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What OWS has taught me; Alec Baldwin
Topic Started: Nov 16 2011, 11:03 PM (190 Views)
Thumper
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alec-baldwin/what-occupy-wall-street-h_b_1096920.html
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Pat
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Once again, this all centers on people making poor choices in their lives. And not questioning government institutions.

People have participated in education systems that prepared them for one of two choices. To learn enough to be somebody elses robot. Or to think outside the box and use what was learned as individual entrepreneurs.

A semi educated worker bee (which is what the business community wanted out of public education), will visit a Home Depot store and ask how they can get a job there. A self actualized entrepreneur will walk past the homeless begger in the parking lot, past the human resources office, and ask to speak to the manger about cutting a better price on the power washer displayed in the store. He will then load the power washer into his truck, do the same thing with a guy at the trailer lot and place where you buy water tanks. Within 72 hours he is knocking on doors and offering to power wash what they have for a fee. It's a different way of looking at the scenery you pass by.
Edited by Pat, Nov 17 2011, 01:00 AM.
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tomdrobin
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Here are some of my favorite quotes from the article.

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Maintaining US corporate profitability is the single goal of this Congress. Because that is what the corporations who own the Congress paid for when they bought the Congress.


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When the Greatest Generation was replaced by the greediest generation and what was known as the Protestant Work Ethic became a quaint chestnut. The definition of success became getting the most for doing the least. It became about getting away with what you can and the only issue was getting caught. Which pretty much defines the Wall Street culture of today. Never have the world's greatest financial markets been controlled by such dangerously short-sighted people as they are today. And never has this country been cursed by a more incompetent and derelict Securities and Exchange Commission as we are today. In the wake of 9/11, America attacked a perceived terrorist community with all it had. In the wake of some of the worst financial scandals in US history, the SEC took a dive, throwing the fight in the first round.


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OWS talks a lot, too much in fact, about One Percent versus Ninety Nine Percent. As if success itself were a crime. That's a mistake. But what OWS has helped to remind me is that One in Five is a far more unsettling ratio. Twenty percent unemployment. In the 21st Century United States.

There won't be enough cops any where in this country to rip down all the tents that are going to pop up in places you never imagined if we hit that figure. That's what OWS has taught me.


And, yet like Herman Caine, people think the problem is just a lack of ambition and incentive. It you want to be rich just get a job and make yourself rich is the cry. It's just not quite as simple as that. The have always been and will always be people who are driven to succeed, and there has always been and will always be people who aren't that highly motivated, and would like to just work for a modest paycheck and go about their lives. Used to be the system was set up so their was a place for both of these groups at the table. Problem is the opportunities still exist for those with high ambition and initiative, but for the rest the future looks pretty bleak. Entitlements like unemployment and food stamps ease the misery, but they can't last forever. And, if the right has their way that spending will be severely curtailed. Looks more and more to me like we are heading for bannana republic status, with a few of the haves and a whole lot of the have nots. Of course it's all their fault, for being who and what they are. And, if we just make them hungry enough they will change into bright and highly motivated. I'm not buying that logic. What we will get is more misery and crime and a disappearing middle class. American companies making big profits by offshoring manufacturing and selling cheap here is not a sustainable model. As the pool of unemployed grows eventually even the cheap prices at Walmart will be out of reach for most.
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