Forum Post: Proposed list of OWS Demands

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Unionize ALL workers immediately. Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality. I make $120/hour, can’t afford child support, can’t afford a house, and you want to cut it down? Institute a 6 hour workday, and 6 weeks of paid vacation. So my salaries cut and my hours are cut? You just took away 43% of my earnings! Institute a moratorium on all foreclosures and layoffs immediately. Repeal racist and xenophobic English-only laws. America speaks English? Open the borders to all immigrants, legal or illegal. Offer immediate, unconditional amnesty, to all undocumented residents of the US. What! Are you kidding me? Do they get social security too? Create a single-payer, universal health care system. Paid for by the rich, which I will soon not be. Pass stricter campaign finance reform laws. Ban all private donations. All campaigns will receive equal funding, provided by the taxpayers. This is so that only unions like teacher union funds, can donate large sums of money to their agenda without interference. Institute a negative income tax, and tax the very rich at rates up to 90%. 2012, the year of the great migration for the rich, they buy out Greece and move there. Pass far stricter environmental protection and animal rights laws, so that no business can build anything without outrageous fees. Allow workers to elect their supervisors. Lower the retirement age to 55. Increase Social Security benefits. Paid for by whom? The rich all moved to Greece? Create a 5% annual wealth tax for the very rich. Ban the private ownership of land. WHAT! Make homeschooling illegal. Religious fanatics use it to feed their children propaganda. WHAT! Reduce the age of majority to 16. Abolish the death penalty and life in prison. We call for the immediate release of all death row inmates from death row and transferred to regular prisons. Release all political prisoners immediately. Immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. Abolish the debt limit. Ban private gun ownership. Strengthen the separation of church and state. Immediate debt forgiveness for all. End the 'War on Drugs'. Breakdown: What Does Occupy Wall Street Want? Sunday, October 23, 2011 Update by Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka There's a bunch of screaming, angry, incoherent weird people with signs gathering in large crowds across the country, and for once it's not the Tea Party. So what do the Occupy Wall Street protesters want? We took an informal poll and discovered groups of people with the following ideals and beliefs: • 16,283: The government needs to impose salary caps for all businesses. If an individual ends up getting paid "too much" money, the government should fire and replace them with energy-efficient scooters. Recyclable energy-efficient scooters. From Darfur. • 16,008: Free health care for every American and also non-Americans. This program should be able to cure every disease and also make it impossible to ever die. Also every year on your birthday the government should send you a check for $1,000 that says "GREAT JOB!!! XOXOXO UNCLE SAM" • 15,998: "Being poor" should be a professional occupation subsidized by the rich, a job which can pay up to $56,000 annually. Tenure should be provided to individuals who do the best job being poor. This will ensure they do not end up living a life of poverty. • 15,002: There are currently too many people who do not belong to unions. This can be fixed by creating a Global Union of Human Beings, which any person automatically joins upon being born. Union benefits include two free bumper stickers and the promise to fight for any human being who has their job replaced by a non-human being (exempting recyclable energy-efficient scooters from Darfur). • 15,001: Banks should not be permitted to make money; they should only be allowed to lose money. But not our money... somebody else's money (emphasis on the key part of the statement). • 14,781: Something seriously needs to be done about this whole global warming thing. We don't really have a concrete plan on how to solve it, but we'll just come up with shit and will judge its success on how many people it annoys. Maybe make it illegal to be warm or something. • 13,129: There needs to be more jobs. There also needs to be less pollution. Replace pollution with jobs. • 13,121: Remember that George W. Bush guy? He was a terrible president. We just wanted to remind anybody in case they forgot. • 13,121: Also Dick Cheney. • 12,677: Instead of shooting guys in the Middle East, our soldiers should be having gay sex with them. • 12,003: Immigration laws must be reformed. Simply touching American soil should instantly make you an automatic American citizen. Mailing a foreigner a package of dirt from Ohio will immediately transform them into an American upon signing for the delivery. Also if you turn on the television and see an American on it, you become a citizen as well, regardless of where you are located. • 11,873: Instead of forcing citizens to do it, Wall Street should pay to occupy itself. • 11,295: The teachers union needs more rights and power. Instead of basing performance on student test scores, teachers will be rewarded based on the number of times they are able to correctly spell their own name. • 10,911: More jobs for poor people, less jobs for rich people. Middle class people will keep the same amount of jobs they currently have, but they should be given coupons to trade their job in for another job of equal or lesser value (does not expire). • 10,673: The government is far too corrupt and bloated. A new, bonus government should be created, with the explicit purpose of monitoring the other government. The bonus government should employ more public employees and have a larger budget than the original government, because that