What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[Lissa]

Once again, you're deflecting. Opportunity is eroding, you even said so yourself, and thus so too is the equality of opportunity. You cannot have one erode and another stay the same when they are essentially the same. This is not arguing apples and oranges, this is arguing apples to apples. You cannot have opportunity erode while having the equality of opportunity stay the same, either both have to stay the same, both have to increase, or both have to decrease. They are tied together. If one erodes, so to does the other have to erode, they are not exclusive to each other, they are inclusive of each other.

Say I'm a business owner, and in 2008 I hire 100 new employees a year, and then due to recession and lack of sales I entrench and decide for 2009 and 2010 to hire 50, or zero new employees. This equally denied the opportunity to the pool of potential applicants. There is no inequality in presenting, or retracting the opportunity.

But, this is a much bigger picture as well. Being hired is one piece. How about education? Part of the stimulus bill increased the amount of money going to student aid. Opportunity is increased in that case. What about new business ventures? Again, part of the stimulus went to the Small Business Administration for expanding grants and loans to small business. Things are hampered by a credit crunch as banks swing the pendulum away from ridiculously easy credit.

I'm not deflecting here. I'm swirling around a bigger picture of what opportunity means both at the present, and historically. It means more than railing at the disproportionate wealth of the top 1%. It means more than a poverty rate that oscillates between 10% and 16% over three decades. It means more than getting every child through high school, and every high school graduate through college.

No, you are still deflecting. Your above comments is a perfect deflection. What you've illustrated is not equality of opportunity, you've described no opportunity. There has to be an opportunity there to even check to see if there is an equality of opportunity, what you've described above is a complete and utter lack of opportunity, something completely different.

An example of equality of opportunity is you have a position and five people apply for said position. The position requires either a degree or 5 years experience. Now, let's setup the five people.

Applicant one has a degree in the area you're looking for, some experience in another area (re-educated trying to try a new career), happens to be latino, and has excellent references.

Applicant two has a degree, 5 years experience in the area, happens to female, and has so-so references.

Applicant three has no degree, has 10 years experience, happens to be a white male, with good references.

Applicant four has no degree, has 5 years experience, happens to be asian, and a friend of your boss (their only real reference).

Applicant five has a degree, 2 years experience, has mediocre references, and happens to be a close friend.

Now, in an equality of opportunity, all of the applicants fit the minimum for the position. You interview all of them and your final choice is based on who interviewed best and had the best references.

But the way things work now, applicant four and applicant five would be chosen over the others because of connections with the company (#4 due to being a friend of the boss and #5 due to being a friend of you the interviewer). This is more typical that most people realize as a large majority of jobs are handled by word of mouth than by putting out an advertisement (this was an interesting statistic given to me by someone that helps with job placement when I was looking for work last year). If a large number of positions are going through the word of mouth method, that right there tells you that equality of opportunity does not exist.

I think I've shown that mostly people are better off than they were a decade ago, and that most people do advance upwards in social mobility. I've acknowledged the current challenges and I've given my opinions on why I believe real opportunities contributing toward "The American Dream" are eroding. But, I believe it would be natural for people to be more pessimistic in the trough of a deep recession, or in the midst of a civil war, etc. Despite the hard times, more young people still believe they will do better than their parents.

Err...what? How can you say that people are better off right now than they were a decade ago when the job situation was much better then than it is now? And I would really like to see these young people saying they'll do better than their parents. Every thing I've seen says exactly the opposite, that young people are realizing they will not do as well as their parents unless their parents are truly destitute and they can maybe claw their way up a little. Right now, the situation is far worse for young people then it has ever been in the past century, possibly history of the US. How you could possibly think that they would be better off than their parents is just astounding to me.

Once again, try staying on topic. The fact is, opportunity has decreased and it continues to decrease. Jobs are being lost and not coming back because of the push for automation along with decreases in working condition (and s'posed increase in productivity which, in essence, is having less people do more).

