"Bankers Join Billionaires to Debunk ‘Imbecile’ Attack on Top 1%"

[El_Machinae]

My OWS sympathy is because I think it's the financial sector that has become parasitical and non-productive. They're not generating the wealth (growth) proportionate to the level of income they're receiving. More and more money is getting tied up in zero-sum games. It's like saying that a high-stakes poker game is 'wealth creating' because the players employ a waitress while they play. There's a lot of unrealised potential, and it's just become gobbled up.

 

[Pangur Bán]

On the contrary, the people in the article deserve to be purged. Really. The world would be better off without them.

Wouldn't be the worst atrocity in history, but sadly wouldn't fix the problem. These guys are avaricious like just like most humans; avarice was around well before our Ayn Rand or meritocracy garbage was here to rubber stamp it. The problem is the system. If you had a pogrom of all the bankers and other financial parasites, of the hereditary plutocrats and the rest of the self-proclaimed government protected supermen, you would soon just get other guys filling their place. I'm not even sure you'd free up their wealth, as their heirs and acolytes would probably just get all their property too. For all the good the French revolution did, all you got was Napoleon. The Russians got rid of their Tsar and got Stalin

... though in fairness our current lords are better represented Stalin and the CP hierarchy, the Tsar and aristocracy by our old aristocrats. Now I'm being incoherent!

 

[Murky]

My OWS sympathy is because I think it's the financial sector that has become parasitical and non-productive. They're not generating the wealth (growth) proportionate to the level of income they're receiving. More and more money is getting tied up in zero-sum games. It's like saying that a high-stakes poker game is 'wealth creating' because the players employ a waitress while they play. There's a lot of unrealised potential, and it's just become gobbled up.

I agree. These 1% bankers just take wealth away from the ordinary citizens without giving anything back in return to show for it. There are no tangible things produced from it. It's all just 1s and 0s.

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh, there's kickback. VISA charges the vendor (and me) 2%. Then I get 'points'. I feel like I'm wealthier, and the vendor is happy to get the sale. But the 1.8% spread is still there, just sucking money out of the actual economy.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I'm surprised Bloomberg was willing to give a voice to such marginal income earner.
They don't own a city, so why should we care what they have to say?
They should get a real job.

 

[downtown]

Obama didn't run his campaign. No politician does. They are branding. That's like saying Ronald McDonald runs McDonads or Alec Baldwin Citibank.

Uh, of course they do, and I know this because I've worked multiple campaigns. The candidate is the CEO of the entire campaign operation, and while the extent that they involve themselves in strategy varies from candidate to candidate, nearly everybody does. Obama interviewed and hired his senior staff. Obama manages the performance of his senior advisers. Obama helps set his messaging, and I'm sure had imput on a lot of other aspects of the operation. Sure, he doesn't know the day to day operations in the Las Vegas field office, but my CEO doesn't have any idea what i do on a daily basis, or maybe even my department, either.

And his campaign never had to worry about unions

The chief organizing muscle of team Obama, especially at the primary level, were Unions. I also know for a fact the team employed union contractors for setting up field offices. Nationwide campaigns involve a fair amount of construction.

operational logistics

That's most of what campaign staffers DO

long term capital investments, international trade regulation fluxuations, etc. etc. etc.

That's true, those are significant differences, although not every large company does a lot of international work either. Certainly the timeline would be a major difference.

They aren't exactly the same thing, but you're trying to build a functioning logistical staff of thousands, allocating close to a billion dollars of revenue efficiently, and control a brand and message. If you can do that, you have a lot of the skills to manage a pretty damn big company....you'd just need to get better at long-term finance. It isn't an uncommon career path for guys who are at the top of the logistical chain in nationwide campaigns.

 

[RedRalph]

You have to ask though: if someone remains in a job after they have earned enough money that they need never work again: isn't it just a lucrative hobby? Why on Earth would anyone feel bad for their 'burden' when they could just quit immediately?

 

[El_Machinae]

Ostensibly, it's also a very productive hobby. If some abstractions of economic theory are correct, people pay you more than you're worth to them (they get more benefit from your activity than whatever else they could use that money for). Under this analysis, the person should continue working, because they're delivering net value for their efforts.

This kinda breaks apart when we pay people big money to create negative externalities, though ...

 

[Tarquelne]

Uh, of course they do, and I know this because I've worked multiple campaigns. The candidate is the CEO of the entire campaign operation, and while the extent that they involve themselves in strategy varies from candidate to candidate, nearly everybody does.

Maybe it varies with the party. I'm wondering if you worked on Dem. campaigns and Pat. is assuming GOP. It may not be a coincidence that he used a clown and an actor for his examples.

 

[Traitorfish]

How many thousands of people have you figured out to employ? I am sure your blogging is far more productive than any of those bosses maintainng a buisness model that does not include bankrutcy and 100% layoffs.

The question was what are their troubles. I know its en vogue (and why OWSs are such laughing stocks) to imagine everyone above janitor to be mustashe twirling villians boiling babies for dinner, but the simple fact is running large buisnesses is not easy. You can't do it. I can't do it. Obama can't do it. And to pretend that such management does not have immense challenges associated with it is just willfull ignorance.

