Occupy Wall Street

[Swadius 2.0]

Well, if you consider an economic region that is gerrymandered to include only poor people, then the poorer of those poor will be that region's poor, while the less poor will be the rich.

The thing is, you don't draw an economic region based on economics, you draw an economic region based on geography to determine the economy of that geographic region.  IE. I think you misunderstood when I said economic region. 

What is signification about geography that implores you to draw lines in it?

 

[MadocComadrin]

Well, continents and countries seem to be quite the natural divider, eh?

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Given that they are entirely artificial constructs, no. Convenient yes, but that's hardly a grounded answer.

 

[MadocComadrin]

Continents are artificial? Countries? Man-made? yes; "artificial?" no.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here.

 

[Adorno]

People are not poor because of laziness.
When you can statistically foresee those who will become poor already before they are born
it doesn't make much sense to explain poverty with psychology.
Unless you believe people are lazy by genetics and pass on the lazy gene.
But that does not explain why the social mobility is much higher in some countries than others.
In short forget about free will - that illusion died long ago    (I'm exaggerating but psychology just doesn't work when you want to explain social phenomena). 

First, why are you typing like that...it's weird. I'm talking about the ideal. That is to say, a lot of poverty in reality is caused from misfortune rather than not working or not being of any (potential) worth to society. In my ideal, the poor are those who work little or don't work, don't have the talent/skill to make their little-to-no work worth it to society, and do not have the will to correct the former.

I think we think very differently 
Again you talk of personal traits like 'talent', 'skill', 'will'. But they don't explain poverty.
It doesn't explain why politics can in- or decrease poverty.
But I think we're going in circles 

Also, sociology does include aggregate psychology, and most forms of statistics are empirical, and the probabilities are often empirical (or Bayesian) as well. That means they are hardly set in stone: the quantitative depends on the qualitative.

Sociology and psychology are far from each other both historically and epistemologically.
I don't see how they share methods.
Some of the first sociologists who laid the foundations did in no way use psychology. People like Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim.
Sociologists might try to explain psychological phenomena like anxiety/fobia, sexuality etc. but they do so with sociological methods.
(The so called Frankfurter School is an exception where especially Eric Fromm combined psychoanalysis with Marxism in a hideous way.)

 

[del_diablo]

If poverty is confined into an economic region, how do you know if a person is really poor or not?

Lets say you have a few neighborhoods:
One is the really rich one, with really inflated prices on the houses.
The other is just another one, and belongs mostly to the middleclass.
The last one is a appartment complex.
So the real measure that must be used would be the apartment complex for the single people, and perhaps the middleclass house group for a couple that has been married for some time.
Basically:
Rent+Cost of food+Cost of cloths+Cost of transportation+Cost of mantaining the house and equipment+cost of insurances = Roughly the cost of living
And then you compare that to what that person earns.
If you are poor, you will need to reduce the costs of some of those below what we consider a standard. Perhaps you need to buy the cheapest ingredients, start on a unhealthy and unbalanced diet? Perhaps you need to buy cloths a lot more strategical and then only buy new ones when your old ones can't be fixed with needle and thread?

Even better: Count the number of hours that person has to work in arveage per week to earn enough money to satify the cost of living.
If they are working more than 7-8 hours a day each day to do so, then they are underpaid and poor.

 

[FrisianDude]

I wonder why people think occupying bits of cities helps.

 

[Dodes]

I wonder why people think occupying bits of cities helps.

maybe because it makes people talk about it and raises awareness

like what you just did 

what would you propose they do instead?

 

[FrisianDude]

Do their work. Get jobs. Maybe get into politics. Do something rather than camp. Though I suppose in the US they can't really form new parties because a new party has really not much chance of getting anything done. In all the other countries where ******s-with-Fawkes-masks think they're being useful though they have much more chance of getting something done politically.

The Occupy Rome people though, were far more despicable than those who don't do much (in fact, I don't despise them); in Rome the Occupy-ers made a mess.

 

[MadocComadrin]

I think we think very differently 
Again you talk of personal traits like 'talent', 'skill', 'will'. But they don't explain poverty.
It doesn't explain why politics can in- or decrease poverty.
But I think we're going in circles 

We're not, we just have different goals: in the ideal, you want poverty gone, but I want poverty redefined (to exclude misfortune (which includes effects of legislation, macroeconomics, etc).

Sociology and psychology are far from each other both historically and epistemological.
I don't see how they share methods.
Some of the first sociologists who laid the foundations did in no way use psychology. People like Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim.
Sociologists might try to explain psychological phenomena like anxiety/fobia, sexuality etc. but they do so with sociological methods.
(The so called Frankfurter School is an exception where especially Eric Fromm combined psychoanalysis with Marxism in a hideous way.)

Yet the history of sociology is very different from modern sociology, which has moved away from it's philosophical roots. Modern sociology has borrowed quite a bit from cognitive science (which recursively borrows from sociology :3) as well as aggregate psychology, both for explanation of phenomena and getting phenomena to explain.

