Summations Only

Two other things have equal power, mockery as used by Carlin, the Smothers Brothers, Woody Guthrie, Will Rogers and images like those shown during the civil rights era, the Vietnam War, and the glass print photos taken at First Bull Run.

I don't see how anyone could actually hate something as insignificant as the Tea Party. Maybe fear it like all ignorance should be feared but more likely just find it amusing.

I don't think there even is a left in the US these days.

Wall Street "affords" no one but the people that are actually working on Wall Street.It's time to return to a Progressive tax structure and a Progressive Inheritance Tax.

Wall Street is nothing more than a middleman. While it helps making transfer of funding easier, it produces nothing, funds nothing.

Plus, the US is relatively close, has no means of identifying aliens and is a convenient gateway to move on to a First World Nation like Canada.

That is just so funny.I wonder if the Reverend Gary Davis was a "hippy" when he recorded Cocaine Blues around 1905?And some images of that housing for migrant workers from the Library of Congress.

Too funny Buz.Now you change your time line to 50s-70s.Well guess what, I can tell you about that period as well, 'cause I worked picking crops in the 50s and let me tell you, there was no housing, no free meals, no health care.Or maybe you never heard of Caesar Chavez? Or maybe never heard of Deaf Smith County?Shall we discuss the 40s? I have pictures from then as well.By the way, the pictures I posted were NOT of the Dust Bowl or Great Depression, they were migrant farmers.

I gotta admit, that link is absolutely the funniest thing I've read in a long, long time.I wonder if the author has ever had a job in the first place.

They are not protesting business or capital enterprise, they are protesting income inequality and pointing out that if they wish to live the American Dream, they need to move to Denmark or Norway or Sweden. Note that the lowest quality of life among developed nations is in the ....USA.AbE:Forgot to provide the cite and source for the graph.It is from a TED Talk by Richard WilkinsEdited by jar, : add cite and source

Actually, there is no legal requirement for any time off in the US with the exception of some medical based ones such as maternity leave.There are Federal Holidays, eight days a year IIRC, but no requirement that someone gets off work.Vacation time is based on a company by company system and only available where the company either offers it as an employee benefit or it is required through a union contract.Edited by jar, : Fix subtitle appalin spallin

Yes and no.It was common but is being eroded rapidly. Today the norm is multiple tiered vacations where new employees get none and they can earn vacation based on how long they stay with that company. Many companies also have a "use it or lose it" policy yet can often find reasons why someone cannot take vacation at the time they want it. This means that often in a family with multiple working members, vacations are not coordinated.

Yes, it is a company by company issue. Often unions include vacation in their contracts and so in that case it will extend across companies where workers are under the same union, but even there, any non-union workers are not assured of vacations.

I'd like to return to what I think is the single most important issue in the OWS movement and that is Income Inequality and the Quality of Life.Of the developed nations, the US has the greatest income inequality and also the lowest quality of life.If we return to the graph I presented before, the one from Richard Wilkinson's TED Talk, ... we can see a very direct correlation between a nation income inequality and quality of life.Even there though, the US is an outlier have a far greater inequality of incomes and a far lower quality of life than any of the other 20 industrialized nations.The US has a higher infant mortality rate than even Cuba.The US has a higher incarceration rate than ANY other country, 50% higher than Russia, about five times higher than the UK or China and ten times higher than Japan.In the US, this current case of income inequality (there have been several other such cases) really grew from the perversion of economics instituted during the period when Reagan was President. At that time the concept of "Profit is the answer" was sold to the masses and we saw the concept of "for profit health care" and "for profit education" and "for profit incarceration" proliferate like a cancer on the American Dream.Any cure though will take time but if we look and learn from the other 20 or so developed nations there is still a possibility that the US can once again join the group of First World Nations.

There are specific steps that can be taken.For example, the term "For Profit" when linked with certain areas of life must be ridiculed, laughed at, made to seem obscene and vulgar.For profit health care and for profit schools and for profit incarceration should be the first on the list. Those three need to go down the toilet with the rest of the excrement.They are obscene and near terrorist level behaviors.Second, we need to put a very progressive inheritance tax in place that assure it is impossible for a moneyed class to arise in the US.Third we need a single payer health care system and education system and abolish all "for profit schools".And if it takes something like the 60s and 70s to accomplish it, then I believe that would be a worthy fight.