Is it the same troubles 8 out of 100 of us are facing? Nope. Do any of use have such responsibilty resting on our shoulders? Nope.

The old bourgeoisie-as-Atlas model of society becomes rather less convincing when you remember that nobody asked the buggers to take the sky onto their shoulders. Speaking only for myself, I'd quite happily see them stripped of the responsibility.

You have to ask though: if someone remains in a job after they have earned enough money that they need never work again: isn't it just a lucrative hobby? Why on Earth would anyone feel bad for their 'burden' when they could just quit immediately?

A pertinent question if there ever was one.

 

[Pangur Bán]

A retort to the Bloomberg article of a few days ago, by "reformed" kleptocrat Josh Brown:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/45764338

The old bourgeoisie-as-Atlas model of society becomes rather less convincing when you remember that nobody asked the buggers to take the sky onto their shoulders. Speaking only for myself, I'd quite happily see them stripped of the responsibility.

Uch, you'll always have people justifying the status quo. Those financial supermen would have earned it no what they actually did. The aristos used to rule cause they had blue blood, and people believed blue blood existed.

 

[downtown]

Maybe it varies with the party. I'm wondering if you worked on Dem. campaigns and Pat. is assuming GOP. It may not be a coincidence that he used a clown and an actor for his examples.

I'm sure there are candidates that are more hands off than others, but they are always involved. People who followed the Newt or Cain campaigns closely would know the candidate had their fingerprints all over the campaign mechanism.

 

[Crezth]

The old bourgeoisie-as-Atlas model of society becomes rather less convincing when you remember that nobody asked the buggers to take the sky onto their shoulders. Speaking only for myself, I'd quite happily see them stripped of the responsibility.

Hear hear!

 

[Traitorfish]

Uch, you'll always have people justifying the status quo. Those financial supermen would have earned it no what they actually did. The aristos used to rule cause they had blue blood, and people believed blue blood existed.

Incidentally, that's how I go about justifying the Jacobin Terror- rigorous haematological analysis!

 

[Ayn Rand]

Seems like the "1%" is mobilising a belated ideological response to the OWS movement (presumably because the more direct response of "club the hippies" has proved only moderately successful in winning hearts and minds). Thoughts? Reactions? Incoherent expressions of seething proletarian rage?

I don't know if it's sophisticated enough yet to be classed as an ideological response.

What it seems to be is a very simple and clever attack on the weakest form of the OWS argument. Because they have attacked the entire "one-percent" then it is only necessary to put up a few counter-examples of exceptions - people who are in the 1%, but undeniably are good and productive people.

I think that the original position "we are the 99%" will gradually be morphed into "indiscriminate attack on everyone in the 1% is senseless". And indeed it is senseless, and easy to counter.

The old bourgeoisie-as-Atlas model of society becomes rather less convincing when you remember that nobody asked the buggers to take the sky onto their shoulders. Speaking only for myself, I'd quite happily see them stripped of the responsibility.

That sounds nice. It remains to be seen whether that would really make the World a better place for the "99%" though, but I think we will slowly find out.

 

[Alassius]

One of these days, I'm really going to have to act upon my plan to create a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Bosses. Those poor creatures have suffered in silence for too long!

I suggest the name National Society for the Defence of Aggrieved Plutocrats, or NSDAP.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Can anyone find sense amidst the hyperbolic rhetoric here?

At a lunch in New York, Stemberg and Allison shared their disdain for Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires public companies to disclose the ratio between the compensation of their CEOs and employee medians, according to Allison. The rule, still being fine-tuned by the Securities and Exchange Commission, is “incredibly wasteful” because it takes up time and resources, he said. Stemberg called the rule “insane” in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.

“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive,” Allison said. “This attack is destructive.”

A demand to disclose information over compensation of employees and CEO's of public companies is nothing short of a destructive attack on the 1%.

Can anyone explain that one to me?

 

[uppi]

A demand to disclose information over compensation of employees and CEO's of public companies is nothing short of a destructive attack on the 1%.

Can anyone explain that one to me?

The truth is destructive to a construct built on lies.

 

[Cutlass]

Can anyone find sense amidst the hyperbolic rhetoric here?
A demand to disclose information over compensation of employees and CEO's of public companies is nothing short of a destructive attack on the 1%.

Can anyone explain that one to me?

Transparency is destructive to fraud and mismanagement.

 

[El_Machinae]

There is a very excellent seminar recently on the London School of Economics on Herd Behaviour (it's an ethologist's perspective on economics, and ethology is a powerful tool for economic theory that is wildly under utilized). It discusses how executives DO need wage differentials to remain motivated, but it also discusses how publishing median wage figures causes a net decrease in social happiness.

I'd greatly recommend it (and Lord Turner's three-part seminar at the LSE, too). The OWS movement really, really needs to have this type of information, because the OWS movement is mostly a social discontent movement.

The more you know.