Wall Street protesters: We're in for the long haul

[Sheilbh]

Now, that doesn't mean that any of them as individuals would support their particular means of concentrating wealth be changed, because surely the problem is elsewhere, but I bet that in general the set of the super rich (especially those who got their by their own efforts rather than inheritance) are pretty smart people who fully understand that as a society their group continually getting more and more of the share of wealth is probably not a good thing.

I read an interesting article - I'll try and dig it out - about the super-rich.  One of the points that came across was that many of the people who really did achieve their wealth under their own steam, like Lloyd Blankfein, are a bit less sympathetic to that sort of argument.  Because they've earned that wealth I think they don't understand why they shouldn't get more from it - they've achieved this.  Similarly because they've achieved it why haven't other people achieved the same?  Which is all pretty understandable. 

[Berkut]

Now, that doesn't mean that any of them as individuals would support their particular means of concentrating wealth be changed, because surely the problem is elsewhere, but I bet that in general the set of the super rich (especially those who got their by their own efforts rather than inheritance) are pretty smart people who fully understand that as a society their group continually getting more and more of the share of wealth is probably not a good thing.

I read an interesting article - I'll try and dig it out - about the super-rich.  One of the points that came across was that many of the people who really did achieve their wealth under their own steam, like Lloyd Blankfein, are a bit less sympathetic to that sort of argument.  Because they've earned that wealth I think they don't understand why they shouldn't get more from it - they've achieved this.  Similarly because they've achieved it why haven't other people achieved the same?  Which is all pretty understandable. 

Right, that is what I meant by "the problem is elsewhere".

I bet though, that if you ask them if systematically it should work out that the rich continually get a greater and greater proportion of the overall wealth, they would say "Well, no, that isn't really sustainable, is it?". Because of course it is not.

Sure, in *their* particular example, THEY should get more and more money, because THEY in particular are working hard for it and it is theirs!

[MadImmortalMan]

Right, that is what I meant by "the problem is elsewhere".

I bet though, that if you ask them if systematically it should work out that the rich continually get a greater and greater proportion of the overall wealth, they would say "Well, no, that isn't really sustainable, is it?". Because of course it is not.

Sure, in *their* particular example, THEY should get more and more money, because THEY in particular are working hard for it and it is theirs!

In their case it is an example of the poor getting richer.

[Josephus]

Sure, in *their* particular example, THEY should get more and more money, because THEY in particular are working hard for it and it is theirs!

As someone once sang:




Money get back
I'm alright Jack keep your hands off my stack.
Money it's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit
I'm in the hi-fidelity first class travelling set
And I think I need a Lear jet

Money it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a raise it's no surprise that they're
giving none away

[Jacob]

Sure, in *their* particular example, THEY should get more and more money, because THEY in particular are working hard for it and it is theirs!

It seems to be one of the eternal principles of human life, right there.

[fhdz]

It seems to be one of the eternal principles of human life, right there.

Everyone needs to do x. Everyone, that is, except me.

[The Minsky Moment]

I dunno.  If it's down to Citizens United, I thought it was rightly decided.  Maybe there are other problems with corporate personhood of which I'm unaware, which is certainly possible, but as far as that case went, the decision seemed unavoidable, as much as I might abhor the speech actually in question.

The problem lies in the fact that corporate personhood is a legal fiction justified (and only justifiable) on the grounds of convenience and expediency.  But failure to limit application of the fiction to its logical purposes (commercial activity - eg the ability to enter into and enforce contracts, to be free from expropriation without due process, etc.l), results in incoherence, because it is self evident that a corporation, which is a paper entity that is purely a creature of state law, which enjoys potential immortality and limited liability, is different in critical respects from living, breathing natural human beings.  The danger here is not the fantastic horribles you invoke later in you post, but what Citizens United itself portends -- a racheting back of long-accepted regulatory practices.  Does corporate level taxation violate equal protection to the extent such taxation is imposed differently than on natural persons?  Similarly, are franchise taxes constitutional - aren't they now unequal capitation taxes?  Do corporations have "personal" second amendment rights post-Heller?  If they have full First Amendment rights, aren't lots of SEC regs relating to what they can and can't say unconstitutional? 

[Ideologue]

My deal with Citizens United is that I find it difficult to limit the political speech of one type of organization, which I may find undesirable, and logically square that with political speech I do find desirable by other types of organization (e.g., unions, non-profits), unless the profit motive alone is enough to remove them from that set.  And you'd probably expect that I wouldn't care, but I'm generally pretty absolutist on expression issues (with some narrow caveats).

