You want to know why the Occupy Wall Street Movement is happening? The chart below says it all. It isn’t about the poor versus the rich. It is about Wall Street bankers pillaging the middle class with their fraudulent debt instruments. Look at the 1980s. From 1983 through 1991 were pretty good years for the American economy and the average salary on Wall Street was between $70,000 and $90,000 and the average workers’ salary was about $40,000.
You can see what has happened since. The average salary soared to $400,000 for the big swinging dicks on Wall Street while the average salary for John Q. Citizen “soared” to $60,000. I’m sure you would agree that creating fraudulent mortgages, luring middle class Americans into debt, blowing up the world financial system in 2008, and then forcing John Q. Citizen to pay for their world destroying risk losses, certainly deserves compensation on an epic scale.
These Wall Street maggots have taken a dramatic pay cut to $360,000 per year since crashing our economic system, driving our national debt up by $4 trillion, and causing unemployment to rise by 7 million people.
Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein and their friends on Fox News can’t understand why all these “socialists” and “communists” protesting on Wall Street are so angry.
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So there .. .
How strange.
A quick internet search shows me that CONgress has gone from less than $70k annually, $169.3k in 2008. They have received their annual raises every year since.
Their staffs were blessed with college loan forgiveness and huge increases when Pelosi took over and Obama was installed.
Meanwhile, the average wage falls.
This is proof positive that WE are simultaneously being stripped of our ability to earn a decent wage, while piled on with additional (and mainly hidden) tax & mandate burdens.
And people wonder why so many are pissed.
I’m sick of hearing people complaining about the disparity of income and concentration of wealth in this country or the fiscal unsustainability of government welfare and entitlement programs. Sheesh, to listen to some you’d this was a unprecedented situation in human history, a new and unknown economic circumstance. To the contrary it is the traditional economic condition mankind has known throughout history with the 20th century attempt to substitute government funded income redistribution through tax policy that is the unique and anamolous economic arrangement.
Prior to this responsibility for providing jobs and what we would call ‘entitlements’ fell directly upon the rich and upper middle class not the government. It went by many names, domestic service, peonage, serfdom or even slavery but it was how societies dealt with income inequality and welfare.
The UK is illustrative in this regards. When the industrial revolution occured it created a surplus of labor on the estates of the landed gentry. Some of these displaced farm workers went to work in the factories of the rising class of industrial tycoons but, and this is where we went astray, just as many went to work in the homes of the nouveau rich and the upper middle class. A 19th century newly rich factory owner, if he didn’t have a title, would damn sure have manservants, parlor maids, cooks, chauffuers and in numbers that reflected his new wealth and status. Prior to WW1 ‘domestic service’, as it was called, was the largest occupational category in the British Isles. America’s rich, aping British nobility, did the same. Wealthy American families would have dozens of servants.
I can think of no way to more quickly put our unemployed back to work than to once again make today’s wealthy display their wealth and status by the size of their estate and the number of servants they retain to run it!
Sorry, meant to say CONgress in 1980 was at less than $70k, to 2008’s figure.
Ooops.
Cry me a fucking river, Scott.
So Colma please tell me what is preferable about being a cook in a restaurant and being the private cook for a prosperous lawyer, banker, software developer, golf pro etc? My guess is the private cook would have a more relaxed working environment, live in a much better neighborhood and better job security. Rather drive a taxi in city traffic all day scrounging for fares or just have to make a few trips each day to drop off or pick up your employer and his family in a big Mercedes? Work in an motel as a maid or work in the elegant home of a wealthy family?
We need to make it fashionable for the wealthy to employ servants again and remove the stigma of being employed as a domestic worker. Being a manservant to a Jamie Dimon or Steve Jobs would be a helluva of an interesting job. A lot more interesting than working in a cubicle in their company.
Scott, I’m thinking of hiring a maid. How about you? You can come live in a tiny room — hey, it’s at least got it’s own, tiny bath! — and take care of my every whim. You can clean up after my dog, cook my meals, do my dishes and have a cocktail waiting for me when I arrive home from my job. You can’t have a day off unless I grant it to you, and you will be paid a pittance since you’re getting free room and board. Forget having any kind of entertainment or social life of your own. I simply won’t stand for it.
How’s that work for you?
Jim says: “Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein and their friends on Fox News can’t understand why all these “socialists” and “communists” protesting on Wall Street are so angry.’
I notice that you always use Fox News to make disparaging comments. Can you cite some of your favorite media sites that have real news and speak and unbiased truth?
Check this out.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/election_2012_republican_presidential_primary
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Ahmadinejad will see this headline and his asshole will start to pucker.
Labor laws would not be repealed and I doubt the IRS would call a maid or cook who lives in your home an ‘independant contractor’ or management , unless they held the title of butler, so OT would have to be paid as well as minimum wages. How the IRS treats room and board I am not certain. I believe it counts as compensation but not in lieu of wages. I might also that, in modern America, about the last thing a celebrity, ultra rich tycoon or even a prominent small town family would want to have in the news is their mistreatment of household employees.
