In case you haven’t heard, the good folks at OccupyWallStreet have made public a list of their demands. Given their youthful zeal, I had been worried that their expectations might be excessive or unrealistic, but as you’ll see, it’s all modest, reasonable stuff.
Here it is:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.
Very good, no? I’d only add: everyone gets to be super hot-looking, and really good at something totally cool, like snowboarding or capoiera.
And let’s have more prime numbers!
13 Comments
More prime numbers would be good. Free prime rib on Tuesday would be better.
I demand no more forced carries. Really messes up your golf score when you land in the hazard.
Also, more government cheese. Last time, I got nacho cheese. I think that’s what it was – people kept yelling at me Hey, that’s nacho cheese!
Free Beer on Tuesdays!
Why only Tuesdays? We have a fundamental right to be provided with the beer we need every day of the week.
Once the whole world comes here for all the free beer, think of the brewing jobs it will create!! Everybody wins. It’s just basic economics.
The colors in the visible spectrum are so yesterday. I demand that government provide choices in ultraviolet, infrared, and a few stunning colors in the microwave range.
Free beer on Tuesdays is a reasonable demand. Free beer every day is borderline unreasonable.
The demands of this latest organized (or is it onanized?) protest are silly if taken literally. They’re pretty much on a par with demands associated with organized (etc) protests representing the opposite extreme of the political-economic sprectrum. This is all very entertaining as street theater.
Is it clear to anyone here which portion of the political-economic spectrum “the good folks at OccupyWallStreet” belong to?
Regarding “more prime numbers.” Since Malcolm views this as a simple matter of mental construction, I assume he would have no objections to its implementation. Right?
“Simple matter”? Not at all. Just because it’s a mental construction doesn’t mean that it isn’t an important and useful one, or that we could just arbitrarily add more prime numbers without screwing the whole thing up.
Although – maybe we could just slip in few extras, and nobody would notice, especially if we made ’em some of those big 50-digit ones.
plenty of subprime, not enough prime
“Free beer on Tuesdays is a reasonable demand. Free beer every day is borderline unreasonable.”
Big Aitch, let’s discuss the issue over free beer next Tuesday. I believe that after a few beers, the demand for free beer every day will seem borderline reasonable instead.
Jeffery Hodges
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HJH,
Absolutely, lets have a free Beer Summit on Tuesday about having free beer every day! I’m always willing to listen to reason.
Will Obama be hosting?