At this point, if you have not heard of the "Occupy Wall Street" Protests (online it is referred to as #OWS), then you are most likely either living under a rock, or so engrossed in your fantasy football league that you are absolutely oblivious that there is life outside of the NFL. If you fall under either of these groups then I encourage you to hit some of the news sites and get up to speed. Basically these protests have officially been going on for a little over a month now.
Let me be clear that I do believe that there are legitimate frustrations among those that are protesting. I am absolutely positive that there are some legitimate sad stories out there. I also believe that there are many Corporations that rightfully deserve the brunt of these frustrations.
Since the late 90's I have been openly frustrated with the efforts to ship American jobs oversee's. President Obama's current "Job Czar", GE's CEO Jeff Immelt, was one of the most outspoken CEO's in the early 2000's encouraging companies that Outsourcing was key to survival in today's Global Economy. Being in the Information Technology industry, I noticed this most with programming jobs being shipped over to India. I disagreed with Republicans who kept telling us that outsourcing our jobs oversees was a good thing. Why? Because we aren't talking $12-18 factory jobs making cars. We are talking about technology jobs and service jobs like call centers and tech support. People making $60-100k. These jobs are a significant portion of the middle class. So that is gripe #1.
Gripe #2: I realize that 9/11 gets blamed for a lot of things, but I don't think many can argue against the fact that our economy took a major hit after 9/11. People stopped buying as much. In the manufacturing world, when you don't sell as much product, you reduce your production levels. In the services world (people that don't make things), your #1 costs are related to your workforce, so you are required to reduce your work force. Through these efforts, companies have learned that they can scale the workforce back and force the remaining employees to pick up the slack. The common mantra is "Do more with less." I get that that is Business 101. When times are tough I get that such decisions are a matter of survival. My gripe however is that when business returned, these companies didn't re-hire those people, but instead they are pocketing the cash savings and sitting on it to make their balance sheets look even greater for their shareholders.
The "Powers at Be" are not grasping the concept that the more people employed with good-paying jobs, the more people that are in the market spending money, buying services and goods. It is the market version of the "Circle of Life". This is where I agree with the frustration of "Greed on Wall Street".
Gripe #3: I absolutely believe that a company is perfectly in their rights to reward their executives when they lead their companies to achieve goals and profits. However, I do have a gripe when I see a company receive a Government Bailout because they are in financial trouble, and then turn around a give bonuses to their executives. I will set aside the entire Government Bailout topic for another day. I am sorry, but if a company is in dire financial straits, then how can you reward your executives for this? To me, it would be logical that if your company got itself into financial trouble and the government has to step in and give you tax payer dollars to keep your doors open, then you should be removed from your position. To me that is common sense.
I take great pride in our Rights and Freedoms that we are afforded here in the United States. I try very hard to respect everyone's right to form and possess their own opinions. The same goes with the right to assemble and protest. I believe it is a wonderful attribute of our society that you can assemble and make your position known without fear of tanks and military people gunning you down like we have seen in Iran, Libya, and recently Syria.
Despite all of this, I refuse to stand with the Occupy Wall Street people. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, I don't believe that this is a "non-organized grass roots" effort by "the people". In fact, if you just go to the OccupyWallSt.org website and scroll to the bottom you will read that back in June this effort was started by Adbusters. If you google Adbusters, you will see that they do not hide the fact that they are a Anti-consumerism Magazine out of Vancouver. They are Anti-Capitalism. Just reading through their information, you can clearly see that they want to destroy our economy.
Again citing their website, on August 12th they clearly state the following quote:
Furthermore, I believe that the strategy of using the "Arab Spring" tactics is flawed. First of all, those efforts were the people rising up against the government. They were directly revolting against the power of the government. Wall Street could care less about a bunch of people camping out in a park. Their bottom lines are not affected in any way by these efforts. And the politicians in Washington? They are completely confused on what to do. The Democrats are so scared of the Tea Party, they would love to find an alternative grass roots effort to combat the Tea Party. But the lack of clarity in the message leaves way too much room for the radical anarchists to get involved (as we saw recently in Rome), and the Democrats know they will lose the Moderate vote if that happens. So for those reasons, I believe that these protests are flawed, misguided, and doomed for failure.
So what is the answer? What is the solution to address the problems that causing all of this legitimate frustration? How can we the people affect change in Corporate USA? I have some ideas. And that will be the topic of my next blog.
Let me be clear that I do believe that there are legitimate frustrations among those that are protesting. I am absolutely positive that there are some legitimate sad stories out there. I also believe that there are many Corporations that rightfully deserve the brunt of these frustrations.