So I am very sympathetic to arguments which suggest this is the case, and occasionally wonder if I'm not overcompensating for my biases (as you might expect, I don't like very much corporate political speech), but I'm also sympathetic to the idea that corporations--as associations of people for whom First Amendment protections do and must apply--should have the ability to make their collective voice heard on issues which affect them.

You know, until such time as they are nationalized as part of the First Five Year Plan.

As for the "rights creep" issue, it's something to be guarded against surely, but I don't believe Citizens United really represents a first step toward such travesties.  (And just to note, SEC regulations may abridge speech, but generally speech of a commercial nature, so that must be, or at least can be, analyzed differently than the political speech in Citizens United.  At least, I expect they do.  Maybe they don't.  I'll fully concede you know way more about SEC rules than I do. My understanding is that their principal purposes involve compulsory speech in the form of filings with the agency--and there is no real 1stAmdt. argument here so far as I know, unless you're widening your gyre to include mandatory disclosures of all types, including personal income tax; and to provide orderly and fair voting, particularly proxy solicitations and the like.)

[Admiral Yi]

The issue is not so much whether there should be more or less tax money provided to the public in any of the given systems (health care, finance/ mortgages/ pensions, education) but the fact that deregulation and mis-regulation has created systems where public money provided for the public good (be it health care, support for homeowners or or education) tend to go into the pockets of shareholders rather than actually providing those public goods.

The issue is not so much how much water to put into the irrigation system, as much as it is that it seems that significant parts of the system leads the water away from the dry fields altogether.

Did you intend this as a description of the common ground between left and right populists in the US?  Because I don't think it is at all.

[Jacob]

Did you intend this as a description of the common ground between left and right populists in the US?  Because I don't think it is at all.

I think it's a description of some of the problems that both the populist right and left is responding to.

What do you think the common ground is, if at all?

[Admiral Yi]

What do you think the common ground is, if at all?

Not much if anything.

[Jacob]

Not much if anything.

What about disaffection with the bail-outs, as others have posited in this thread?

[Admiral Yi]

What about disaffection with the bail-outs, as others have posited in this thread?

Only superficially.  I doubt most OWS types have a problem with the GM or Chrysler bailout, or a Greek or Portuguese bailout.  They've fixed on banks as the root of all evil and bailouts is just more fuel for the fire.  Whereas Teabaggers don't have anything against banks or people getting rich (my impression), they just don't like bailouts.

[The Minsky Moment]

So I am very sympathetic to arguments which suggest this is the case, and occasionally wonder if I'm not overcompensating for my biases (as you might expect, I don't like very much corporate political speech), but I'm also sympathetic to the idea that corporations--as associations of people for whom First Amendment protections do and must apply--should have the ability to make their collective voice heard on issues which affect them.

But what does it mean to say that?  To what extent is it meaningful to say that an articial entity has speech rights above and beyond the rights of those human beings who act on behalf on the entity?  A piece of paper in a Delaware clerk's office or a headquarters building can't have speech rights.

At first principles, a corporation is just a complex web of contracts and agreements embedded in a construct of state statute.  The corporate name - Acme, Inc. - is just a convenient shorthand to use to denote that complex rather than have to describe it in detail every time one wants to reference it.  The origin of corporate legal status is the convenience of being able to deem certain property as being held by the complex as a whole rather than any particular specific person or persons associated with it, and to render that convenience effective, the human agents of the corporation have to be given the power to enforce those rights on behalf of the complex- to sue and be sued on contracts, etc.  Thus it is convenient for certain purposes to treat corporations "as if" they are persons, but that personhood is obviously artificial, limited, and distinct from the personhood of natural persons.

Since a corporation literally does not speak and cannot communicate other through its human agents, it is logically incoherent to talk about the corporation itself having speech rights.  Rather what is at issue is something different - whether as a matter of law, corporations should be granted some degree of immunity from governmental regulation or sanction, or priviate liability, for certain speech acts conducted by its human agents.  The answer, obviously, is yes - because without that immunity, the speech rights of the human beings that speak in relation to the entity would be compromised.  But what is at issue here is the speech rights of natural persons, not the rights of the artificial entity.  This is just a very basic categorical misconception.

[Ed Anger]

Developer with shotgun scared off Oakland rioters

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/03/BACM1LQ5FU.DTL&tsp=1