Going back to that graph, what is the social mobility of one of those 99%ers who got a useless liberal arts degree? It doesn't matter if his/her parents were ignoramuses, they will most likely make more money in their lifetimes than their child.

maybe because it makes people talk about it and raises awareness

Except that for the Occupy Wallstreet movement, the tension is being felt throughout America, not just those making a well out of Wall Street, ie. if you ask most Americans, they would say they are upset to a certain degree with the upper classes and politicians (and rightfully so). The Occupy Wallstreet movement is simply showing how most youths in the US are complete idiots when it comes to politics and economics. Frankly, I want to Occupy Wallstreet to make economics classes mandatory. I will use an army of stock brokers to bash down all who oppose me!

 

[Papa Lazarou]

For the public to be upset with politicians is pretty retarded. They're a product of a system. It's not like they all just suddenly chose to act like morons out of nothing. The non-morons and non-moronic behaviours are selected out (by the public). Blaming people is a waste of time, because handing out punishments is not going to solve the problem.

 

[MadocComadrin]

For the public to be upset with politicians is pretty retarded. They're a product of a system. It's not like they all just suddenly chose to act like morons out of nothing. The non-morons and non-moronic behaviours are selected out (by the public). Blaming people is a waste of time, because handing out punishments is not going to solve the problem.

The thing is, they aren't morons: it's just no politician in the US really represents their constituents (at least on the Federal level). Likewise, the two party "system" is utterly broken, as all one party tries to do is undo everything the other does.

 

[ealabor]

Irony - A group of citizens whom largely are subsidized by taxpayers don't work by choice and thus don't pay taxes, are asking the percentage that already pay the biggest share of the tax bracket to pay their "fair" share.

Occupy Krenshaw.

 

[Finzi]

Isn't Occupy Wall Street a protest against big business controlling American politics from behind the scene and the rising levels of inequality in USA?

 

[MadocComadrin]

That's the general sentiment of the nation itself. The OW thing is just a bunch of stupid youths being overly loud about it.

 

[ealabor]

Isn't Occupy Wall Street a protest against big business controlling American politics from behind the scene and the rising levels of inequality in USA?

Well actually it's a protest about a great number of things, from anti Capitalism to anti Fed Reserve, down to particulars of loaning institution alleged abuses of specific student loans, and on over to pro movement sentiment from Socialist reform ideals all the way up to Marxist revolution.

One of another such notions being percieved inequality which you mentioned, and which I eluded to in my prior post, in that at least some of the folks are protest in demand that the highest teir of taxpayers, i.e. 1% (which is the contrary party to the "99%") need to pay their fair share. And despite the fact that they already pay the highest percentage, it's not enough, and only to be made from folks of which some don't even work by choice, it's just absurd.

Being that the movement is of such various obscene ideals, then i'll continue to take pot shots at whatever the flavor of the day is regarding these people, and as long as their ideals don't run out of stupid, then I won't run out of ammo.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Isn't Occupy Wall Street a protest against big business controlling American politics from behind the scene and the rising levels of inequality in USA?

Their manifesto is all over the place. They seem dissatisfied with the same actors but for completely different reasons. In all respects, it's a terrible protest. They pose little political threat, they have no clear list of demands a significant portion of the protesters agree with, and they're not really doing something that people not involved in the movement will recognized as sacrifice, and thus garner little respect for protesting. They are living in tents in a park near the city centre, it's like a bunch of students doing a sit in where half of them are fornicating in the computer lab.

Continents are artificial? Countries? Man-made? yes; "artificial?" no.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here.

Geographical terms are artificial. There's nothing, or at least you've not given any indication of a swaying factors, why we should draw lines where you think they should be drawn, or more to the issue, why there should be dividing lines at all and why there isn't one region. We have a set of all people, what reason is there to distinguish them into subsets or regions when terms can apply to the entire set? What reasons are there to not just round up all people of a certain income rate and toss them into one set that aren't present in rounding up all people within the ghettos of a certain state and putting them all into a society where poverty is relative only inside of this set? This sorting of people into societies and regions to define poverty is completely arbitrary if there are no reasons why sorting them into these groups makes sense.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

For the public to be upset with politicians is pretty retarded. They're a product of a system. It's not like they all just suddenly chose to act like morons out of nothing. The non-morons and non-moronic behaviours are selected out (by the public). Blaming people is a waste of time, because handing out punishments is not going to solve the problem.

The thing is, they aren't morons: it's just no politician in the US really represents their constituents (at least on the Federal level). Likewise, the two party "system" is utterly broken, as all one party tries to do is undo everything the other does.

Pretty sure they are morons. They certainly say a lot of moronic things.

 

[Mage246]

People in the top 1% of income also work by choice. They make enough that they could easily retire to a comfortable life, but they want more so they continue to work. The difference is that people in the bottom who don't work (and let's accept that it's "by choice" just for the sake of argument) know that even if they did work they would have about the same amount of money either way. Because the way the system is set up, people who can earn a lot also get opportunities to earn a lot more, but people who can only earn a little tend to earn even less as time goes on (due to inflation, debt, etc.).

 

[del_diablo]

What is wrong with pointing out a problem?
Why do Americans hate freedom and hate problems?
WHy can't Americans accept that the first step to solve a problem is by identifying it?