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Comment by Andrew_Quentin | Hacker News Reader

The protesters know very well what they want also. It is only the media who is unclear for very understandable reasons because this has only started. They are not asking to abolish the banks, but the Glass ceiling to be re-instated, they are asking for more equality of course, the graph for example that was posted here on HN a while ago showed clearly that while the country grew, wages did not, after 1970s, or, after the Regan Thatcer market prevails let the jungle rule.

I do not know how many of them are lazy. I would not think many since it takes quite a lot of work to organize what they have and keep pushing forward. Many of them simply can not find a job and find themselves in a spiral without any help because of temporary difficulties. We have had plenty of posts here on HN just how poor people are trapped into poverty. Banks get money, little people get kicked out.

Anyway, maybe you should visit their websites and read what they want.

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>Anyway, maybe you should visit their websites and read what they want.

From what I've seen from the posts all over the internet, it runs the entire political spectrum from the very progressive liberal/socialist(tax the rich, end wars, socialized medicine) to the very libertarian(end the federal reserve, go back to the gold standard). There is also a lot of anti-globalization stuff in there, as well. That's on top of the anti-corporate greed goals(which are what I assume the entire thing started about, but quite frankly, I'm not sure anymore).

The problem for me, even as a liberal, is that a lot of the demands are either impossible(removing the fed) or so unspecific(there is a lot of talk about "personal liberty") that they could mean anything to everyone that it's hard to state that I support them or am against them.

I assume you mean the Glass–Steagall Act.

I keep seeing this idea of 'asking for more equality' and I have no idea what that means. Equality of what? pay? opportunity?

Forced redistribution of money to equalize incomes would be an unmitigated disaster so I can only hope that isn't their actual demand.

Anyway, the protesters and their supporters need to refine their message a bit.

I see those attractive young people protesting, and I can't help but wish for equality of appearance. Why should I be stuck with this body, when all of those people flaunt -- or worse, ignore -- their beauty?

Seriously, it's ironic that the same set of people who claim that "material possessions aren't important, it's the people that matter" are the ones who find money so important that they've got to redistribute what others have earned. But they don't give attention to the myriad other ways in which some people are better-advantaged than others.

> Forced redistribution of money to equalize incomes would be an unmitigated disaster

Not really. A different balance of taxation would be a form of redistribution of income (and indeed would be interpreted as 'forced' by some). Would that be an unmitigated disaster? Well, it needs checking in the detail, but one suspects that such different tax profiles and hence 'redistribution' existed at various times in the USA's past: the 1960s probably, for example. That is unlikely to be called a period of disaster: it was one of growth and creativity, was it not? If all that happened was going to the moon and inventing the internet, you would have to call it pretty good.

Not really.

I'm sorry, but I simply can't take you seriously.

you don't understand that the very definition of a tax incorporates the idea of 'force' (hint if it is optional, it isn't a tax)

you are confusiong redistribution and/or progressive tax structure with 'equal incomes'

you claim without any evidence that the 1960s represented a time when this redistribution was implemented

My comment was about the ambiguity of 'equality' without any clarification or context and about the dangers of promulgating 'equal incomes' via forced redistribution.

I do not want to live in a world where any individual effort made to raise my income above the average results in the government grabbing my wallet and giving it to someone making no effort at all.

Thanks for the reply. I must admit, I am not from the USA so I did not follow all this really closely, but if there was a clear representation of the demands, I surely missed it.

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