Operation Occupy Wall Street

[Dawn Falcon]

Yea, but you don't get to vote on whether Apple will build it's phones in Silicon Valley instead of China, or that Walmart must buy shirts made in Tennessee instead of Vietnam.

...And that's why companies should be held to the same ethical standards as people.

It's not even good for the rich, as we're seeing, for the middle class to fade away. We're in serious danger of social regression. They'd rather hang onto a shell of prosperity rather than loosen their grip.
Well, at some point you need to take a hammer and start breaking fingers. I'd rather do it metaphorically, as in the Nordic countries, before it starts happening in reality some way down the line.

[biosc1]

Yea, but you don't get to vote on whether Apple will build it's phones in Silicon Valley instead of China, or that Walmart must buy shirts made in Tennessee instead of Vietnam.

You can certainly vote with your wallet if you so choose.

[Erich]

Not if everybody is racing to the bottom, you can't.

[Hagbard Celine]

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmo...r-rule-letter/

http://www.occupythesec.org/letter/O...t%20Letter.pdf

325 pages where they go through the Volcker rule, line by line, commenting on where it's useless and where it can and should be improved.

[Teiman]

Yea, but you don't get to vote on whether Apple will build it's phones in Silicon Valley instead of China, or that Walmart must buy shirts made in Tennessee instead of Vietnam.

If you make the rules, you can make so the phones are built in Tennessee.

The classic tool to do that is having a import tariff, where products created in countries with lower wages have a higher tariff. This way you protect wages worldwide (not only on your own country). Maybe there are other tools. Like have another tax on products created outside on the country. So for the end customer, is cheaper to buy a USA product, than a china one.

The way globalization work nows, it run against the interest of wages, but If you control the rules, you can disable this bad effect.

Perhaps there will be some bad side effects. Maybe globalization is good for the world economy. But obviusly if is bad for you, and you don't stop it, then well... you are wellcoming these bad effects.

[Timex]

If you make the rules, you can make so the phones are built in Tennessee.

The classic tool to do that is having a import tariff, where products created in countries with lower wages have a higher tariff. This way you protect wages worldwide (not only on your own country). Maybe there are other tools. Like have another tax on products created outside on the country. So for the end customer, is cheaper to buy a USA product, than a china one.

The problem here is that you can't make it cheaper to buy the US product. You can only make it more expensive to buy the other product.

So, the problems this type of isolationism causes are multifold:
1) You essentially start a trade war with the other nation, and they'll do the same thing to all of your exports to them.
2) You raise the prices for products in your own nation, which means that your workers need higher wages to still have the same effective buying power. But they already had higher wages than other nations... so now you need to jack up the tarriffs, because you are trying to level the playing field even more.


The reality is this... If some guy is willing to do exactly what you do, for less money... then he deserves the job. You need to adjust to the situation. Other plans are likely to fail.

[AaronSofaer]

You can, in fact, make it cheaper to buy the US product. That's what subsidies are for. Presumably we both oppose them, but they do exist.

[Black Isis]

You can, in fact, make it cheaper to buy the US product. That's what subsidies are for. Presumably we both oppose them, but they do exist.

That doesn't really make it cheaper, it just changes how you're paying for it. If you subsidize the price of widgets, but then raise taxes to pay for the half of the widget no one is paying for, the price of the widget hasn't changed. You've just socialized the cost of the widget. When this is something like health insurance I don't have much trouble with it, since it's something everyone should have as a social good anyway. When it's, say, cars, it's not as good an idea for a variety of reasons.

[AaronSofaer]

Teiman's point is that you can make it so that the jobs stay in the country.

That remains true. Subsidy is probably a better way to do it than tariffs, though both combined probably works better.

[ReptileHouse]

Perhaps a minor point, but subsidies don't necessarily make goods cheaper for consumers. They make it effectively cheaper for the producer to make. Whether those savings are passed on in the final price of the product is not a given.

[Teiman]

The problem here is that you can't make it cheaper to buy the US product. You can only make it more expensive to buy the other product.

So, the problems this type of isolationism causes are multifold:
1) You essentially start a trade war with the other nation, and they'll do the same thing to all of your exports to them.

The war already exist, and are a war against the middle class.

The current situation is that if you are a corporation, you can create products where wages are low (say asia), and sell the products where wages are high. If you are a middle class person, you can't buy products in asia with you westerned wage.

2) You raise the prices for products in your own nation, which means that your workers need higher wages to still have the same effective buying power. But they already had higher wages than other nations... so now you need to jack up the tarriffs, because you are trying to level the playing field even more.

This is true. Will result on more money on the pockets, but less stuff you can actually buy. Is this good or bad? do we need a lot of electronic toys? what good do us having a lot of electronic toys and being unemployed?

The reality is this... If some guy is willing to do exactly what you do, for less money... then he deserves the job.

My company sells some software for 3000. Other company tried to enter our market with a competing product that cost 200.
That company has closed, because there's a very small number of companies that can buy the product, so being so cheap is a losing strategy.

Perhaps some of our customers want our product for 40. But thats not the cost of it, so we don't sell it at that price.

These suckers that tried that do my work for less money are now unemployed.


I don't always buy the cheaper product. And I don't always pay the lower wages. The lower price product could be some product with problems... It sometimes is not, but you need to know more to make a informed decision. Paying a very low salary for a person is mostly ok, but what you can end doing is exploiting that person. So I think you would raise the wage of that person to some decent level, even if that person don't ask for it. Thats better for you, because that person will continue working for you, and will not quit to search a better opportunity. Is expensive to train new people.

