Lame, pat, pre-packaged putdowns of Occupy Wall Street: We all deal with 'em, whether we're arguing with a neighbor, appearing on Fox, or answering the jeers of relatives who've just received a chain email that "really puts the protesters in their place."
Here are a few easy comebacks for your next argument. They cover everything from the supposed "hypocrisy" of demonstrators who buy cardboard (really!) to snarky comments about scruffy-looking anticapitalists with beards.
1. They say "Oh, look. The demonstrators buy stuff from corporations!" You say "Whaddya expect? Corporate lackeys in government have forced everybody else out of business!"
I don't know who came up with this lame picture, but it's making the rounds on Wall Street - and with all the other Americans co-opted by its propaganda:
Hey, bankers! Is that the best you've got? Really? Because this picture is so lame that it actually gave us several of our talking points. We'll start with this one:
Corporations get generous tax breaks for not hiring people and shipping jobs overseas instead. They make money from those free trade agreements pushed through by their functionaries in the government. And Wall Street's making billions for not lending to smaller businesses that might compete with some of those mega-corporations.
Now you're calling the demonstrators hypocrites for buying stuff from corporations. Who else are they going to buy it from? Everyone else was driven out of business!
In a very real sense, that's why they're protesting.
2. They say "They hate businesses!" You say "No, they hate parasitical businesses."
Want to know something ironic? If the demonstrators had their way, most businesses in this country would actually do better. Why? Because the banks aren't lending to anybody but the mega-corporations who are already sitting on a ton of cash.
If the system was reformed, banks would lend to those smaller and medium-sized businesses that actually hire people. What's more, debt relief for the American consumer would unleash a buying wave that would spur widespread economic growth.
These "anti-business" protesters would be great for businesses -- all, that is, except for the dishonest and socially useless ones. You know, like the ones that underwrite politicians, think tanks, and television networks - who then proceed to make fun of demonstrations, as they're paid to do.
And you wonder why they're protesting?
3. They say "But it's hypocritical to buy corporate products and then protest corporations!" You say "You sound like a Communist."
That's right -- like a Communist. I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe as protests very much like these were overthrowing the Soviet empire. You know what the old-timers in those countries said back then? They said "These people are protesting the State, but they're wearing clothes made at state-run factories and waving signs made with state resources! What hypocrites!"
(Well, they said it in Hungarian, or Czech, or Polish. But the meaning was the same.)
Tell your debate opponents they sound just like old Commies as they defend the uncompetitive, inflexible, and totalitarian system the corporations now run. Don't blame the demonstrators. They can't operate within the new system until we've reformed the old one.
That's why they're protesting.
4. They say "Did you know they paid all the TARP money back? They weren't bailed out." You say "Fine! Give every consumer in the country an interest-free loan!"
This is one of the inept moves that CNN's Erin Burnett tried on a protester. She, and everybody else using this line, must be either confused or financially illiterate.
Here's how the real world works: If you (we, actually) lend the banks a trillion dollars at 3% below the usual rates, that's the same as giving them a cash gift of $30 billion -- even if they pay all the money back!
And when you count the Federal Reserve's actions, like purchasing the banks' toxic assets through the "Maiden Lane" dummy corporation, the bankers have gotten billions more in additional bailout money. The demonstrators are right: A few mega-banks destroyed the economy, and we bailed them out.
This argument's as hollow as a mega-bank's promise. And that's why they're protesting.
5. They say "But still, they buy corporate stuff!" You say "They're called Occupy Wall Street, not Occupy Main Street. Anybody in that picture using an ATM?"
They keep coming back to this one, for some reason. That's why the picture says things like "hat by J. Crew." Oh, snap! Oh, wait -- what's your point again?
They're protesting banks, for crying out loud, not hat companies!
As we were saying: Lame.
6. They say "These protesters don't understand the free market." You say "What free market?"
Economic theory says that one of the basic elements of a free market is transparency. Yet as of this writing Wall Street's fighting tooth and nail against a process that would allow more transparency in the derivatives market. They don't want transparency - and that means they don't want a free market.
We haven't had a free market for decades. We've had a lootocracy that makes money through deception, confusion, and obfuscation.
People should conduct their business in the light of day -- and gambling with other people's money should be illegal. The words "free market" and the phrase "Wall Street" don't belong in the same paragraph, much less the same sentence.
That's why they're protesting.
7. They say "Ha ha! Look at that bearded guy in the sandals!" You say "Hmmm ... A bearded guy in sandals protesting the moneylenders. Where have we seen that before?"
They love making fun of the demonstrators' looks, but it's pretty difficult to step outside the system and live outdoors without looking a little rough in the eyes of the moneyed classes. Jesus and his disciples probably looked pretty rough to some people, too. I'm sure the rich people looked down their noses at Him after He overturned those tables. That's not done in polite company.
