. But a temporary credit isn't going to work.
This is a good idea in my opinion. One way you could do it is alter the deduction for wages as an ordinary business expense and make it a credit. I'm not saying a another new credit but turjning the deduction for wages into a credit. If a corporation is in the top 35% bracket, $1,000 spent on wages only lowers their taxable income by $350 because deductions only shave money off of your taxable income. A credit for wages would reduce tax liability dollar for dollar. Thus, if you spent $1,000 on wages, it would reduce your tax liability $1,000. Still need to have more demand for goods and services and confidence in the economy but I think it would be a good thing because it's a pretty strong hiring incentive.
Oct 13, 2011 8:57pm