Sonic Youth Gossip - NYC Protest Anyone?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Occupy Wall St.

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

1. I'm all for reinstating a living wage, but a $20/hr minimum wage is kind of a spit in the face to college-educated professionals, not to mention that inflation would soar to compensate. A fairer idea is a standard nationwide minimum wage. Here in PA, the minimum is $7.25/hr but I've heard it's higher elsewhere. It should be equal across the board.

2. As someone who was recently in a situation where the people with the most control of solving a health care related issue were the ones least affected by it, I sympathize, but I'm not sure this is the answer. That said, the health care system in this country does need an overhaul.

3. See #1.

4. I'm sorry, but no. Universities have large staffs of well respected professors and high end professional equipment they use for educational purposes, and those things cost money. You can't realistically lay that burden on taxpayers. Yeah, tuition should be lower (maybe something should be enacted where colleges have to have their tuition rates reviewed and approved by the Department of Education or something), but it's simply a fact of life that you gotta pay for higher education. In some countries they pay for high school, so in reality we have things easy.

5. OK, this one I can get behind 100%, no argument from me.

6. A good idea, but $1,000,000,000,000??!! How on earth do they plan to raise that much money?

7. Another good idea, but again, $1,000,000,000,000? Combined with #6, they'd need 2 trillion. Anyone who could raise that much money needs to think about helping out the national debt.

8. Another one I can get behind 100%.

9. I don't think this is up to Wall Street or the US government to say yes or no to.

10. One more I can get behind 100%.

11. This just isn't realistic. We're talking massive layoffs to cover the losses and if they think that's acceptable, it doesn't say much for their sense of compassion. Maybe there are situations were people should be given some leeway, but an across the board erasure of all debts is not feasible. Just like tuition, paying debts is a part of life sometimes. If you don't want to pay debts, then spend your money more responsibly and don't rack them up in the first place!

12. This ties in to #11 and to a point #2. The credit system does need an overhaul, but this is not the answer.

13. I don't really have an opinion on this one, but I will say I'm anti-union.

Overall, I think their hearts are in the right place, but a lot of what they're proposing just can't be done or shows a lack of responsible thinking on their part. There's more to solving problems than either pretending their causes never happened or throwing money at them. Someone in the comments section said the list is too much and they'd get a lot more support if they came up with a single uniting idea such as outlawing corporate lobbying. I agree, and I'd take it one step further but outlawing ALL lobbying...I've been repulsed by the idea since I first learned about it in civics class. No one should be allowed to buy a stake in the way the country is run.