Think about it: A guy rides into town on a donkey. Then he says the moneyed interests are exerting too much influence on the government -- and on some of the religious elite, too. And what was that about the wealthy? Oh, yeah -- "It's easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter heaven."
3,000 years of moral law condemns people who make excess profits from money without contributing to society. Every single prophet to make those arguments - which is to say, all of them -- was condemned by the plutocracy of the day.
No matter what you believe or don't believe spiritually, it's clear that oligarchic wealth has corrupted our politics, polluted our culture, and debased our basic sense of morality.
And that's why they're we're protesting. I've been to New York's demonstration, and Washington's. Next stop is LA. But they're all over the country.
If you haven't been to one yet, why not stop by? 'm not an organizer, just an admirer, but consider this an official invitation: Your presence is requested as democracy -- and history -- unfold before us.
If you're part of the 99%, come as your are. (Sandals optional.)
Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
Kristin Knox: Occupy Wall Street Style
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg: A Letter to Kim Kardashian: Why We Occupy
David A. Love: Why Conservatives Need to Support the #OccupyWallSt Movement
Now, why Jesus looks so WASP in most modern images is the real question. :-)
They say "So why not get rid of the corporate lackeys in government, instead of voting them in election after election?"
You say....
You say "Hire me!"
or more accurately,
"Where?!"
4. Cutting the budget deficit more important than boosting the economy. Untrue. With so many Americans out of work, budget cuts now will shrink the economy. They'll increase unemployment and reduce tax revenues. That will worsen the ratio of the debt to the total economy. First priority must be getting jobs and growth back by boosting the economy. Then, should we turn to cutting the deficit.
5. Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits. Wrong. Medicare and Medicaid spending is rising quickly, to be sure. But that's because the nation's health-care costs are rising so fast. One of the best ways of slowing these costs is to use Medicare and Medicaid's bargaining power over drug companies and hospitals to reduce costs, and to move from a fee-for-service system to a fee-for-healthy outcomes system. And since Medicare has far lower administrative costs than private health insurers, we should make Medicare available to everyone.
6. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Don't believe it. Social Security is solvent for the next 26 years. It could be solvent for the next century if we raised the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. That ceiling is now $106,800.
7. It's unfair that lower-income Americans don't pay income tax. Wrong. There's nothing unfair about it. Lower-income Americans pay out a larger share of their paychecks in payroll taxes, sales taxes, user fees, and tolls than everyone else.
1. Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else. Baloney. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both sliced taxes on the rich and what happened? Most Americans' wages (measured by the real median wage) began flattening under Reagan and has dropped since George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.
2. Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth. False. From the end of World War II until 1981, the richest Americans faced a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent or above. Under Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, the top taxes on the very rich were far higher than they've been since. Yet the economy grew faster during those years than it has since. (Don't believe small businesses would be hurt by a higher marginal tax; fewer than 2 percent of small business owners are in the highest tax bracket.)
3. Shrinking government generates more jobs. Wrong again. It means fewer government workers -- everyone from teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and social workers at the state and local levels to safety inspectors and military personnel at the federal. And fewer government contractors, who would employ fewer private-sector workers. According to Moody's economist Mark Zandi (a campaign advisor to John McCain), the $61 billion in spending cuts proposed by the House GOP will cost the economy 700,000 jobs this year and next.
Right wingers and corporatistas say they support the free market, and the protesters don't. But the fact is that right-wingers DO NOT support the free market. They support concentration of capital and power in the hands of just a few cronies, the way John D. Rockefeller did over 100 years ago.
Also about 100 years ago in Italy, a political party used the mechanics of government to ensure the concentration of wealth into the pockets of a selected few. They called themselves "fascisti".
But....BUT.....I don't have anybody (aka evil banksters and Wall Streeters) to use them on.
{wink}
*****Even the local working class Repugs don't deserve my "best" shots....though most of them aren't too vocal.
Actually, nobody around me is talking about it much.
I gotta sharpen my wit online.
{wink}
"Socialism is a failed system."
"So how does 'occupying' anything make a difference?"
"Get a job."
I knew why I was there: because I have an increasingly uneasy feeling that there are things for sale that should be priceless, that unemployment shouldn't be this high, and that either "too big to fail" is an oxymoron--or describes something that is a social service, not a capitalist instrument.
"So how does 'occupyingÂ' anything make a differenceÂ?" - So how does not do anything make a difference?
"Get a job" - I might be able to if the banks and Wall Street would release the trillions they're sitting on and lend it to Main Street.
It is a bunch of ignorant people trying to emulate something that they do not understand ("Arab Spring" in general; Tahrir Square specifically) in hopes that looking like those events will produce results.