People Power

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Originally Posted by 555-04Q2

I managed to do it. And it was not easy! Believe me, it sucked, but I did it. So what's the excuse now :)

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Again, so what? I doubt, with all due respect, that your life and career progression are in any sense exceptional. That isn't meant in a rude way, quite genuinely.

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Originally Posted by 555-04Q2

When the German war machine was flying over Britain to bomb the cr@p out of it during the second world war, did the British say "...well we are f@#$*# so lets go home", or did they do something about it? Even when all hope seems lost, there is a way if there is a will.

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People behave rather differently in times of war. (To all the Americans reading this, you have not, incidentally, been at war on home soil since 2001, despite what you may have been told, so this statement does not apply to you.)

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Originally Posted by Bob Riebe

For anyone, anyone who is not simply too young to know, to not know that people were not paid almost twenty dollars an hour in 1965, or that that amount could even BE ANYWHERE NEAR the average.
That person is either a moron, or has serious mental health problems.

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Pots, kettles...

The alternative is that they could just have made an incorrect calculation. Why not go to the body whose figures were quoted and point out the error of their ways?

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Originally Posted by 555-04Q2

Protests about racial abuse, segregation such as Apartheid etc are justified in my book and I am all for that sort of unhappiness.

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Do you mind me asking: are you South African yourself, and if so, what is the colour of your skin?

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Originally Posted by Rollo

I dispute this most heavily. The vast bulk of rich people didn't EARN it. They were either paid wages according to the forces of market forces (which is quite apart from actually earning the wage),.

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No. Market forces IS the final and only arbitrator of what is proper earnings

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Originally Posted by Rollo

or they accumulated wealth through investment, which means other people earnt the money for them.

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Again you fail at basic economics. It was the investments that allowed the "Other people" to work by creating the opportunity. The investor deserves every dime. They used their money. They did the homework. They took the risk.

The "other people", as you call them, invested nothing and in a free market are paid exactly what their labor is worth.

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Originally Posted by 555-04Q2

So these CEO's who worked their way up to the top of the ladder and placed themselves in the right positions don't deserve their salaries?

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Better that than a blind, slavish belief that those in positions of seniority are worthy of same, or an automatic respect for authority.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

Better that than a blind, slavish belief that those in positions of seniority are worthy of same, or an automatic respect for authority.

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Which is what Socialism promotes!

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Originally Posted by anthonyvop

If he was smart he wouldn't be an ultra-leftwinger

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Ultra-left-wing by your standards, Tony, but to anyone whose political compass is not absurdly skewed I see no ultra-left-wingers here.

By the way, I wouldn't go throwing comments around about others not being 'smart' if I were you. The best-written posts here in terms of the standard of English used are not from the right-wing Americans, let's put it that way.

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Originally Posted by anthonyvop

No. Market forces IS the final and only arbitrator of what is proper earnings

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Market forces = plural. Therefore, 'market forces ARE'. Earnings = plural. Therefore, 'what are proper earnings', or, better, 'what constitutes proper earnings'. Clearly the hard-left education you no doubt believe I received in the British state school system was rather an effective method of teaching me how to write properly.

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Originally Posted by Rollo

There is a very real disconnect between what people earn and what they are paid. It seems to be a tremendous lie of the right to refuse to separate the two.

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I deleted part of your post not because I do not think it is not correct in points, but a bit over simplified; although among those who pay is far above anything that could be considered "earned" by their work is actors and education heads.

The actors are the greatest hypocrites but the general populace is just too damned stupid to notice for he most part; whereas beyond that, what makes the head of universities and colleges WORTH hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.
What do they do to keep college affordable for the average person and stop the curricula across the land from becoming political hack jobs?
Are they any different from the Wall Street people which the protest originally brought attention to?

That the occupy thing happened actually was necessary.

What it became is exactly what I thought it would. A dog and pony freak show for rich kids who have too much time and are given too much money by their parents.

If people who "earn" money were paid for the labor involved, then those who use shovel and swing hammers would be the ones earning the most. Not college professors who sit on their throne paid for by families struggling to keep their kids in college.