Chris Hedges & The Occupy Wall Street Message

Finally someone has perfectly summarized the end-game of Occupy:  Wall Street.  Thank you Chris Hedges:

This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don’t understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb and blind.

For more of Hedges' (along with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! in the first 2 clips) spot on analysis:

More Tax Graphics

Tax History

The Redistribution of Wealth...Upward

After all the sturm and drang from the Republicans about President Obama's socialist agenda to "spread the wealth around," a new paper from University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez shows that that has already occured...but in an upward direction. The above graph illustrates just how bad the situation is.

What Professor Saez found, to quote Paul Krugmann of the New York Times, was "truly amazing:"

• since 2000, just the top 0.01% of income earners DOUBLED their cut of the nations total income to 6%
• As of 2007, the top 10% of American earners accounted for 49.7% of total wages, a level "higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the 'roaring" 1920s.'"
• "The top 1% incomes captured half of the overall economic growth over the period 1993-2007"
• "...while the bottom 99% of incomes grew at a solid pace of 2.7% per year from 1993-2000, these incomes grew only 1.3% per year from 2002-2007. As a result, in the economic expansion of 2002-2007, the top 1 percent captured two thirds of income growth."

So, as you hear complaints that President Obama's proposed health care surtax on the wealthy is somehow unfair, point to this report. After seeing these numbers, is it any wonder why there is so much anger being displayed at health care town halls nationwide? In my opinion, the anger is justified, it's just aimed in the wrong direction.

Global Worker Unrest

A story in the Financial Times today caught my eye and I thought I'd make a quick inter-country comparison of how each countries workers handle their disagreements with management. I'll start with the extreme example.

In China:
Tonghua Iron & Steel, a state-run enterprise with about 50,000 workers, had been in privatization talks with Jianlong Group, one of China’s largest privately-held steel companies, when the workers rebelled. After the manager, Chen Guojun, stated that he was going to lay-off all of the workers, they beat him unconscious then stopped an ambulance and police from entering. The manager died because of the attack.

In France:
France has several interesting examples. Two weeks ago, workers facing lay-offs at a Nortel Networks research center that is being closed in Châteaufort, near Paris, threatened to blow up their factories unless they receive more severance pay. They later admitted the bomb threats were a hoax. Back in April, workers at two Caterpillar plants in Grenoble, France, kidnapped five of their management team in their offices after the company announced it would be laying off 733 employees. More examples of the French workers "kidnapping strategy" can be found in this comprehensive article from the Washington Times. Though this strategy sounds extreme, the workers typically treat their "hostages" very well and mainly used the tactic to bring media attention and awareness of the issue to the rest of the country.

In the United States:
The only example of a successful worker rebellion (other than a strike) that I can remember in the past few years was the sit-in last year at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago that ended with the company getting an emergency loan that kept the factory open.

Why is it that extreme examples of worker protests don't happen in America any more? Where are all of the protests, like the ones in the '60s and '70s that made America famous? I ask because, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has the highest rates of poverty and inequality of it's member countries, with the exception of Mexico and Turkey. The OECD was formed in 1960 and currently has 30 members, that you can see here. The first link in this paragraph takes you to the OECD individual report on the US also has some other very interesting statistics, so I highly suggest clicking it.

Could America's worker's response to management be so docile because of the fact that their economic well-being is so fragile? I'm not advocating violence or bloodshed, but where are the domestic protests?