Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
OWS - Finger-Wiggling Their Way To a Better Tomorrow
Posts
You're never going to get rid of companies like Goldman Sachs, the best we can hope for is motivating the government to at least pretend to reign them in.
Lest we forget, in Elections its the number of people, not the amount of money that should be the deciding factor.
Not that this matters for much anymore.
I think its symptomatic of a larger flaw in the national discourse that it took Millions of people camping out in public parks over several months, to achieve the same influence over public discourse, that a single Billionaire with a checkbook can achieve in a week.
I can't understand this sort of a reaction. Political reality either turns me into someone depressed on the verge of suicidal self-destruction or into radical anger I want to take out on someone, somehow, in a way that'd make a difference. Not that I probably ever will, but if I was assured that there was no peaceful means to make positive changes I'd happily throw my life away to stab at the heart of the financial services industry, especially Goldman Sachs. (probably by getting access to their trading-systems and wreaking digital havoc with them.) Sometimes, even if it is to be expected, I think we need to still be outraged. Desensitization to crime is exactly how we got here, if there were more outrage we might have enough people willing to strike and make life an economic hell for these guys.
As far as "largest employers in NYC" they probably wouldn't even make the top 50, and yet for some reason the mayor feels the need to go out defend them. Like, as if their billions of dollars wasn't enough to defend them against a bunch of hobos and college students, they've got the friggin' mayor watching their back, ready to do whatever is necessary to help them out.
They may not have the highest headcount, but they are very important to the local economy. If Blankfein up and decided to move HQ to Baltimore the city would lose out on a lot of corporate/income tax revenue and other lesser firms would probably leave the city to follow the vampire squid.
It makes good sense for the mayor to give them a little pat on the head and it costs the city nothing. What is the upside for NYC to him calling them a bag of dicks? I mean, they are a bag of dicks. I'll say it, but if I were mayor, I'd also visit and let them know how "important" they are.
Mikey's doing his job and he's doing it pretty damn well. If he goes for a fourth term and Weiner stays in his unfortunate shame hole, I'd vote for him.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
Yeah that's the standard neoclassical argument, where you assume that anything that's profitable must be a net benefit to the economy. Of course that ignores the obvious fact that Goldman Sachs makes its money by screwing over its customers and competition as much as possible. One of their executives even publicly admitted that.
And if flying pigs shat rainbows and peed gold....
Why wouldn't a major financial company move its headquarters away from the financial capital of the world*, as well as one of the most desirable cities to live in in the world, to Baltimore, location of The Wire?
* Okay, NYC may have been surpassed by London recently, but still.
P.S. Also liked the part where you took me pointing out to someone that 35K employees does not make an employer "huge" to mean something else entirely.
Well you're measuring "huge" in a way that is utterly meaningless. "Huge" doesn't mean squat to a mayor whose constituents aren't being employed by that company and NYC loses some of its financial cred if the mayor goes off on an impotent tirade against iBanks.
Also, there are quite a few investment banks that don't have headquarters in New York. There's nothing inherently magical about a Wall Street address and there's nothing stopping anyone from creating arcane financial instruments from an office in Baltimore or Wichita.
What do you think he should have done, and how would it have benefited the citizens of New York?
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
I think he should have read my post and realised that I wasn't the one who was defining huge in that way and that my only contribution to this this line of discussion was pointing out that 32K employees does not make an employer huge. But hey, by all means, keep yelling at me about how spacekungfuman was wrong in a different way than I thought he was wrong.
Also, sure. Nothing magical about New York. Yet somehow, I have a feeling if I were to survey Goldman Sachs employees and ask them how many of them would be willing to move to Wichita or Baltimore....
Sorry, Fallout, that "at least pretend" bit was sarcasm. Which is pretty impossible to transfer in a visual medium, I'll give you.
My point was, it doesn't bother me that politicians suck up to money. I'm also not a NYC citizen so what I have to say about their mayor is tangential at best, but what I meant was that while politicians can go get all the cash they want, it's up to voters to hold their feet to the fire.
Yes, Selling tobacco is profitable, doesn't mean its social costs are way bigger then the benefits. Same with selling subprime mortgages that you know are going to fail. Doesn't mean the social costs have been a lot worse then the marginal tax rate on said sales.
