Dr. Dre – The Day The Niggaz Took Over

Read this article: An Investment Manager’s View on the Top 1%

Very eye opening. A lot of people I know – neighbors, colleagues, school friends – are likely considered the top 1%.   Or likely to be there if they continue on their current pattern of working and saving. My wife and I have years of college, Beckie 5+ years working on a post-grad degree, continuous post-college high-pressure employment, and consistent savings. For the past 15 years we’ve maxed our 401k’s, saved probably 1/3 our incomes, driven our cars til they were 10 yrs old, paid off our monthly credit card balances, and avoided any debt other than mortgages which we set up so that they could be paid by either one of our incomes. The author is right that is not a bad place to be, and I’m thankful every day for my brains, stable family growing up, good health, education and the country that allowed me to do well when given those opportunities. But I got fucked in the recession too – huge loss to the savings I’d contributed to for 20 yrs, house value fell to what I paid for it in 2000. Not as bad as someone who lost their house and job, but like 30% of my net worth *poof*. 6-7yrs of working every day *poof*. So, yeah, I’m mad as all get-out.

What I don’t think people who are so anti-OWS get is that its a very fine line between the guy who took out student loans, bought a house at the peak, and didn’t save vs. the bottom of the top 1%, those 53% paying taxes but still struggling. We still got jacked by an unfair system. The people poo-poo’ing the movement as ‘lazy people who want handouts‘ are so busy being repubnicant to see that, well, 99.5% of us have a lot more in common than different. Yes, living within your means and saving has softened the blow to you, and thankfully there are a lot of you and I still solvent and keeping the train on the rails.   In return we still have a house and a job while others have lost almost everything…but we are still swimming upstream. That is not America. America is about a level playing field. Rupert Murdoch’s zombie army need to open their eyes and read their damn bank statements. It really is time for a class war.

MoveOn, or whomever is going to harness the awareness OWS is raising to these systematic inequalities, needs to keep this in a centrist framework. I don’t think they are at all capable of doing so, too beholden to their liberal audience and too fundamentally liberal themselves to see the broad themes instead of getting their pinko panties in a bunch over pimples. Typical idiot democrats. Instead of sending around a centrist message, MoveOn sends me requests to email the Mayor of Oakland chapping him for his over-aggressive police. Why don’t they send me the address of my Congressman and the Buffet Chain Letter? People living in a park and banging drums can not be the lasting image of opposition to the inequalities in our system! EVERYONE should get behind leveling the playing field, Congressmen being compensated like the rest of us, consistent tax rates for all entities, and intelligent bank regulation. Fracturing into extreme positions like social justice or universal health care will continue to highlight our differences. These issues are symptoms of our economy failing and moving towards plutocracy. Even libertarians espouse the need for corrective action towards flaws in the system. A healthy stable economy and fair opportunities will go a lot further to correcting these other symptomatic problems than some masterplan like Obamacare or other non-centrist proposals.

I am not optimistic. We’ve let the argument be co-opted for too long already, another symptom of a deteriorating system,I don’t think the average person is capable of opening their 3rd eye and taking our economy back.