Since the late 90's I have been openly frustrated with the efforts to ship American jobs oversee's. President Obama's current "Job Czar", GE's CEO Jeff Immelt, was one of the most outspoken CEO's in the early 2000's encouraging companies that Outsourcing was key to survival in today's Global Economy. Being in the Information Technology industry, I noticed this most with programming jobs being shipped over to India. I disagreed with Republicans who kept telling us that outsourcing our jobs oversees was a good thing. Why? Because we aren't talking $12-18 factory jobs making cars. We are talking about technology jobs and service jobs like call centers and tech support. People making $60-100k. These jobs are a significant portion of the middle class. So that is gripe #1.
Gripe #2: I realize that 9/11 gets blamed for a lot of things, but I don't think many can argue against the fact that our economy took a major hit after 9/11. People stopped buying as much. In the manufacturing world, when you don't sell as much product, you reduce your production levels. In the services world (people that don't make things), your #1 costs are related to your workforce, so you are required to reduce your work force. Through these efforts, companies have learned that they can scale the workforce back and force the remaining employees to pick up the slack. The common mantra is "Do more with less." I get that that is Business 101. When times are tough I get that such decisions are a matter of survival. My gripe however is that when business returned, these companies didn't re-hire those people, but instead they are pocketing the cash savings and sitting on it to make their balance sheets look even greater for their shareholders.
The "Powers at Be" are not grasping the concept that the more people employed with good-paying jobs, the more people that are in the market spending money, buying services and goods. It is the market version of the "Circle of Life". This is where I agree with the frustration of "Greed on Wall Street".
Gripe #3: I absolutely believe that a company is perfectly in their rights to reward their executives when they lead their companies to achieve goals and profits. However, I do have a gripe when I see a company receive a Government Bailout because they are in financial trouble, and then turn around a give bonuses to their executives. I will set aside the entire Government Bailout topic for another day. I am sorry, but if a company is in dire financial straits, then how can you reward your executives for this? To me, it would be logical that if your company got itself into financial trouble and the government has to step in and give you tax payer dollars to keep your doors open, then you should be removed from your position. To me that is common sense.
I take great pride in our Rights and Freedoms that we are afforded here in the United States. I try very hard to respect everyone's right to form and possess their own opinions. The same goes with the right to assemble and protest. I believe it is a wonderful attribute of our society that you can assemble and make your position known without fear of tanks and military people gunning you down like we have seen in Iran, Libya, and recently Syria.
Despite all of this, I refuse to stand with the Occupy Wall Street people. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, I don't believe that this is a "non-organized grass roots" effort by "the people". In fact, if you just go to the OccupyWallSt.org website and scroll to the bottom you will read that back in June this effort was started by Adbusters. If you google Adbusters, you will see that they do not hide the fact that they are a Anti-consumerism Magazine out of Vancouver. They are Anti-Capitalism. Just reading through their information, you can clearly see that they want to destroy our economy.
Again citing their website, on August 12th they clearly state the following quote:
"Strategically speaking, there is a very real danger that if we naively put our cards on the table and rally around the "overthrow of capitalism" or some equally outworn utopian slogan, then our Tahrir moment will quickly fizzle into another inconsequential ultra-lefty spectacle soon forgotten. But if we have the cunning to come up with a deceptively simple Trojan Horse demand … something profound, yet so specific and doable that it is impossible for President Obama to ignore … something that spotlights Wall Street's financial capture of the US political system and confronts it with a pragmatic solution … like the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act … or a 1% tax on financial transactions … or an independent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the corporate corruption of our representatives in Washington … or another equally creative but downright practical demand that will emerge from the people's assemblies held during the occupation … and if we then put our asses on the line, screw up our courage and hang in there day after day, week after week, until a large swath of Americans start rooting for us and President Obama is forced to respond … then we just might have a crack at creating a decisive moment of truth for America, a first concrete step towards achieving the radical changes we all dream about unencumbered by commitments to existing power structures."This didn't come from Glenn Beck, Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh. This is clearly stated on the OccupyWallSt.org website under the "Update from Adbusters" dated August 12th. For this reason alone I refuse to support these protests. I adamantly disavow the Adbusters agenda.
Furthermore, I believe that the strategy of using the "Arab Spring" tactics is flawed. First of all, those efforts were the people rising up against the government. They were directly revolting against the power of the government. Wall Street could care less about a bunch of people camping out in a park. Their bottom lines are not affected in any way by these efforts. And the politicians in Washington? They are completely confused on what to do. The Democrats are so scared of the Tea Party, they would love to find an alternative grass roots effort to combat the Tea Party. But the lack of clarity in the message leaves way too much room for the radical anarchists to get involved (as we saw recently in Rome), and the Democrats know they will lose the Moderate vote if that happens. So for those reasons, I believe that these protests are flawed, misguided, and doomed for failure.
So what is the answer? What is the solution to address the problems that causing all of this legitimate frustration? How can we the people affect change in Corporate USA? I have some ideas. And that will be the topic of my next blog.
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I welcome all comments from both points of view. I reserve the right to delete comments that are personal attacks or name calling towards me or another commentator. One of the many things that is great about our country is that we have the right to our opinions. Let us all be adults about it no matter if we agree or disagree.