Occupy Wall Street Turns 2

[Caliga]

Ours is not a system that you can change from within like that.   Good luck to her I guess, though.

[Admiral Yi]

Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.

What are these $15 minimum wage places going to do when people show up from all over the country?

[The Brain]

Milwaukee elected a Socialist mayor.

[frunk]

Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.

What are these $15 minimum wage places going to do when people show up from all over the country?

Does it make a difference what the minimum wage is if you are unemployed?  Would you move cross country to somewhere where the minimum wage was higher without having a job lined up first?

[Admiral Yi]

Does it make a difference what the minimum wage is if you are unemployed?  Would you move cross country to somewhere where the minimum wage was higher without having a job lined up first?

People move without having something already lined up all the time.

[Valmy]

People move without having something already lined up all the time.

Sure they do...but typically not for a minimum wage job.  Besides a part of the country with a higher minimum wage probably costs more to live in so it would probably not do you much good.

[frunk]

People move without having something already lined up all the time.

So they might have a slightly higher number of unemployed for a while.  I don't think they are going to get a huge influx of higher minimum wage hunters.

[Savonarola]

I just saw this article about the aforementioned Kshama Sawant and I thought Ide would appreciate it:

Seattle City Councilmember-elect shares radical idea with Boeing workers

By Gary Horcher
SEATTLE — Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

"The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing's profit-making machine," Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle's Westlake Park Monday night.

This week, Sawant became Seattle's first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers' rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers.

On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.

Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. "That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it's going to devastate the state's economy," she said.

Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that "democratic ownership."

"The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don't need the executives. The executives don't do the work, the machinists do," she said.

Sawant says after workers "take-over" the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.
"We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines," she told KIRO 7.

Sawant says she was referring to "drones" when speaking of war machines. Still, she says even as they work on the lines, building airplanes daily, she believes Boeing workers are under siege.

"Workers have to realize, they have more power than they think," she said.

VICTORY THROUGH MASS TRANSIT!

[MadImmortalMan]

Commemorate your Occupy experience with this Zucotti Park photo from Wal-Mart!

[The Brain]

For kshama.

[Savonarola]

Commemorate your Occupy experience with this Zucotti Park photo from Wal-Mart!

  Awesome; I hope it's made in China.

[Caliga]

"We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines," she told KIRO 7.

Yep, just push a couple of buttons, flip a switch or two, and pull that lever over there and you'll be churning out Greyhounds in no time.

[crazy canuck]

A real socialist.   And she got elected.  In the US.

I always said the Americans wouldn't know a real socialist if they saw one.

[Tonitrus]

While Boeing is being rather crappy, playing the ol' "extort states for tax breaks" game, Kshama is also clearly quite naive. 

[Admiral Yi]

Boeing is being rather crappy, playing the ol' "extort states for tax breaks" game

Are you getting this from this article, or somewhere else?

The only thing I got from this article was that Boeing was threatening to pick up stakes if the union didn't take the deal.