It was a rhetorical question, you moron. The fact that you think a classist system is preferable to freedom says all it needs to.
My take is during this period of time 1983 to 1991 we still had a lot of engineers running companies who understood the value of their labor force. Then came the age of MBAs so as the Engineers retired and were replaced with people with business degrees; these people, not knowing anything about the products their companies produced lost focus on the value of their employees. So today we have highly paid upper management. In addition to this after exporting our manufacturing capabilities the focus was on financial instruments; so the rewards went to those who could manipulate the financial instruments to bring the most profits out of fictions created out of thin air.
Did this create real value making these employees worth their salaries and bonuses? No. What has been created is the financial mess we are presently in. We are upside down and the money has gone to those that took us down the tubes.
To get back on track we need more engineers with an understanding in business to head our companies and run government.
We have stupid people running our companies and our government. I will give you one example of stupidity recently performed from one politician. Rick Perry, Governor of Texas has appointed a non engineer to head the TXDOT. Now how is a non engineer going to assess the condition of the roads and bridges in Texas and decide priorities on spending money for repairs and replacements of this infrastructure? He does not have the education in engineering to make those critical decisions.
Do you remember the recent collapse of the I-35 bridge that happened in Minneapolis, Minnesota that killed several people? Well the head of the MNDoT was a non engineer that ignored the inspection reports that revealed for years that the bridge, being ignored maintenance for many years, was ready to collapse. This person being a non engineer did not see the danger. And guess who appointed this person? None other than then Minnesota Governor Pewlenty. And he wanted to be president in 2012?
We have stupid people running this government; on all government levels as administrators, and they are also running our companies as CEOs getting paid big bucks for their stupidity.
Why, you ask? Duh; just pointing out the problem as to why the ship is going down.
Doppelganger (Scott) @12:11
Scott: Your dream could quite possibly be a reality… oh, wait, it already is but the servants are guatemalan.
Teresa
It’s worse than that.
Serve in the U.S. military for 20 years ————- 50% pension.
Serve in Congress for ONE TERM —————– 100% pension for LIFE!!
I would be angry at this, but I don’t want to piss off Scott.
I’ll try once more to try and penetrate the cultural prejudice and sociological stupidity that has been exhibited here.
Most Americans are fascinated by celebrity. They even admire the rich and famous if those people have achieved nothing more than become famous because of their looks or ability to run with a football. The clone their hairstyles, wear clothes with a football or basketball players name on the back, follow their every divorce, arrest, rehab stay or appearance on TV. People used to do the same with the ultra rich or nobility. Still do where Dukes and Princesses still walk the earth. On a more mundane level, we have middle managers and workers who ‘believe’ in their company. If they work for Pepsi they swear by Pepsi and revile Coke. Think Apple is cool and Dell passe. Buy a BMW or Jaguar because they think it has more ‘class’ than Cadillac or Lincoln unless they work for Ford or GM! This is the nature of mankind.
What is wrong with making the rich and famous spend a large portion of their outsized income on paying people to maintain the fantasy that they are better than us, larger than life. If you think a servant didn’t exhibit the same snobbery in regards to the rank of his employer as the modern corporate drown does in regards to his employer you be wrong. They moved up in the world too if they could rise from being a scullery maid for a moderately rich squire to a post in the house of a Lord or member of the royal family same as a modern man thanks his lucky stars when he gets a job with a large company that pays benefits and has a pension plan! Better still they got to actually know the boss on a personal level. I bet their are a lot of modern ‘workers’ who would give anything to hang out with Tom Brady, Paris Hilton or Larry Ellison even if as trusted member of their household staff!
Stucky says: “Serve in the U.S. military for 20 years ————- 50% pension”
Not that my job was as important, but i had to work 35 years to get a 50% pension.
.
Scott says: “Most Americans are fascinated by celebrity.”
I’m not one of them. Don’t envy them, don’t hate them. Just other people is all they are.
scott
Stick around, we have lots more to exhibit: luddites, shit-throwing monkeys, the odd neocon or two, anarchists, know-nothings, velociraptor packs that love to dine on people that are up themselves, cheezburger cat pictures, pigmen, doomers-lite and otherwise, critiques on weaponry and more.
Just wondering … how is your village getting along without you?
Novista:
Scott and Dave are of the same cloth… Marinites.
They’re both often annoying as all shit, but I see exactly where they’re coming from. Though I am not a Marinite myself, I dwell in the massive graveyard of their yesteryear. Not a joke… ask them what Colma is.
In addition, I dwell where they have had a great view from atop Mt. Tam, symbolically an Ivory Tower.
Dave was an RNC foot-soldier in an insurmountable political battle 20 years ago. He lost and retreated to Virginia.
Scott is a trust-funder who still won’t take me to the Olympic Club so I can get into Stanford. Oh well, the rich hate the new rich… fact of life. Somewhere, deep inside, he knows all the ladies will flock around me, a Ben Boy, and make utter fools of themselves.
Scott and Dave are alright in my book.