Know whats worst? Not only wouldn't the taxes on the sale of subprime mortgages cover social costs, but it wouldn't even cover the cost if they paid the full rate instead of the low rate they do now. Those high income constituents? They have some of the lowest tax rate in the state AND most of them don't even live in NYC. They live in high income counties such as Nassau. So they contribute even less to the fiscal well being of NYC.
Okay. You're both wrong. Care to address the substance now?
Corporations aren't exactly a democracy and Jersey City is right across the river.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
That's a global problem, not a local one. Mayor McCheese doesn't do McDonaldland any favors by endorsing Supersize Me. It isn't Bloomberg's place to fix the global banking system. His job is just to govern his city and no one's really made the case that being nice to these toolbags and making them feel "special" has any negative impact on the city.
Actually in NYC, wage income, short term and long term capital gains are taxed at the same rate.
A lot of them do. People actually live in Manhattan and West Brooklyn. Hell, there are several brand new luxury towers in the financial district.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
Whoopsie fucking do. So they pay as much in state taxes as the rest, can't say the same about Federal taxes can you.
And a lot of them don't There is a reason Nassau County is has the highest per capita income in the country. Want to guess what the reason is? There is also a reason the Hamptons are the most upscale part of New York.
That's a non sequitor. I was talking about municipal taxes. You confused it with state taxes, and were still wrong.
As for Long Island, I don't know what you read on a blog about Nassau County, but as a dude with an LIRR 10 trip in his wallet that used to commute, Nassau isn't the Galt's Gulch for investment bankers that you're implying it is. Even so, the point you're trying to make is irrelevant. Wall Street is an important part of New York City, and for some others in this thread to suggest that the mayor is a shitty human being for meeting with the same people that the President meets with is just aggressively ignorant.
He created a program a few years back that pays low income parents to take their children for check ups and attend parent teacher meetings. I've never heard of another city with a similar program. When the right criticised him for it's lack of bootstrapyness he shot back "So fucking what." The dude is a great mayor.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
Which is something you don't get.
Sooooo spacekungfuman says that having 33K employees worldwide makes Goldman Sachs a huge employee. I say that having 33K employees does not make Goldman Sachs a huge employee. You say that we are both wrong. O_o
Neither are corporations forced slavery camps. And you've now shifted the goalposts, geographically, from Baltimore to Wichita to Jersey City.
I think it is of high substance, in a Debate and Discourse thread, how bad you are at debate and how completely obfuscatory you are in your discourse.
You're both wrong because it is a silly point to argue. I assume Space was trying to point out that Goldman Sachs is a very visible employer in a sector that is very important to NYC. Using their global employees was silly, but it was in response to Pi-r8s ignorant assertion that
.
For some reason you felt the need to refute the word "huge" by citing a retail company that has zero presence in NYC. That was pretty silly of you, dawg.
O.o The point was that Goldman can move their office out of NYC. I didn't move the goalposts, you're just focusing on minutiae. Also, I didn't suggest that corporations are "forced slavery camps" (holy hyperbole). If you don't want to move for your job, you can be replaced.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
Also I can't help but eyeroll whenever someone puts this penny arcade subforum on a pedestal. It's a great avenue to talk about substantive subjects in depth, but get over yourself dude.
As crazy as it sounds, I respond to what people write, not what people intend to write (but don't). If you're responding to a point Pi-r8's making, then I'd suggest you hit Quote on his post. I was issuing a factual correction. If spacekungfuman said the sky was green, I would have corrected that too, regardless of its relevancy to the conversation, because it's just wrong. Not everybody in this conversation is on one of two sides here. Your need to divide us into dichotomous opposed camps is fairly obvious and unhelpful.
I don't particularly feel the need to engage this point on a higher level than you've begun it with. Quite frankly, the notion that Goldman Sachs would move to Baltimore is ridiculous and only slightly less ludicrous than their moving to Somalia. Similarly with Wichita. Even more so just because Mayor Bloomberg didn't come visit them one day and pat them on the back. If your point is that the company could move, then you should probably say that, instead of suggesting ridiculous scenarios in which Goldman Sachs, a corporation dependent on its ability to attract and retain highly educated, hard-working employees using high levels of financial compensation and lavish lifestyles in an industry sector that places premiums on timeliness, ambition, reputation and prestige, might up and move its operations to Jersey City while its primary competitors remain in New York (see Merrill-Lynch, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase), leaving behind the city in which it's operated in for the past 183 years since its founding after posting a $4.4B profit last year.
