Clear Choice
This is finally the debate I've been hoping for. From the Occupy Wall Street Journal we get one view:
"This is not about banks. This is a permanent CRISIS. daily, when the alarm rings, it comes over the kitchen table all the way to our work places and into the streets, right through our relationships and bodies, to our bank account, screaming for low wages, competition and mistrust. it works with our fears. this is the daily madness of competition, of capitalist culture. this is a permanent crisis. we won't pay for this crisis any more."
And from Bill Moyers from his article in the Nation we get another take:
"...(everyday citizens) laid down the markers of a civilized society: legally ordained minimum wages, child labor laws, workers safety and compensation laws..and rules that promote competitive markets over monopolies and cartels."
One believes it is "madness" to compete with his/her fellow Man over the abundance which lies before us and the other celebrates it. This is one of the prime divisions which exists within the "99%" and which so many hope to avoid indefinitely in order to go from a moment to a movement.
Some see the crisis as profound,"permanent", and solvable only by driving history forward into a new epoch. Others believe it is just another orbit in a cyclical universe so that the old answers of populism and a New Deal re-solve the crisis once again. Some see the entire legalistic/constitutional framework as not only inadequate but fatally flawed. Others believe them to be an eternal foundation upon which We The People may forever rest. Some look to a new culture, some worship the old.
Bourgeois populism and democracy (legal-political) have a huge advantage in this debate but I hope the "complex unity"of the Occupy Movement will at least allow it to play out and not come to blows. Competition is just a small part of the content struggling to fill such floating signifiers as equality and justice, there are plenty of others; merit, risk-reward, property, aptitude, competence, etc.. dangling just below the discursive surface. Time to meet liberalism and it's Protestant ethics head on. The unease of the West coast dock workers over the attempted blockade was just the opening gambit.
posted by troutsky @ 9:35 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
How can this all come together?
People are in the streets all over the world but so far they have been easily managed.
An entire town in China sat in and faced down the military resisting the takeover of land by a developer.
Russians are telling Putin to screw off.
Egyptians are still trying to get the American backed military out of there.
Europe's problems will be blamed on social spending and it's back to Thatcherism.
All small movements that can be crushed as easily as an Occupy encampment. Obama rode in taking advantage of a severe cynicism and his great achievement may be to have compounded the cynicism and pushed a lot of backs against the wall all over the world.
Well, just lower taxes and watch Kapital put everything in order. The top twenty corporations in America paid less than .01% in taxes. Barely covers the cost of extortion and bribes by the IMF and the State Dept. What a deal but you are still going to have the right spouting the meme till we get proper media.
As long as the presumption of status, power and hierarchy are guiding principles of our modern society, with individual achievement as the lynchpin to advancement, not even proper media will make a difference. We will just be chatting and rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Well, the indefinite detention provision has passed.
Indefinite detention without charges, attorney or any hint of habeus corpus.
This is where we are heading and not a peep. Beak probably wonders if it means he can snatch an OWS protester and lock on in his cellar.
Ducky you still don't get it, but I can't really fault you, neither does the right. Social spending contributes to Europe's problems, because their entitlement culture goes way too far, but the main cause of their problem is their tax and regulatory climate. That is what causes economies to contract, and when economies contract, how do you get the money for social spending? The left cuts its own throat with this shit and then spends its time inventing ways to blame the right. It's fucking crazy.
Pagan: You have to take those econ.101 books by Mankiw and put them in a little pile and BURN THEM. They no longer explain anything, really. The simple formulas were attractive but fundamentally flawed.
Ducky: As Naomi Klein suggests, it "comes together" over peak oil and climate change. The logic of Obama's liberal-democratic capitalism crumbles with the Tar Sands. Or Powder River coal or fracking for natural gas.
kultur: There are experiments with radical, participatory democracy going on that challenge hierarchy on one level. I know it's not the depth you are talking about but it is movement. And in a weird way the battle over the meaning of science and knowledge itself is going to come to the forefront. At some point the data itself says capitalism doesn't work. Religion and market ideology will confront their marriage of convenience and the story will have to change.
Troutsky-
Get real. Before a government can fund social spending it has to be able to take in more money than it spends, not the other way around. You don't need an economics course to be able to figure that out.
Well Pagan, a progressive tax can deal with a lot of that.
Problem for me is that hanging around with bad companions like trout and kultur I've stopped asking the question of whether fiscal policy is an adequate response to the wealth and income differential.
Doesn't matter, the system that produces the inequality has to be tamed. It's going to take some doing here but the ecological movement holds hope which is why the right is so intent on trashing it.
Your beloved ecological movement is determined to send the mass of mankind packing back to the Dark Ages while the elite favored few live like feudal lords.
Also, Ducky, what kind of tax do you think we've had for the last century. Fuck, dude, we've had a fucking progressive tax since the days of Wilson. Wake the fuck up!
No we don't Pagan.
Payroll taxes (SSI are regressive and are equal to income tax receipts.
Sales, state, gasoline and others are virtually all regressive.
The recent tax cuts made the income tax much less progressive. Our tax system is minimally progressive if at all.
I wide awake, thank you.
The top rate is 35.5 percent, the lower rate is something like 14 percent, and most of the people who pay that lower rate get most or all of it back at the end of the year. Seems pretty fucking progressive to me. In the meantime you can't walk two steps in any direction without having to worry about running afoul of some idiot regulation. When you say capitalism doesn't work, that's why I can't take you seriously. It's not being allowed to work.
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