would obviously make it more effective. • 10,271: CCP Games is ruining EVE Online's fragile economy and must be stopped at all costs. • 9,972: It is not fair that a lot of money goes to rich people while only a little bit of money goes to poor people. For the sake of equality, all the money should instead go to the government. • 8,883: Investment bankers are ruining the global economy. The fundamental principles of banking and investing are corrupt. To prevent another global meltdown, all numbers should be considered subjective. At any moment in time, the number 9 could suddenly become the number 46, and vice versa. Any number greater than 2,000,000 should be illegal. • 8,102: Bring back "Arrested Development." Oh wait, they did bring it back. Well in that case, this is a preemptive protest for when it is inevitably canceled once more. • 7,839: Guns are the leading cause of all gun-related murders, so guns should be illegal. Knives are the second highest leading cause of all gun-related murders, so they should also be illegal. Hell, let's just make murder illegal. That should solve the problem. • 7,127: Atheism should be taught in all schools to counteract the Christians in our culture, who are all intolerant racists possessing extremely narrow, sweeping, judgmental worldviews. • 6,231: A liberal scientific thinktank has conclusively proven the validity of the equation "TEA PARTY = NAZIS." This fact must be revealed and shared with the general public through the use of red markers on cardboard signs. • 6,008: Automobile manufacturers should be required to install car seats that allow the driver to have an abortion while operating their vehicle. The dead baby should then be processed and used as biofuel. • 5,998: The government should encourage eating anybody who earns over $250,000 a year. • 4,289: There should be more support for gay marriage. Anybody should be able to have a gay marriage, regardless of sexual orientation or lack of partner. Any baby born should automatically be gay married to another baby by default, unless the baby signs a document stating otherwise. • 3,165: The government should approve more research money to produce vegan tapwater. • 2,971: Government should subsidize iPhones for all Americans (ie, "only poor Americans"). • 2,506: Support for impractical, unsustainable, expensive, inefficient renewable energy sources that inconvenience everyone involved and cause more problems than they solve. Maybe a windmill powered by sand that is delivered to homes via horseback. • 2,288: Close Guantanamo Bay. Open more Trader Joe's. • 1,963: The government should move Wall Street to somewhere more comfortable, like an open field or a beach maybe. That would really help us all occupy it more efficiently. Make it closer to our apartments too. • 1,584: Free college education offering degrees available through the internet. Possible majors include Advanced Blogging, Politics Arguing, and Minecraft Playing. • 963: White people shouldn't be allowed to vote for Herman Cain because the only reason they'd do this is to trick people into thinking they aren't racist, when they actually are. The only person who should be able to vote for Cain is himself. • 502: Make it possible to Congressionally elect anime characters. • 384: Something (bad) is happening to the ocean and somebody should try to stop it (soon). • 201: Illegalize money. • 153: Replace Fox News with a channel that reports on the furry community 24/7. Continue to call it "Fox News." • 97: Rebuild the Twin Towers and let Muslims fly more planes into it so they can get their aggression out. Repeat process until they see how compassionate we are and thereby end their hostilities against us. • 43: There should be one day every month where the cops are put in jails and the prisoners get to be police officers, because then those fascist pigs will know what it feels like to be on the other side. We can call it something fun like "The Great Switcharoo Day." • 19: End the "skateboarding is in fact a crime" act. • 17: No particular agenda; just showed up to wear stupid Guy Fawkes masks and do retarded shit to be ashamed of for the rest of all eternity. • 1: Sane and rational person who thoroughly understands the fundamental problems in America. So who lost trillions in extremely complicated finacial gambles? The Wall St banks. Who convinced the governments they had to be bailed out with public funds to avoid the laws of capitalism? The Wall St banks. Who is still paying $100's of billions in bonuses each year out of those public funds? The Wall St banks. Who is refusing to lend to SMEs to stimulate a faltering economy? [SME == small to medium enterprise] The Wall St banks. Is it getting clearer as to why they are protesting at Wall St? Funny how giving yourself and your cronies each a billion dollar bonus, out of public funds, during a depression is OK with you, but wearing a black shirt is makes you an extremist. How do you feel about the US ICE department announcing it was siezing internet sites from Disney studios? (given that these sites were taken without due process, oversight or proper juristriction resulting in 10,000s of errors?) Well, one of the problems is that the "Occupy Wall Street" folks themselves don't really know what they want. They are a mixture of all different sorts of folks. Some are moderates who want more regulation of Wall Street, others are die-hard communists who have come out of hiding since the Collapse of the Soviet Union and think that they can spark a revolution again. They are a diverse group with no real central message - think of them as the Left-Wing equivalent of the Tea Party. The Tea Party was a broad right-wing group who broadly opposed Obama, but didn't have a coherent message. Some wanted all immigrants removed, others wanted less environmental regulation and still others just wanted lower taxes. Some