by Roland Hulme
Occupy Wall Street is a protest movement that's capturing the attention of America. However, that might change once you read their list of "demands."
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| The 99% lack a clearly defined agenda. |
Lower Manhattan is awash with civil unrest at the moment, as thousands of protestors gather in the heart of the world's financial center to protest stuff.
This stuff includes political corruption, fraudulent banking practices, illegal foreclosures, government bailouts and a host of bona fide crimes committed by banking institutions against honest, working Americans. But many of the protestors are also railing against capitalism in general; and leading the charge to bring social and economic revolution to the United States.
This is where they lose me.
Although I initially supported the movement, that support quickly dissipated when I was directed to a list of "demands" being proposed by a member of Occupy Wall Street - a list which quickly and definitively identified the author - and possibly the movement - as idiotic.
AMENDMENT: Apparently LloydJHart does not represent Occupy Wall Street with his nonsensical ramblings. They have since published an official list of more sensible demands. Find it here.
Behold the following. Because the author didn't bother correcting his spelling, grammar or punctuation, I won't bother doing it for him (or when I quote him later):
Proposed List Of Demands For Occupy Wall St Movement!
by LloydJHart (read it here)
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.
My response to this lunacy is as follows:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage.
I believe strongly in the concept of a "living wage" - in which every American who works full time is entitled to enough income to support themselves and their family.
However, to achieve this through "re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods" and "raising the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr" shows an infantile grasp of economics.
Trade tariffs, for a start, are "protectionism", which has been shown to be a terrible idea every time it's been attempted. Just look at the War of American Independence - spurred, in part, by Britain's trade restrictions to its colonies - and the dire "Corn Laws" in Britain during the 19th century.
Besides, America already has absurdly inequitable tariffs in place. For example, corn farmers receive subsidies, while sugar imports are heavily taxed, which has made the domestic production of ethanol as impractical economically as it is functionally.
As for the minimum wage - what sort of lunacy is that? Occupy Wall Street are calling for the wage to be more than doubled all across America. Do you think doubling payroll costs will make American companies more likely to hire or fire employees? Do you think it will make them more or less competitive against foreign imports (from producers with much leaner labor costs)?
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system.
Occupy Wall Street demand "all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market". This is ironic because the finest health care system in the world, in France, has a thriving private health insurance industry; which exists alongside the government single-payer system.
Like with their solution to "restoring the living wage", their 'solution' to the health care crisis shows a complete lack of understanding of the problem they're trying to solve.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
That's great. Didn't we cover than in Demand One?
Demand four: Free college education.
American college graduate leave school with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of student loans. That being said, they also leave school with the finest graduate degrees in the world. 17 of the 20 best universities in the world are in the United States - so it's clear that the system that's currently in place, expensive as it is, works.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
I actually agree with the concept of this statement, but roll my eyes at the childishly limited vision it implies. America's future lies in pioneering alternative, sustainable energy and selling that technology to the world (bringing in trillions of dollars of revenue and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.)
Instead, Occupy Wall Street seem to only care about turning off the coal-fired power plants and having us all heat our bathtubs with solar panels.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
America's infrastructure is crumbling, and we desperately need to spend billions of dollars rebuilding it before this country turns itself into a third world nation. So Occupy Wall Street and I seem to be on the same page.
But, if you'll excuse my French, where the f**k are we supposed to find a trillion dollars all of a sudden?
(Psst! The answer is - "America's military budget.")
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
Once again, you've got to ask Occupy Wall Street exactly where the f**k they think this trillion dollars is going to come from.
And unlike in the answer above, I'm not going to tell them this time - because Demand Seven is basically a call to revert America to a pre-industrialized society.
Don't get me wrong. I love forests and river systems - but I also love not living next to mosquito-infested swamps, and being able to take the highway to work.
Also, shutting down all the nuclear power stations would kind of have the opposite effect of what Occupy Wall Street is calling for in Demand Five (an end to fossil fuels.)
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Dear Occupy Wall Street. This already exists. Read a law book.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
This demand is so mind-numbingly stupid that it actually, physically hurts to retort to it. All I can argue is that with unemployment hovering at around 10%, perhaps opening our borders to an influx of bargain-basement foreign labor might not be the best thing for the economy at this time, and certainly won't help achieve the "living wage" they were whining about earlier.
On the upside, at least the tidal wave of foreign labor will be able to help Al Qaeda lug those heavy chemical bombs and nuclear devices over our undefended border.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
While more and more countries move to electronic voting machines and systems, Occupy Wall Street wants us to revert to a paper ballot; which has been ripe for rigging throughout the history of democracy.
Paper ballots caused all sorts of problems in the 2000 elections (which, many believe, Al Gore should have won) and President Kennedy definitely rigged the 1960 election (more than 6,000 people in one Illinois district voted for him; despite only 4,000 actually living there.) Like with every other "demand" of theirs, this stems from an infantile understanding of the electoral system; and makes things worse, not better.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all.
This one's my favorite. Occupy Wall Street "demand" debt forgiveness of "sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now."
You hear that? Every debt in America, stricken from the books. Trillions and trillions of dollars given away; with essentially "free" houses to all who have mortgages, billions of dollars of consumer goods given away free and student loans evaporated from existence...
That's all well and good - but what about the people who loaned this money? What about the shareholders? What about the businesses that gave out car loans and payment plans for goods and services?
Of all the mind-numbing stupidity of Occupy Wall Street's manifesto, this is the dumbest "demand" yet - and it gets worse: "65 trillion dollars of debt must be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period."
Wow. Just wow.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Absolutely. Because what benefit is there in giving companies that issue loans or payment plans information about who does and who doesn't default on their debts?
In all honesty, this is such a stupid "demand" the reason for it being here is probably because the author of this manifesto has a shitty credit rating.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
Well, in theory this right already exists; although I'll admit that many companies - such as Wal-Mart - crack down hard on attempts to create unions.
I am half-and-half when it comes to trade unions. I know they are ripe with corruption and graft, and I know their self-destructive, unreasonable demands almost led to the demise of the American auto-industry.
But then again, if you don't allow unions you end up with corporations exploiting workers to a disgusting degree; denying them fair pay and essential benefits because the employees don't have the clout to gang up and demand what's right.
I disagree with the right-wing's current "war on unions" - but union solidarity has a time and a place, and needs to be tempered by the cold water of economic reality.
The only verdict: Occupy Wall Street are idiots.
AMENDMENT: Since then, Occupy Wall Street have published a list of more sensible demands. Find it here.
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