Just what do you want?! What is your message? What are your demands?: questions asked by those in the media as though the cumulative effect of co-opting our government and, effectively, our economy over decades into corralling the rest of us into financial pillories can be distilled into a single grievance when our life’s earnings have been distilled into a few gold-plated door knobs in the Hamptons (or elsewhere)…?. The fundamental here is demonstrating our awareness; eyeing the enemy: corporate power and their greed – financial thuggery.
I’m posting to share my awareness.
July 2003 I decided to start throwing money at a retirement account. I was finally in a position where deferring taxable income while I still paid off student loans actually yielded a modest gain (taxes higher than loan interest rate). Also, the account value was supposed to grow with the economy. Guess what? 8+ years later it turns out that if I could have put away that money in my own personal tax-shielded, savings account (if such a thing existed for Main Street savers) and at the CURRENT savings interest rate, my balance would be in the same, if not better place. Although I am forgetting the formulae learned in several calculus classes, I have reason to believe I would have been better off if given the higher savings rate returns at the time, earlier in my account. As one of the 99% I demand a tax-deferred personal savings account (at my local credit union). I want to cut out the fat-cat Wall Street middle-man handling my retirement savings / masturbating my money into their personal mega-mansions. Personal savers would get taxed on withdrawals and accounts can be personally prioritized based on need: retirement, unemployment, disability, etc. while incentivizing personal savings in general. Until something like this happens, I have to pay my fees to the top 1% for a 1%-gain-retirement account or pay my taxes to close the account which will end up in the same fat-cat paws anyway (bailing out the too-big-to-fail failures / income pimps).
Meanwhile, at the time when I’m being approached about retirement accounts, my husband and I are being told we need to buy a house. NOW is the time. Interest rates were dropping and values were going up: house values, supposedly, never decline. In fact, here in West LA house values more than doubled in less than 4 years (2002-2006). But LA’s unemployment rate was 6% at the time – significantly above the national rate of 2% for a healthy national economy. Hmmm – what exactly am I being urged to signup for? My other demand is for the 99%: have some critical awareness. Quit being a God-forsaken lamb lead to slaughter. Know the field and know what you’re signing up for!
When we’re living in a country where, after 9/11, nearly 3,000 people died (immediately) and our president tells us to “go shopping,” you have to know something’s gone awry. All I can fathom is that our economy is in the hands of global-economy casino lords. In this global system you’re either a gambler, a slave, or one of the 1%. And given this scale and concentration of power, our corralled earnings can amount to little more than a few gold-plated door knobs somewheres: http://www.losangelesdailynews.org/now-shy-of-glitz-owner-to-sell-mansion/
First of all, wherever there’s blame there’s a failure to take responsibility. Take responsibility: divest from the corporation. Save your hard-earned money! Support your local credit union and KNOW their structure. Don’t use plastic, debit or credit, use cash. Shop local: farmer’s market, crafts market. Either grab the Wall Street bull by the horns and know how to join the 1%, or recognize the bull markets for the bull-shit bubble markets that they really are (bull farts then?). Balance, if not prosperity, lies beyond Wall Street.
And so my questions are these: what do the financial services sector produce really (other than the fees they take playing investors off one another)? How is this sector relevant to the GDP – gross domestic product? Fundamentally, what is the financial services sector producing other than money ethers? What, really (in a GDP sense), is the cost-benefit ratio of saving banks that are running on ether? Is it me or has the cost clearly outweighed the benefit? I think we all know the benefit is limited to “1%” (in all it’s iterations).
I don’t suspect there’s anyone out there: not Bernanke, not Geithner, not Paulson, and Bloomberg seems to be in denial, etc. who realizes just how inflated the financial services sector is and so the rest of us, the 99% pays. And so all we can do for now is occupy: recognize the vacancy or lack of will until there is a breakthrough. Just what does the top 1% contribute? Floating jobs in fee-based ether to mitigate the unemployment demand? – a modest show of responsibility when you’re in cahoots with the government anyway.
Thank you occupiers!
money -particularly in LA. In general, “going out” costs. Nevermind the expense of gas or commuting, just parking your car begs for a fine: $9 to hang out downtown on the weekend; $5 to park to take a hike. Fortunately it’s free to park and watch the planes land at LAX. It’s also pretty awesome to watch jet-engine machinery hurdle over you just a few (seemingly) feet above, and then there’s the experience of the shock-scale 747 lumbering over you: it’s otherworldly – “priceless” …for everything else there’s shoes. Those I’ll purchase on “cyber-Monday.” I’m not a saint.
Talaria Walk 