And its things like this that prove that the talk about income inequality and unfair tax cuts isn't about "envy".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/18/occupy-wall-street-six-month-anniversary?newsfeed=true
When a corporation has the balls of a billionaire politician in a vice for not being able to criticize their activities in public for being involved in a financial crisis I start to get worried.
Well, I mean, you are envious about it.
That means shit though, because apparently the money is there. I remember getting told all the time "we just don't have the money" and look, look it's right there. Lots of it too.
Envy implies that I want their money, I don't. I just want the chance to make my own money and I want people to do their civic duty to support our society (i.e. pay your fucking taxes, jerks). I don't want Mitt Romney's stuff, I just want him to stop making it impossible for me to go out and get my own. That isn't envy.
I think the problem is that they are doing their civic duty by paying their taxes. They just pay way less than they probably should. And any attempt to broaden the concept of civic duty to include more social programs (and more taxes) gets attacked as people wanting to steal from the rich and give to themselves. I wish a message like yours (anger at denied opportunities, not anger at inequal wealth distribution) could get more traction, since I think that it could appeal to a lot of the rich, and the "displaced rich" (i.e., the poor that vote in what they see as their future self interest when they get rich, which will happen any day now).
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
The problem with this is that my sentiment is the majority sentiment, but people assume it isn't. Inequity of wealth is the example because it shows the affects of the denied opportunity. The GOP spin machine turns it into "envy" and the media runs with it.
I think you'd be hardpressed (in an actual representational group of the American population, not random boards on the interwebz) to find a majority of people who actually want to just steal from the rich and give to themselves, but of course that's the easier headline for the media to sell.
Oh yeah. On my way through Union Square this morning some occupiers were setting up and the cops already had the park roped off and some news vans sat in waiting. I imagine shit is going to go nuts any day now.
Apparently, OWS is moving its base of operations to Union Square. I hope they get some good speeches talking about it as a center for civil disobedience throughout America.
It's also kind of the message OWS has been pushing (or being portrayed as pushing) though. Focusing on wealth inequality more than fair taxation and the need for better social programs. The Republican party is definitely very good at controlling the conversation through messaging (see pro-life, death tax, defending traditional marriage) but I don't think the robin hood attitude we are discussing is wholly a republican party creation.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Seriously? People live in union square. Businesses with VERY high rent may go out of business if customers can't get to them (I'd be very upset if this led to olives closing). Why can't OWS choose a location that isn't terrible? Also, are they going to stop the green market? That would be ironic since some protesters have been talking about eating local.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Hrm. You make it sound like a perfect location for a protest if you want people to notice you.
Steam: DigitalArcanist | XBoxLive: DigitalArcanist | PSN: DigitalArcanist | Backloggery: Houn
:^:
It's easy to control the conversion when the so-called "liberal" media plays softball with them and gives many of their political supporters big roles in front of the camera.
Is Robin Hood really a good analogy? Isn't he considered a folk hero?
It isn't good attention if you're pissing off the farmer's market, commuters, the community board, dog owners, and street artists. (Not on this list: Investment Bankers)
Union square is a particularly terrible location. Not only does it not have the Zuccotti Park the-rules-don't-say-anything-about-camping loophole, but the bulk of the interior of the park is just paths and fenced off grass.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
This morning there maybe 50 people, a banner, and a pile of cardboard signs. One guy had a bucket drum. No tents.
But hey, don't let these facts get in the way of your interpretation of OWS!
Dude, I was very plainly saying that IF they "occupy" union square, those are the people that would be pissed. You yourself expect "shit to go nuts any day now".
If there are only 50 people, it isn't exactly an occupation, is it? Once there are tents and sleeping bags, it's game over. Protesting is awesome. Good on 'em.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
If it is 50 people, they are not occupying it. That is less disruptive than the line for the circuit city when the PS3 launched. If the numbers swell and the barricades go up, I don't see how that won't disrupt the green market. Its a perfectly fine place to meet and protest (although it seems a little random, since there are no financial firms there).
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson