Jobless Occutards Going On Strike In Oakland

[Muldur]

Who exactly wins from working, or after reading Howie's example, simply bringing home, less than an unemployment check?

There are no winners, except the rich.

They first discovered this after the welfare "reforms" of the 90s...slashed the welfare rolls considerably by making people take any job they could find, even if the take home was less than the welfare benefits.

Result, more people working hard for a DEcreased standard of living...and the PTB pat themselves on the back about acquiring one more desperate workforce sector to exploit.

 

[Muldur]

Unless you have national unemployment insurance... In Finland (IIRC) it used to be 5 years of unemployment... and it was amazing, that about 3 months before it would run out, people would find jobs. Absolutely amazing. And when they reduced it from 5 years, to 4 year there were people stating that the unemployed would be starving because they couldn't find jobs... but golly gee whiz, about 3 months before that would run out (at 4 years) people started finding jobs. Amazing.

Same principle in the US. About a month before unemployment runs out, there is a spike in people finding jobs... go figure.

Horsecrap! Read up on the growing legions of "99ers"...there just aren't enough jobs.

 

[Checkmite]

Face to face? Not that I know of...and am thankful for it. I would not hold myself responsible for knocking a Corporatist shill on his/her ass.

This is the part where someone from Occupy Wall Street comes in and states that Muldur "doesn't represent the movement" right?

 

[Foolmewunz]

So how'd that General Strike turn o.....oh %&$@.



Of course they don't! The No True Occupier argument, I presume.

No, they represent the movement. The entire movement, of course, because a bunch of conservatives on a skeptics' forum told me so.

Alternate theory: There are fringe groups within fringe groups.

 

[Foolmewunz]

This is the part where someone from Occupy Wall Street comes in and states that Muldur "doesn't represent the movement" right?

I'm not from OWS, but I can say that Muldur doesn't represent the movement because thus far, I've seen no one who represents the movement, really. It's a hodgepodge of causists at the moment. Many of those, I agree with.

But the people arrested in Oakland or at any other location are no more the full representation of OWS than the Weathermen were a full representation of the anti-war movement in the 60s.

It would do your argument a lot better if you'd stop ironically arguing against the No True Scotsman while applying such a broad brush based on a tiny sampling.

 

[Chungy]

I have no job, and now i feel like am occutard. I hope my local protest will get some ink.

 

[shuize]

I have a job. But I'm not going in today. I think I'll stay home and occupy my house.

 

[JihadJane]

I've got a funny name.

 

[Muldur]

This is the part where someone from Occupy Wall Street comes in and states that Muldur "doesn't represent the movement" right?

I represent no one by myself. I do know a heck of a lot of people though who think the same way I do. We're tired of doing everything the elites tell us we should do to get ahead, only to have our promised rewards snatched away at the last minute like a sadistic child teasing a cat with a string.

If you leave people with nothing, then they have nothing to lose, do they?

 

[Howie Felterbush]

Yeah, if you're going for the immediate benefit. But the 30 hours/week is going to look a lot better on your résumé than a 0-hour week.

Plus, it may lead to a full time job at my workplace.

 

[Darth Rotor]

I have a job. I am not going to work tomorrow. I have earned some paid leave. So, I am going to a beer festival. Much better idea than sitting around making noise with no clear message to broadcast.

Best wishes to the Occupy folks, when they finally agree on their message.

I for one am interested in hearing it.

 

[Virus]

If you leave people with nothing, then they have nothing to lose, do they?

Oh yeah right. The Occupy Walltards have got nothing. Just iPhones, laptops, designer clothes, college education, plenty of pot to smoke, the leisure to take a month off to go sleep in parks.

 

[Muldur]

Oh yeah right. The Occupy Walltards have got nothing. Just iPhones, laptops, designer clothes, college education, plenty of pot to smoke, the leisure to take a month off to go sleep in parks.

There's that meme again...

Here are the facts:

http://gawker.com/5851376/the-demographics-of-occupy-wall-street

business analyst Harrison Schultz and professor Hector R. Cordero-Guzman from the Baruch College School of Public Affairs, today released a study based on a survey of 1,619 visitors to the occupywallst.org site on October 5. And about a quarter of them have also attended occupation events. So they aren't all armchair activists.

Some of the results are to be expected. For example about 64% of respondents are younger than 34. But others back up the assertion made in the title of the report "Main Stream Support for a Mainstream Movement: The 99% Movement Comes From and Looks Like the 99%."

Among the findings:

They aren't all kids. Xers, Boomers, and older are also in on it: One-third of respondents is older than 35, and one-forth is 45 or older.

It's not all students and the educated elite. About 8% have, at best, a high school degree. And just about a quarter (26.7%) are enrolled in school. Only about 10% are full-time students.

"Get a job!" wouldn't apply to most of them. Half of the respondents are already employed full-time, and an additional 20% work part-time. Just 13.1% are unemployed—not a whole lot more than the national average.

"Tax the rich!" could hit close to home. About 15% earn between $50,000 and $80,000 annually (pretty good anywhere except in Manhattan). Thirteen percent earn over $75,000 annually, and nearly 2% bring in more than $150,000.

It may be a party, but not that kind. The movement is often identified as a liberal, even Democrat-dominated cause. But just 27.3% of respondents call themselves Democrats (and 2.4% are Republican). And the rest, 70% call themselves independents.

Not everyone tweets. The microblogging site played a big role in getting the movement started. But that's not how most people keep up with it. Twenty-nine percent of respondents are regular Twitter users. But 66% are Facebook regulars. The biggest online community, however, is YouTube, with about 74% being regular users.

and:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnew...mines-politics-of-occupy-wall-street-movement

In a poll conducted by Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York, a team of 15 researchers ventured out to survey 301 New York protesters to find the answers to these questions.

"We’ve had a lot of speculation about who these people are," the professor commented, adding, "Some of what we found reinforced what many already believed, and some results were surprising." In the survey, Panagopoulos and his team focused on characteristics relating to the movement’s demographics and political beliefs to better understand the catchy, but somewhat esoteric, signs and slogans that have painted the media headlines over the past several weeks.

The poll, sponsored by Fordham’s Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy, found that New York’s OWS movement is 68 percent white and 61 percent male. While 28 percent of the protesters are unemployed, most are college graduates and 22 percent hold advanced college degrees. Of those who are currently employed, 30 percent claim to work full-time and 18 percent work part-time.

The average age of the protesters is significantly higher than the surveyors predicted. "We thought it would be mostly people in their 20s," said Panagopoulos, but the average age is 33, which "means for every college student you have a mid-career professional in their 40s."

 

[TruthersLie]

Horsecrap! Read up on the growing legions of "99ers"...there just aren't enough jobs.

There are plenty of jobs... It is just that may of them are "beneath" what these folks want. Not my fault.

And with UE being the way that it is in numerous states, it is much, much easier to stay at home, make 4 to 6 phone calls to people, report that you were "looking" for work and collect your 1/2 to 2/3 of your working salary...

Of course, i can't leave out the ability to work under the table while collecting this amount either.

ETA:

Source for my claim that people on unemployment spike when they are about to run out of unemployment insurance (in the US... still looking for the finland citation) http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/UnemploymentInsurance.html

Most people who receive unemployment insurance find a job or are recalled to work in the first several weeks. Meyer also found that among those who remain jobless for a longer period, the chance of a person on unemployment insurance going back to work increases rapidly as the time of benefit exhaustion approaches. Indeed, the chances of an unemployed person getting a job triples as the length of remaining benefits drops from six weeks to one week. Meyer suspects some of the jobless may have arranged to be recalled to previous work or to begin new work about the time their benefits expire. "If workers are bound to firms by implicit contracts, moving costs, specific human capital [education, experience, skills, etc.], or other reasons, firms have an incentive to base recall decisions on the length of UI [unemployment insurance] benefits," noted Meyer in a study done for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Unionized firms tend to take greater advantage of this "layoff subsidy" than do non-union establishments. And not surprisingly, given the incentives, layoffs are more common for those eligible for unemployment benefits than for those not eligible. If benefits are extended beyond twenty-six weeks, the unemployed tend to stay out of work nearly a day longer, on average, for each week of the extension.

 

[JihadJane]

Unless you have national unemployment insurance... In Finland (IIRC) it used to be 5 years of unemployment... and it was amazing, that about 3 months before it would run out, people would find jobs. Absolutely amazing. And when they reduced it from 5 years, to 4 year there were people stating that the unemployed would be starving because they couldn't find jobs... but golly gee whiz, about 3 months before that would run out (at 4 years) people started finding jobs. Amazing.

Same principle in the US. About a month before unemployment runs out, there is a spike in people finding jobs... go figure.

I figure people don't prostitute themselves unless they're forced to.

We just finished our last round of holiday hiring. Out of about sixty available jobs we managed to fill twenty-seven of them. Of that twenty seven, I'm willing to bet about a dozen of them come to the realization that working sucks and just disappear. It's retail, so it isn't like our standards are ridiculously high. The current batch of unemployed people around here would rather collect their unemployment than work. Scrut's get a job, work hard, etc. statement might be a little simplistic, but you have to realize the concept is still lost on a lot of people these days.

I'm bending over and taking it all right. I'll have to pull that slack once it starts getting busy.

Who, in their right mind, would want to work for/with someone whose hobby is calling people retards?

 

[Howie Felterbush]

Who, in their right mind, would want to work for/with someone whose hobby is calling people retards?

People who have gotten used to eating regularly and living indoors.

Nobody really wants to work. It sucks. It interferes with fishing.
But you do it anyway, if you want things like a new fly rod or a car or dignity. I'd love to sit on my ass and get paid for it, but I seriously couldn't do it. I'd feel like a POS if I was able to work but didn't and had to rely on my unemployment insurance. You pay that in to get you through an unexpected layoff while you find a new job, not to live on like it's a salary.

Obviously, some other people feel differently.

 

[Brainster]

Vichy Oakland is now debating whether to join the Maquis:

A majority of the Oakland City Council indicated late Thursday that they would like an end to the Occupy Oakland encampment in front of City Hall, but they did not vote on any proposals.

The statements came at the end of a five-hour meeting during which hundreds of people crammed into the council chambers for an emotionally charged discussion about whether to allow the encampment to remain at Frank Ogawa Plaza with city support. Several times, the rowdy crowd shouted down city officials as they tried to speak.

A local developer, who was forced to rack a shotgun to protect his property, notes the fallacy of the "no true Obamaviller" claims:

Tagami disagreed, calling the Occupy Oakland encampment "basically concealment and cover for anarchists who are doing this to our city."

Even the collaborationists discovered that they were not immune to the vandalism:

Other businesses that professed support for Occupy Oakland's general strike didn't escape the damage. Windows at the Men's Wearhouse, which closed Wednesday and put up signs of support, were shattered.

Of course, the question remains, who will evict the occupiers? Will the city police agree to the task, given that Quisling Mayor Quan welcomed them back after the first sweep?

 

[timhau]

People who have gotten used to eating regularly and living indoors.

Nobody really wants to work. It sucks. It interferes with fishing.
But you do it anyway, if you want things like a new fly rod or a car or dignity. I'd love to sit on my ass and get paid for it, but I seriously couldn't do it. I'd feel like a POS if I was able to work but didn't and had to rely on my unemployment insurance. You pay that in to get you through an unexpected layoff while you find a new job, not to live on like it's a salary.

Obviously, some other people feel differently.

Spoken like someone whose avatar doesn't even share Tootsie Pops.

 

[Howie Felterbush]

Spoken like someone whose avatar doesn't even share Tootsie Pops.

Hey, man, I share. And not with some church, either.

I'm a very charitable guy, but someone who can work and doesn't kind of burns my ass. We're having trouble filling our Christmas rush spots at my job because people come in for an interview and try to tank the interview by showing up in torn jeans or a jester hat or something because they have to be actively looking for a job to keep their unemployment benefits. Actively looking apparently doesn't mean actively trying to get a job.

Are you seriously telling me there's not something wrong with someone who would do that? I know we don't like the "L" word around here, but don't you think that's a bit lazy?

And these Tootsie Pops are from two Halloweens ago, you wouldn't want one anyway.

 

[timhau]

I'm a very charitable guy, but someone who can work and doesn't kind of burns my ass. We're having trouble filling our Christmas rush spots at my job because people come in for an interview and try to tank the interview by showing up in torn jeans or a jester hat or something because they have to be actively looking for a job to keep their unemployment benefits. Actively looking apparently doesn't mean actively trying to get a job.

Are you seriously telling me there's not something wrong with someone who would do that? I know we don't like the "L" word around here, but don't you think that's a bit lazy?

Hey, I agree with you. I was just trying to be witty. I have very little patience with folks who e.g. consider honest if unglamorous jobs like supermarket cashier or mailman to be beneath them. Sure, if you have better options, go for them, but if you don't, don't go all Windsor on the rest of us, lower your expectations.

And for the record, considering your Tootsie Pops: I had to consult Wikipedia to find out what they are, and you can keep them.