So about "a person that work for less money..." thats the wrong way to write it. A person deserve a decent wage. A person working with a wage that is not decent, deserve for that wage to be raised.

[Scuzz]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MN691N857R.DTL

More than 80 percent of the residential mortgage loans that have gone into foreclosure in San Francisco contain one or more clear violations of the law, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting said Wednesday.

While the errors, many of them technical paperwork violations, don't necessarily indicate criminal conduct by lenders and others in the mortgage industry, they do show that changes must be made in California's century-old real estate regulations, he added.

Not necessarily fraud, but it sure is sloppy.

[Malathor]

Occupy: dead, despised.

[WarrenM]

Latest Family Guy had a great line from Peter when he joined the Tea Party. Something like, "But what kind of organization wants a fat angry white guy who hates listening?"

[Robert Sharp]

I'm surprised OWS lasted as long as it did. When I saw this thread bumped, my first reaction was "Oh yeah. That thing. What ever happened to that?"

It's the same reaction I have when someone mentions Pet Rocks.

[Telefrog]

Who could've forseen that this would fizzle out and amount to a fat lot of nothing much? If only someone had been able to predict this!

[WarrenM]

That was the easy reaction, sure. It's easy to be a cynic on the internet - that's why almost everyone does it. It's harder to have hope.

[Telefrog]

I have hope for movements with actual plans and strategies rather than purposefully directionless gatherings.

[WarrenM]

There you go. See how easy that was? Nice work.

[Malathor]

That was the easy reaction, sure. It's easy to be a cynic on the internet - that's why almost everyone does it. It's harder to have hope.

I have hope. Personally I'm hoping Walker's upcoming victory in the Wis recall election (thanks in part to the Occupy backlash) will have national repercussions, jeopardize Obama's electoral math, and prove to be a sledgehammer blow to public sector unions across the country from which they never recover.

[Tortilla]

I have hope. Personally I'm hoping Walker's upcoming victory in the Wis recall election (thanks in part to the Occupy backlash) will have national repercussions, jeopardize Obama's electoral math, and prove to be a sledgehammer blow to public sector unions across the country from which they never recover.

I don't think hope means what you think it means.

[AaronSofaer]

I have hope. Personally I'm hoping Walker's upcoming victory in the Wis recall election (thanks in part to the Occupy backlash) will have national repercussions, jeopardize Obama's electoral math, and prove to be a sledgehammer blow to public sector unions across the country from which they never recover.

And while you're hoping for the Gilded Age to come on even harder, we people with an actual grasp on reality will hope for something less destructive to the country than handing governance once again to the party that's actively trying to destroy our country.

[Fishbreath]

the party that's actively trying to destroy our country.

Given your generally thoughtful and intelligent posts in other threads, I would have thought this kind of hand-wringing hysteria is beneath you.

[WarrenM]

You're saying they AREN'T actively trying to destroy the country? Their actions say otherwise.

[Fishbreath]

On the other hand, Warren, that level of hand-wringing hysteria has been an amusing feature of your posts for as long as I've associated them with your username.

Arguing that anyone who cares enough about the American political process to get involved in it is actively trying to destroy the country is flat-out stupid. I think that about half of the elected American government is pursuing an economic agenda that isn't helpful, but since economics is a complicated field and I suspect they're about as sure of their policy plans as I am of mine, I'm not going to take the step of assuming bad faith.

Although, given that Qt3 P&R might as well have the subtitle 'Where we assume bad faith', engaging on this topic probably isn't very smart of me.

[Malathor]

You're saying they AREN'T actively trying to destroy the country? Their actions say otherwise.

Go take a hard look at California aka Publicsectoruniontopia and tell me who is the one trying to destroy the country.

[WarrenM]

On the other hand, Warren, that level of hand-wringing hysteria has been an amusing feature of your posts for as long as I've associated them with your username.

Arguing that anyone who cares enough about the American political process to get involved in it is actively trying to destroy the country is flat-out stupid. I think that about half of the elected American government is pursuing an economic agenda that isn't helpful, but since economics is a complicated field and I suspect they're about as sure of their policy plans as I am of mine, I'm not going to take the step of assuming bad faith.

Although, given that Qt3 P&R might as well have the subtitle 'Where we assume bad faith', engaging on this topic probably isn't very smart of me.

I don't think they're doing it maliciously. I think they're just too fucking stupid to foresee what will happen.

[Fishbreath]

Then I suppose we're broadly in agreement, although I'm sure we wouldn't be if we were to get into any more detail than that.

[AaronSofaer]

Go take a hard look at California aka Publicsectoruniontopia and tell me who is the one trying to destroy the country.

California's problems have barely anything to do with unions and just about everything to do with a combination of complete legislative gridlock and the godawful moronic amendment/proposition system. Oh, and a complete refusal to either tax appropriately for the services the state is rendering or cut services to a level appropriate for the taxes they're willing to levy, which ties back into the first two points.

Given your generally thoughtful and intelligent posts in other threads, I would have thought this kind of hand-wringing hysteria is beneath you.

Have you been paying any attention to the antics of the Republican party the past while? I don't exactly love the Democrats - see, oh, my entire posting history for evidence - but there's a world of difference between their milquetoast spinelessness and the Republican Party of today.

[WarrenM]

Then I suppose we're broadly in agreement, although I'm sure we wouldn't be if we were to get into any more detail than that.

I don't get involved enough in politics to engage in a deeper discussion so, yeah, best not to get into it. Would be a waste of your time.