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Re: “Occupy Nashville Taking It To The Streets Thursday”
I am one of the 99%. I have a Bachelor's in Science, not an artsy fartsy degree. I am working towards my Masters in IT Security. I lost my high-paying management job in the building materials industry in 2010. I have been unemployed since. I have applied for every job imaginable, many at minimum wage even. Do not claim that young, disenfranchised, unemployed people are all lazy. I have been told I am over-qualified more times than I can remember. Business Week's cover story 4-5 weeks ago was on how there are job openings, but they are by-in-large are going unfulfilled. I will be at the protest, and I welcome to bring intelligent dialog to some of these asinine responses.
Do not assume you know where someone is coming from. Open your mind to the reality that you are getting swindled.
Fact 1: As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, the richest 1 percent of Americans now own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. This disparity is much worse than it was in the past, as just 25 years ago the top 1 percent owned 33 percent of national wealth.
Fact 2: The top 1 percent of Americans take home 24 Percent of National Income. In 1976, they took home just 9%.
Fact 3: The top 1 Percent of Americans own half of the country’s stocks, bonds and mutual funds
Fact 4: The top 1 percent have 5 percent of the nation’s personal debt while the bottom 90 percent have 73 percent of total debt.
Fact 5: Not only are the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans taking home a tremendous portion of the national income, but their share of this income is greater than at any other time since the Great Depression.
Sources:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/152601/5_f…
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&…
Re: “Occupy Nashville Taking It To The Streets Thursday”
@Gast You are missing the point. I am not saying the world owes me a job. I am going back to school to re-train myself in another technical field that will survive the recession the financial sector caused. This is a movement that isn't simply asking to be employed, and to focus so much on this point indicates either a) willful ignorance that you refuse to let go of or b) a deliberate attempt to force a false argument.
No one in this country became rich on their own. Taxpayers pay for services that every business enterprise utilizes, from roads to police protection. The reason social mobility in this country is near dead is directly related to the wealthy and big business who generally speaking have been systematically disassembling the very system that allowed them to come out of lower income levels. The rich are paying the lowest taxes they have ever paid, since taxes have been collected here. The rich have access to numerous tax loophole schemes, which are utilized at a very high rate among ultra-wealthy. This movement is about the rich paying their fair share.
This movement is about bringing this country into the 21st century. We are in a global marketplace, yet individual states are in a race to the bottom trying to woo corporations away from opposing states. All the the while, these companies are moving their manufacturing and professional jobs offshore. This country still does not recognize we are in a global marketplace. We need to bring jobs here and keep them here, through incentives and disincentive's.
China loves that we do not have a uniform approach to clean energy and the research, manufacturing, and professorial grade jobs related to this industry. The America that you enjoyed (assuming you are a baby boomer) funded new technologies and new research to push this country into advanced manufacturing. That is dead now, and likewise new advanced manufacturing is dead as well. If you ask a CEO where they want to build a new business it isn't here. This must change or this economy will not.
This movement is about a lot more things as well, but what is not about is simply give me a job.