The 'cute' was indeed meant to needle you!

Some time ago I would have partly agreed to you, but one has to ignore a whole lot of information
about the new habits of the financial sector within the last two decades
when saying that's all about the usual aberrations.

Let's talk about Greek as an example - it is not all about Wallstreet, but about the influence and the responsibilities of the financial sector generally:
Although, I have no doubt about maladministration in Greek, the 'heeling' 'prescription' makes economically no sense, it is a downward spiral, that ruins the economy of their nation, means no income for the government, means no chance of recovery for the national budget.
And this is all, because it is still the financial elite instead of the economical experts of the governmanet who decide about what the governments do in Europe.
(There is one link in one of my posts to a video about the decisions in the Europe parliament - unfortunately in German)

I don't get the necessity to talk about 'hypocrisis' of the protestants.
Did I miss something? Are you hypocritical when you take action
to show that you are against certain evolutions within your society?


Sure, but if those responsible would have done their job and would have regulated the financial sector as it was meant by law
- we wouldn't even talk about the rich, but about other faults - because we had one problem less, right?

Rich!= more financially responsible. A lot of the worlds wealth is tied up in "old money"

Thanks.


I agree with the latter half of your post but if the former is true could you explain the reasoning behind America's original voting restrictions?


Actually, Greece is crying because its government is trying to give its people benefits which it simply can't afford.


Only if that action includes sitting around on the streets all day shouting obscenities, obstructing law enforcement, and defacing property.

You wanna explain why black people and females couldn't vote either? And actually many of the "founding fathers"believed that the rich shouldn't control everything. That's why george washington washington refused both high pay and to stay in the white house when he originally became president.

I read a book about the 2009 financial crisis
In the last 200 years most financial crises were the responsability of the USA
People must put a stop to the wild american capitalism

I was in Australia for the bulk of the crisis, and we came out of it really well. I'm now in Canada, which is doing quite well.

I see the "99%" complaining a lot. And a lot of it is "We're poor! Life is hard! Share your hard-earned wealth with us!" But at least that's getting some numbers behind a good cause, which is (or should be) the crux of Occupy Wall Street: the excessively rich were stupidly greedy, took down the US economy, and put a ridiculous amount of people who were content to work hard for their small portion out of work. Put laws in place to prevent this.

Those affected by the crisis have every right to be angry, because it's not something that just happens. Rich people stuffing up shouldn't ruin things for the other 99%.

So good on 'em. On the other hand, I think things like "Occupy Toronto" and the other copy-protests around the world are varying degrees of ridiculous -- they are indeed just not-so-rich people complaining that they're not-so-rich. Some of them might "get it", but they're way out of the way of those they're protesting against. Even if they focus on other economic issues, a lot of them are in a far better state than the US.

Browsing "we are the 99 percent" photos, it's amazing how almost everyone I saw who had a degree but was unemployed had an Arts degree. It could be a BA, or even a MFA. Perhaps it lends credence to the idea that Arts degrees are the least employable without something else on top of them (or there could be other reasons), but I couldn't help but think "You got an Arts degree. Surely you planned to be unemployed."

Let's try to sort it this way:


Politics are about power,

its about balancing of power, and its about distribution of power.
Democracy and separation of power are the result within modern society, not only because it is the most fair system but because it is the most efficient system - the latter is often ignored, because people are fed up with current disfunctions, not being aware of the extrem disfunctions of other political systems.


That said, a movement

- and that's what those demonstrations worldwide are - is a political action - even, if there are a lot of people participating that argue from their personal situation.
If you want to achieve a certain political goal, you can't be picky on what people are collaborating with you within your group, whether it is a party or a movement. You can try to establish certain agreements f.i. about to act within the laws, or to act even against laws but without violence as the legendary Indian movement with Gandhi did. But you can't tie those agreements too close.


'Hypocritical'

is probably an unavoidable blame of any political action. I don't see anything hypocritical in the Wallstreet movement that hasn't been surpassed by the financial authorities multiple times, that's why I think it is misplaced to blame them for that, although I understand that you are sort of disgusted.
There are many politicions that are elected for doing a job for the community who are hypocritical in the most things they proclaim, but even those politicians who are honestly anxious to serve the community are not immune against the blame of being hypocritical in one or another perspective.
You can accuse all western democracies that they claim rights within their own countries that they are completely ignoring in their habit against african people or other nations that don't have the economical power to force them to respect their rights.
You can accuse anyone to ignore other social wrongs or whatever when fighting only for one, if you ignore the fact that nobody can fight for more than a few closely connected political goals at once.


The original voting restrictions of the USA

are results of the historical situation of power. Such agreement on the regulations of power is based on the current balance of powers of those who decide about that agreement. Means, a historically installed rule doesn't say anything about the value of that rule in other times and in other social circumstances.

I'll just quickly leave this here: What Wall Street Protestors are so angry about, made by the guys who also run Information Is Beautiful.

Despite my hate for those picture gallery-kind of deals, they have numbers to back up their claims, and they source them, too. A refreshing change of all the random "I BET NINETY PERCENT DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY TALK ABOUT" in here.

Sounds like your personal self fulfilling prophecy.
Some people are highly successful with professional freelance game design:

http://www.falkoloeffler.com/computerspiele/

Thank you fogman, didn't really know how to reply to that without sounding like I wanted to start an argument ot:)