I tend to step back from a problem and view it in it's larger context. I feel I am on topic. We don't know that lost jobs would not return. It would take some stepwise changes, such as reform of our tax code, to return the US as THE place to start or move your business.

I have been looking at this from a 10,000 foot view, you on the other hand seem to be wearing blinders to the truth. And if you're going to bring up reform of the tax code, then you haven't been paying attention to what various companies have been paying in taxes even with the s'posedly high corporate tax rate here in the US (hint, some companies are getting refunds).

As much as you want to say, we don't know if the jobs will return, they won't. Jobs are already moving from China to other countries because it's getting too expensive to produce in China (along with China's nasty little policy of requiring companies that work in China to give, that's right, give, their patents to China to be allowed to work there). Corporations are going to go where they end up with the biggest profits, there by jobs won't return to the US so long as they can be made more cheaply elsewhere. If you think jobs will return to the US that have left, I got some ocean front property to sell you out in Yuma AZ.

Likewise, the wealth creation you state isn't really wealth creation, but wealth concentration as high paying jobs are being destroyed to create more low paying jobs that do not even come close to the same amount of wealth going out and that difference in wealth is going into the pockets of a few. As much as you want to say that rest of the world is better off, it is not. Those with large amounts of wealth are concentrating more wealth at the expense of those that were being paid good salaries now being decimated, those with extremely low salaries getting a few more pennies, and those with a high amount of wealth continue to concentrate that difference wealth lost from those that lost good salary positions as those positions were redistributed to much, much lowered salary positions.

You'd have to show some evidence to back this up. There are many service industry jobs being created, and manufacturing is taking a beating. But, the service sector also includes lawyers, doctors, nurses, financial, computer, etc.

Really? You honestly think that there have been that many high paying service jobs that have been created? Now I know you're fooling yourself if you think that with all the high paying jobs that have been lost that the service jobs created made up that difference. I know you're not that naive. Wealth in being concentrated in the US into the hands of a small few while everyone else is getting screwed over.

I heard a comment from none other than Michael Moore that actually shocked me, he said, "I have no problem with Capitalism as we had up to the 70s and early 80s where if you worked hard you got paid appropriately, but the Capitalism we have now has got to go when you can push money around and get paid large sums of money for essentially doing nothing." It was the first times I had ever heard something truly lucid come out of Moore's mouth that I could truly agree with him on all points.

Pete and I had a great exchange along these lines a couple of years ago. I was wondering what happens when people aren't really needed to run the economy. If you look at the productivity of farming, for example, where very few people produce the same or greater amounts of food. Or, more fully automated production, where machines and robots do most of the work. You put a roll a denim on one end of the machines, and various sizes of blue jeans get spit out the other end, and automatically bundled by size, and sent off to the inspectors. Instead of hundreds of people sitting at sewing machines, you've employed a few engineers, machinists, and repair technicians, and eliminated a lot of tedium. I still don't have an answer, because our psyche's are entrenched in the idea that everyone must find gainful employment in order to be a productive member of society.

So, this may be radical for me... But, one way to alleviate some of the unemployment problem would be to lower the age for social security, and to set the federal and state employee work weeks to 32 or 36 hours. Eventually, the rest of the culture would follow and a 32 hour work week would become normal. Then, maybe we'd go to a 24 hour work week, some day in the future.

The problem that you aren't getting past isn't that having these things come to pass would be fine, the problem that is at issue is the wealth concentration. People are getting forced into lower social strata because of the greed of a few individuals. This is the essence of why Occupy exists, that they're fed up with the greed of a small group screwing over everyone. This is why Grover Norquist is going to find himself soon dealing with backlash from the Republican party because they're getting hammered because of their no tax stand. The policies that are being driven by the no tax agenda is being seen as keeping that wealth concentration in the hands of a few and the many are finally had enough. And more the many continue to see their earnings drop, the more mad they get. So, you'll never see the many advocating your plan unless the few start giving up some of that wealth concentration. Until that happens, your ideas will be a pipe dream.