We are the 1%

[Kreutz]

The one constant I've noticed is people seem to say the Occupy people are on the right track in they're raising awareness of not just so much corporate greed....but the influence it has on our legislative process. The tea party only focused on rampant government spending and eroding civil liberties.

Big brother (the government) and little brother (the large corporations) have been both taking turns (and often double teaming) us for decades. I really think focusing on just one will accomplish nothing and play into the hands of certain groups self-interests on each side, but if people really did go after where the two intersect real change actually could happen.

You can call them dirty hippies all you want, but the fact is the middle class has been downsized and outsourced to where it is now.

All in the name of huge executive bonuses aided by a corrupt tax code written by lobbyists; its both of them that are the problem.

[Diomed]

Big brother (the government) and little brother (the large corporations) have been both taking turns (and often double teaming) us for decades. I really think focusing on just one will accomplish nothing and play into the hands of certain groups self-interests on each side, but if people really did go after where the two intersect real change actually could happen.

I think government is a much bigger threat in the long run than any corporation. The eeeeevil businesses got as large as they did by bribing government into giving them advantages and hurting their competition. Unfortunately for them, a system of bribery is ultimately self-limiting - if you're using your sackfuls of money to pay off the guys with the guns, sooner or later one side of the transaction is going to have all the money and all the guns. Of course, there's the issue of those eeeevil tycoons running the government and getting it to do their eeeeevil bidding - but at that point, they are the government, their business ventures become irrelevant.

I'm also unaware of any history of private businesses running death camps. Maybe there were some, but you'd think the left would trumpet them like they do the atrocities of the Nazis (government again!). Yeah, I think it's pretty clear where the real danger lies.

[Mindflayer]

Big brother (the government) and little brother (the large corporations) have been both taking turns (and often double teaming) us for decades.

There's an image I want to post, but this IS a family friendly forum....

Amen on the middle class carrying the burden. I know, economic theory can be all over the place on whom the burden is placed, but make no mistake - it's on the middle class.

Since diomed Godwined the topic - business and govt go hand in hand, up to and including death camps. Make no mistake that power seeks power.

[Kreutz]

Since diomed Godwined the topic - business and govt go hand in hand, up to and including death camps. Make no mistake that power seeks power.

This is true, diomed is forgetting that IBM, kodak, volkswagen, coca-cola, chase bank, Ford, and other corporations had dealings (and by dealings I mean some of them used concentration camp labor, and didnt just supply them with goods) with the Nazis all in the name of profit.

I would also point out the privatization of our prison system has turned them into for profit gulags, where prisoners are forced to do labor for the financial benefit of the corporation that owns them with no money going towards the prisoner.

And there is a long tradition in the US of the "company store", which was one notch above slavery.

If you give companies the chance they will behave as criminally as any government for more money and power.

[Diomed]

This is true, diomed is forgetting that IBM, kodak, volkswagen, coca-cola, chase bank, Ford, and other corporations had dealings (and by dealings I mean some of them used concentration camp labor, and didnt just supply them with goods) with the Nazis all in the name of profit.

Forced labor is not actively exterminating people on an industrial scale. No, that sort of activity is solely the province of governments.

[Kreutz]

Forced labor is not actively exterminating people on an industrial scale. No, that sort of activity is solely the province of governments.

They certainly worked hand in glove in the case of the Holocaust.

[OakRidgeStars]

My favorite "We are the 53% sign of the day"

[dorminWS]

A big reason corporations are so big these days is that small busineses are selling out because they can't deal with the risk and expense of government regulation; and because the death tax FORCES the sale of most family businesses to pay the death tax when the current generation dies. As they corporations grow, they get harder for small business to compete with; which further accelerates consolidation through sellouts. As the big corporations grow in size and power, thewy begin to be capable of manipulating things like markets, supply lines, and industry standards to even further stack the deck against small business. Also, small businesses are less able to lobby the government. By the same token, the big boys lobby the government because they can afford it AND because they must do so in self-defense. It is the only remedy for regulation by a bunch of nincompoops in government who know nothing about business and how to do it, and are largely hostile to it in any event. This sets the stage for cozy legislator-lobbiest relationships and crony capitalism. And then there are the many abuses of Wall Street aimed at gaming the system to siphon off wealth while contributing nothing to wealth creation (a thing they very much have in commoin with government, I might add).

The middle class is getting squeezed in no small part because of bracket creep in our regressive income tax system. As incomes have risen over the years, the middle class has been burdened with an increasing tax burden. There just are not enough "rich" people to pay suffiient taxes to support our massively bloated government, so unless the government can be beaten out of our pocketbooks, it is inevitable that the middle class will pay ever more taxes.

It all comes back to the same problem: A vastly bloated, overreaching, intrusive government.