Ruth Hinckley http://twitter.com/#!/Lironah @Lironah Sleeping in a tree
Jack of all trades but master of none.
Here are the tweets combined into a single statement.
"Do you really think that 1 in 6 Americans don't have jobs because they choose not to work? Your news is out of date, there. There is certainly a Marxist minority among the protestors, claiming that capitalism itself is the source of the problem But there are plenty of good ideas and valid points being brought up. I'll share some. First there's the unemployment about 16% according to several sources, which is like, 1 in 6 American workers. That's the lowest it's been since the Depression era, though we don't have it that bad, yet. Many of the corporations and politicians being maligned are ones who are making profits by sending jobs overseas, because they can pay less for labor done there. So there are plenty of jobs there, but they aren't being made available to Americans. That causes the whole student loan thing: Jobless Americans assumed that they were jobless because their degree wasn't competitive. So they went back to school, and of course being unemployed they had to take out loans. Well, we all start graduating, only to find that that wasn't the real problem, because we still can't find jobs. So we start defaulting on loans, mortgages, etc., people who would normally be starting up businesses and supplying more jobs can't, because they can't get start-up money. This all came to a point at the burst of that bubble So people started paying attention to where the money was really going, since supposedly we were recovering from the recession, but unemployment kept rising and rising. Then they noticed the extreme income inequality, and started protesting and the protesting made people think about what caused the inequality - which is also approaching pre-Depression levels So, now that #OWS has started to say something about it, people have begun digging, and found that some of the Depression Era legislation has been dismantled and undermined. Glass-Steagal is one example. Finally, people investigated the source of this dismantling and noticed that a lot of politicians are also former CEOs of corporations which donate heavily to election funds. People who do this are called lobbyists, and what they do is put pressure on the politicians they 'bought' into office to vote a certain way. These politicians no longer feel responsible to the Americans who elected them, only to the money that got them there, and are afraid that if they don't play ball, they won't get the money next time they're up for election. So that's where the terms 'lobbyist' and 'crony capitalism' come in. The 'crony' part is important, because it distinguishes between true capitalism and elitism or oligarchy, where only the rich have power. So it isn't so much that #OWS is protesting about those people having more money, as that the 1% has so much MORE money that ours might as well not exist when it comes to legislation. Finally, #OWS sees and points out the exorbitant bonuses the CEOs of these bailed-out banks are giving themselves, and it's almost like their flipping the bird at the taxpayers who are still unemployed, still being foreclosed on by these exact same banks. So there's #OWS in a nutshell; not exactly simple, but you can kind of see where each of the individual complaints kind of follows the same chain of causality. I hope that helped I meant 'highest' in this tweet, not lowest. Twitter - not exactly the best medium for exposition." Ruth Hinckley quote
I must say that was quite a tweet but some interesting points were brought up that deserves a response from me.
- I certainly do not believe that the majority of unemployed Americans choose not to work. That being said I have an issue with the attacks on American businessmen forced to go overseas in order to stay in business. Why does the Labor advocates address the countries that allow there own workers to be exploited and endangered. The problem is those who allow the abuse to go on. Many cite the race to the bottom. This will always be a concern unless the bottom is raised. You can not blame a business for going with the most efficient legal means of product sourcing.
- Student loans are being subsidized at the taxpayers expense and this must be done responsibly, fairly and sustainably. Another problem is not everybody should be have a bachelors degree only those willing to work for it. I have no issue with giving aid and a slight lowering of standards for the poorest among us as long as it is for those willing to work hard at it and succeed as the financial resources are indeed limited. All qualified individuals deserve a chance to succeed. If 100% of the population has a bachelors degree then the degree will have little value.
- The Glass-Steagle Act was not the cause of the current financial crisis although it arguably was a contributing factor. The real cause is to much bad debt versus sustainable income. The following 11 underlying public-policies are the true causes of the current financial crisis #1-The Internal Revenue Code, #2-Prescriptive and Proscriptive Safety-and-Soundness Regulation, #3-Discouraging Maturity Matching in Funding Assets, #4-Fair-Value Accounting, #5-Enforcement of Credit-Default Swaps Where There Is No Insurable Interest, #6-Mispriced Government Deposit Insurance, #7-First Amendment Protection for the Credit-Rating Agencies #8 Government-Sponsored Enterprises, #9-The Overpromotion of Home Ownership, #10-The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and #11-Monetary Policy. Underlying Public-Policy Causes of the U.S. Financial Crisis
- Corrupt Crony Capitalism 'Been Bery, Bery Good' To Members of Congress! My fellow bloggers at American thinker cover this subject quit well and I happen to agree with them. You can also add to the lobbyist problem that needs to be corrected the unholy alliance of big labors chosen politicians undue influence in elections that continue to negotiate unsustainable unrealistic contracts at the taxpayers expense eventually bankrupting us!
- I feel that the TEA activists libertarian based model of limited government coupled with fair taxes is the only viable long term solution.
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