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[Willfor]

This has always been a feature of society to some extent, but civilization has always gone through cycles where resources get too concentrated in too few hands and too many people are made to suffer to be shunted off to the fringes of society where they can be ignored.

Not really actually, not at all. Middle classes are a rare thing. They've only really ever existed in modern life and in Rome. Saying that we're in a cycle and this is a point is incorrect- that cycle never existed. Historically, most of civilization has been rich and poor. There's no cycle, and the problem we have to deal with now is the restrictions on business- less money in businesses equals less money for jobs equals less jobs equals more poor and starving people. This same equalizing approach has been tried by Europe, and well look at them now. Equalizing doesn't work.

I wish there was a "that's the joke" macro for "that's the cycle." Because you LITERALLY just pointed out the exact cycle he was talking about. And you also pointed to the times in history where there existed a means by which more people could actually be happy. Rome didn't have it as well as we have it, of course, but in its heyday it was decidedly better than the times in history before it. There's a reason a good chunk of the time between Rome's fall and our own place in western history is called the Dark Ages.

[Leafsnail]

Occupy as a whole perhaps, but the single local one I attended had a list of specific conditions for the local administration and had even entered negotiations with a union over some of their conditions. Perhaps the same is true for at least some other local Occupys?

That's true - and hopefully that trend will spread.  If you can gain ground on smaller, specific points you should be able to gradually make an impact on a wider scale.

[mainiac]

I'll just pop in and say one thing about people "earning" money.

In our society, only one talent is really rewarded: business management. The geniuses and hard workers, working in the lab and making the product? They get manipulated. Their talents and hard work may actually be what causes the outgoing product to be good, but what keeps the business running are the executives, and they get all the money.

Anyone who thinks people should be rewarded relative to their prowess should absolutely loathe our system.

I do, but not in the way you think. The whole union system (prepared to take flak here) Is what prevents them from getting higher wages- Wages have to be equal.

As evidenced by the fact that private sector union workers do much better then other private sector workers in similar fields?

Middle classes are a rare thing.

So are industrial societies.  We are an industrial society.  There is a really strong correlation between middle classes and industrial societies.

[DJ]

First of all, the people who are wealthy earned their money. They deserve to keep it.

Except for all those who didn't, ie were born into wealth and stayed wealthy because of rampant nepotism in the upper classes. Really, the super rich are becoming more like nobility every day. And these guys outnumber the ones that raised themselves from poverty, because social mobility is dead.

[Bauglir]

I agree that they shouldn't have to lose money they don't want to. Even if they were born into it, even moreso if they legitimately earned it (which, it should be noted, would still require tremendous luck in addition to hard work, no amount of which is sufficient to guarantee success). Taxes shouldn't have to be levied. The free market should fill all the gaps in construction of infrastructure, public service, and all the other areas where government intervention is becoming more and more common.

But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world where greed is a thing, and where personal success at the expense of others is a winning strategy, and winning lets you perpetuate that strategy further. Where corporate freedoms can, counterintuitively, strangle the freedoms of people who actually exist. Just for an obvious example, it's in an insurance company's best interests never to fulfill the purpose for which it exists - paying on policies is not profitable. So this sort of function needs to be tied to another system where consequences for abuse can (in theory) be applied. A government is, again in theory, great for this, but you need to prevent corruption and that's a problem. Can't think of alternatives, though, I'm rather trapped in the current paradigm at the moment. All I can do is figure out ideas for refining what we have right now.

Graduated taxes and all that are the necessary overhead for living in a world where your chances of being able to actually earn your way up from the bottom are maximized. Even if you're making a net payment due to your massive income (don't neglect the savings provided by public infrastructure such as the ubiquitous federal highway example), you're just subsidizing the system that makes rhetoric about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps viable. Think about it that way, if you rather, instead of as subsidizing people who were too lazy/unlucky to succeed.

[SalmonGod]

Found a discussion about OWS on the officer.com forums.

There's absolutely nothing unexpected there (incredibly insulting, violent, and misinformed) but it's there for anyone who wishes to take a look.

[Nadaka]

To keep my anti-fascist rage from boiling over from SalmonGods article, I had to find something positive.

http://news.yahoo.com/patriotic-millionaires-beg-supercommittee-higher-taxes-185620525.html

[Darvi]

To keep my anti-fascist rage from boiling over from SalmonGods article, I had to find something positive.

http://news.yahoo.com/patriotic-millionaires-beg-supercommittee-higher-taxes-185620525.html

That is indeed excellent news.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think it's horrible news. Things must be dire indeed if these guys are volunteering to pay more taxes.

[mainiac]

It's hardly the first time in American history.  Back at the guilded age, some of the titans of industry were leading the charge in the calls for progressive taxation.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's hardly the first time in American history.  Back at the guilded age, some of the titans of industry were leading the charge in the calls for progressive taxation.

Although that may have had something to do with the logical conclusion of the Gospel of Wealth.

[Truean]

It's hardly the first time in American history.  Back at the guilded age, some of the titans of industry were leading the charge in the calls for progressive taxation.

Although that may have had something to do with the logical conclusion of the Gospel of Wealth.

http://news.yahoo.com/patriotic-millionaires-beg-supercommittee-higher-taxes-185620525.html

[lordcooper]

It's hardly the first time in American history.  Back at the guilded age, some of the titans of industry were leading the charge in the calls for progressive taxation.

Although that may have had something to do with the logical conclusion of the Gospel of Wealth.

http://news.yahoo.com/patriotic-millionaires-beg-supercommittee-higher-taxes-185620525.html

We've just gone full circle.  That link was posted on this thread and inspired the conversation you just responded to with that link.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We've just gone full circle.  That link was posted on this thread and inspired the conversation you just responded to with that link.

....Occupyception?

[Darvi]

We have entered an endless recursion of time.

_{Kyon-kun denwa~}