were racist, others weren't. The same thing is occurring with this Wall Street Occupation group - some are there protesting the Bailout that occurred in 07 and 09, others are there to protest the concept of globalization, still others are there because they STILL think Marxist ideology should rule the world. I'd wager that if you went down to the Occupy Wall Street protests and asked 20 people what the protests were about, you'd get 20 different answers. And that's fine. That's what most protests are like. You will never find one group that speaks for everyone. The Occupy Wall Street movement is made up of a bunch of interest groups, that, as a whole, I'd wager represent some of the interests of about.... oh, say 30% of the United States. That's a significant number. I'm not saying 30% of Americans agree with everything the Occupy Wall Street people want, but that at least some interests coincide. And probably at least 50% of Americans have some sympathy to the protesters. Broadly, what most of the group would agree on is that Business has an unnecessary and dangerous amount of influence in Washington. Money talks and politicians listen. Most of them, at a minimum, want donations by corporations to at least be limited to a certain amount. I don't have a problem with that - it's a well known fact that money corrupts politics. It happened to the Romans, and it's happening now. Now, as I've said, I don't agree with everything these Occupy Wall Street folks want. I'm certain that a fair number of them are hard-line communists/anarchists or ultra-green Luddite types who want to end Globalization. I'm all for regulating (even toughly regulating) capitalism, but I'm not prepared to scrap capitalism, especially when the alternative some of these folks are proposing seems to be a whole lot worse than capitalism (Soviet Union, anyone? Maoist China, anyone? Cuba, anyone? Communist Vietnam, anyone? Cambodia, anyone? Virtually EVERY communist/hard-socialist state, anyone?) So why do I support them, even though I'm pretty sure I don't want them to get their way? Because Democracies are about Push-and-Pull. No group, NO GROUP on the left or the right represent the interests, values or ideas of 100%, or hell, even 80% of the American people. This is a mistake many young people make - the idea that "their" group speaks for "The People". Get real - you don't. You never have. NO ONE has EVER spoken for ALL the people. At best, you speak for 60% of the people, but realistically, it's less than that. There's a reason the US keeps shifting between Republican and Democratic Administrations - and it's because America is a very diverse place with many different sorts who think and believe in different things. But through it all, the competing voices of Americans have usually led to a centrist, moderate way of doing things (I know, those of you on the hard-left or the hard-right will scoff at the notion that the US has been centrist. But the fact that BOTH hard-line right-wingers and left-wingers hate the modern US is an indication that the US is doing SOMETHING right to piss off the crazies). While I might have very little in common with the far right or the far left, their voices push and pull the debate in such a way that things usually end up in the centre, which is just where I like it. So I'm sympathetic to the Wall Street Occupiers. It doesn't matter if I think many of their ideas and goals are fuzzy-wuzzy, unrealistic, typical college-youth nonsense (what with their Che Guevera T-Shirts and whatnot) - they serve as a counter balance against another group I hate EVEN MORE - the "no-minimum wage", "Let-the-poor-die", "evolution-is-a-lie" hard-line conservatives who would probably drag us back to the 1800s if they could. The type would would kick an orphan boy down a cliff if it was profitable to do so. While I generally find the far-Left folks a bit crazy, they have heart. But when I talk to the Far-right folks, it's like I'm conversing with a logical entity, but one that is completely devoid of morality and human feelings. I don't like either group. But they usually balance and cancel each other out. Thes OWS protesters won't get their way. Nor should they. But they are there to remind folks in Washington that there is more to America than Goldman and Exxon. That is a very important lesson for Washington to learn. And Wallstreet for that matter. You push the poor down for too long, they'll explode and do something silly. That's human nature. Look at Venezuela - The rich oppressed the poor for so long that the eventually revolted and put in place a lunatic like Chavez, who has destroyed the economy. A similar thing can happen in the US. You kick the poor around for too long, they'll get mad. And mad people aren't rational. Concessions and compromises are necessary to keep things stable, and somewhere along the way, the financiers and Politicians forgot that fact. This Occupy Wall Street group should remind them that there ARE TWO AMERICAS and that you have to BALANCE the interests between conservatives and liberals, or things will get nasty. Very nasty. Blood-in-the-streets nasty. And no one wants that. The rich in Venezuela are kicking themselves. Had they moderated, had they granted more concessions to the poor, they wouldn't be stuck with Hugo Chavez. OWS is a reminder that you have to pay attention to more than one group of people. While OWS might not speak for all Americans, or even most Americans, they are there and they are loud and I think you'll find more than a few people have some sympathy for them and their goals. America is not a happy place right now. It's not nearly as bad as Egypt or Greece, but tensions are rising. You might not agree with what the poor want, but if there are a lot of them, and if they are angry, I don't think your Platinum Visa Card is going to stop them caving in your head with a pipe.