Occupy, What are they trying to do?

[Canarr]

Actually... the damage seems to be minimal. Even students you took several hits to chest and abdomen are still standing, and appear to be fine, even though it looks like the cops are putting a lot of force behind the attacks. Maybe they're pulling their punches? I don't know... but I couldn't see a student go down, or even appearing to be in serious distress.

It's a strange scene. There doesn't seem to be any cooperative effort in the police action, beyond the handful of officers participating in the beating, and the students are neither retreating nor counter-attacking - the guy in the grey sweatshirt, somewhat in the middle, does make a few belligerent gestures, but isn't taken down for it or anything.

So, yeah: maybe they *are* trying to provoke a riot. Maybe it's just some assholes in riot gear whose patience with the protesters ran out. Hard to tell.

[Gravekeeper]

Actually... the damage seems to be minimal. Even students you took several hits to chest and abdomen are still standing, and appear to be fine, even though it looks like the cops are putting a lot of force behind the attacks.

No, apparently this type of tactic can and does fracture ribs it seems, its a lot of force into a small area. They're still standing because they're being held up by people behind them otherwise several of them would have gone down. The first girl hit gets held up and if you watch, she takes another shot right in the upper rib cage just before the 20s mark near crumples, then she wisely retreats back through the crowd. The guy on the left by the bush does go down and never gets back up. If you watch at the 40s mark, the cop behind aims a serious shot at his head that just barely misses.

They're not pulling punches, they're using two hands and putting their weight into it. You can see the force used in how the first girl gets knocked back. There's a reason the one dude has his backpack on his front to protect himself. >.>

[Boozy]

Everywhere wanted a 2 year degree, $7 an hour retail clerk, REQUIRED an associate's degree, asst manager for a grocery store, secretary, file clerk, receptionist-all REQUIRE college degrees now-didn't when the current 1% was was working their way up.

With a few rare and famous exceptions, the 1% did not work their way up the class ladder. They were born rich.

And they will spend their lives benefitting from a tax system that keeps them that way with virtually no effort on their parts.

[Gravekeeper]

With a few rare and famous exceptions, the 1% did not work their way up the class ladder. They were born rich.

And they will spend their lives benefitting from a tax system that keeps them that way with virtually no effort on their parts.

That's...pretty much the geist of it. Especially right now when the ability to earn money with money is far greater than the ability to earn money with your own labour. Its kind of ironic in that the only filthy rich bastards that support the other side of the argument are the ones that actually have built what they have from scratch like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates.

In fact you can pretty much straight up draw a curve between the amount of charity work someone does with their wealth to how much of it they earned themselves. Someone whose eaten dirt before knows what it tastes like and doesn't want others to have to eat it too. Someone with a silver spoon in their mouth sits around going "I wonder why all these filthy peasants can't just be happy eating their dirt?" but appears to have zilch inclination to learn why. ;p

[Boozy]

Its kind of ironic in that the only filthy rich bastards that support the other side of the argument are the ones that actually have built what they have from scratch like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates.

They must still, at times, be astonished to find themselves where they are now.

I suspect they support tax system reform because they know how lucky they are. They each had a handful of very specific skills that made them rich because they were starting out at just the right time. A man with Bill Gates' computer skills woudn't necessarily stand out today, even if he also shared Gates' business acumen and entrepreneurialship. Buffett's knack for allocation of capital turned out well for him during the post-war boom, but would have been a useless skill during the Depression when there was no capital to invest.

People born rich think differently. It's more difficult for them to see the other side, even if they're trying. People have the tendency to attribute their good fortune to some innate characteristic they have that makes them "deserve" it. They also convince themselves that the poor deserve their particular situation. It's easier for them to live this way. If they admitted that their fortune was the "ovarian lottery", as Mr. Buffett puts it, then that means that bad fortune could just as easily take it all away.

[Gravekeeper]

People born rich think differently. It's more difficult for them to see the other side, even if they're trying. People have the tendency to attribute their good fortune to some innate characteristic they have that makes them "deserve" it. They also convince themselves that the poor deserve their particular situation.

Quite true. Hell, that's pretty much been the GOP's entire platform on this so far: "You're poor because you deserve to be". I don't think the human brain can handle immense wealth responsibly without being at least a little bit of a sociopath. Hence lottery winners have a habit of blowing all their money in fairly short order.

If you can have anything you want then nothing in your life has ever had value and thus you can't value anything really. If you don't have some curiousity or empathy to make you look around outside your own life, you probably never will either.

Yet these are people that somehow think they have the capability to govern the well being of others. >.>

[jackfaire]

I have a question. Since the main thing most people seem to agree on is tax the hell out of the rich, cut spending, when we finally get positive, are we going to cut taxes for the rich people who will be paying a bigger portion? Somehow I doubt it. I'd be willing to be the 99% will say screw the 1% and cut taxes for the 99%.

Which is the reverse of how it is now. Most Repulicans have signed onto the Norquist doctrine which states that Taxes should be cut for the wealthy.

When interviewed (paraphrasing) Norquist stated that the 99% wanting to tax the 1% was based on our "greed and envy" and amounted to tyranny and taxes are stealing. Of course this makes one wonder then why he isn't working to help make it so there are no taxes for anyone and not just the richest 1%.

The 1% in many cases not only aren't paying taxes right now but along with all of the tax breaks they get are being paid by the 99% to get richer.

From various articles in the latest Rolling Stone.

I think we should all pay what is fair. The alternative is no taxes at all. Governemnt is run entirely by non profit volunteers and we hold a bake sale to fix the pot holes in a road.

Honestly we should raise taxes when and where needed like Regean did.

One of the interesting things about Reagan was that yes he lowered taxes but he kept the taxes on Capital Gains at the same rate as taxes on everything else. to me that is fair because it is the separate rate on Capital gains where the tax code starts to get wonky.

Actually after he lowered them watched the economy start to sink and realized, "holy shit trickle down economics doesn't work" he raised taxes 8 times.

Some people don't expect those of us with little to give our shirts but at least in my area a lot of people do expect that many of us "I have little" should be giving any extra spending money to charity.

[mikoyan29]

I mean, I kind of appreciate why capital gains are treated differently by the tax code than money earned from labor but still, if capital gains are the only way that a person gets his or income, why should that be different than the person who has to work?

As for a simple tax code, that's not going to happen. Too many people benefit from the tax code the way it is. Sadly, it is the people who work hard that suffer from the tax code.