The anti-Wall Street protests are, indeed, fanning out. And the latest permutation is about to target job cuts made by large corporations. As it so happens, Pfizer is high on the list. A group calledConnecticut Working Families, which is a coalition of community groups, labor unions and activists, plans a vigil outside Pfizer facilities in Groton, where the drugmaker conducts R&D ( see this).
Why Pfizer? The drugmaker is in their crosshairs after accepting tens of millions of dollars in local and state government subsidies to build an R&D facility in New London, Connecticut. But earlier this year, Pfizer decided to shutter that complex and is also shifting jobs from Groton to Cambridge, Massachusetts. All totaled, some 2,500 Pfizer jobs are leaving the state (back story).
“When huge companies like Pfizer take tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in public money, and then pull up stakes as soon as the money disappears, that’s what wrong with our economy,” Lindsay Farrell, Legislative Director of Connecticut Working Families, tells The Groton Patch. “We can’t keep letting big companies take advantage of us, or the middle class won’t survive in Connecticut.”
The protest also comes as Congress debates a possible ‘tax holiday’ for large corporations with huge sums of money parked overseas. A recent report by The Institute for Policy Studies found the 2004 tax holiday enabled 843 companies to reduce tax rates from 35 percent to just over 5 percent. These companies repatriated $312 billion in profits, while avoiding about $92 billion in federal taxes.
Moreover, 58 companies, which accounted for almost 70 percent of all funds repatriated, slashed nearly 600,000 jobs while saving an estimated $64 billion in taxes. Drugmakers, however, were singled out as prime beneficiaries - they repatriated more than $100 billion in offshore earnings, and kept an estimated $30 billion in tax savings.
And Pfizer was among the Top 10 layoff leaders. The drugmaker repatriated $40.1 million in 2004 and 2005 and, as of last year, had $48.2 billion in offshore funds, while laying off 58,071 people between 2004 and 2011 (here is the report). Pfizer, by the way, is also a member of WIN America, or Working to Invest Now in America, a coalition of large corporations that is lobbying for another tax holiday.
For its part, a Pfizer spokeswoman tells The Day that the drugmaker is "dedicated to being good corporate citizens and business partners in the communities where we live and work." Maybe so, but the sour economy is clearly prompting more people to openly vent their frustration. Wall Street may be an obvious choice for protests, but it should not be surprising that other corporate targets are chosen. Given the job cuts and the ceo pay packages (read this), pharma makes an easy target.
66 Comments
I was waiting to see when the great unwashed was finally getting around to protesting pharma. Actually they are not so anticapitalistic after all judging by the number of "OWS" items they have put up for sale on eBay.
I went to the same high school as Mark Rudd, leader of the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960's. He makes these amateurs look like a gathering for church bake sale.
As we used to say "right on".
Your arrogance never fails to amaze, Occupy Wall street is the first grass roots movement in a long time.Try going to Zuccotti Park and see what is happening.
Educational, as always, knowing that the industry tasked with innovation in providing health care for all life forms - from animal to mineral - has no greater sentiment for their *customer* other than "the great unwashed"...
LOL - correction
from animal to vegetable
:-)
Correction: Pfizer has $48 BILLION (not MILLION)dollars offshore! This mistake was repeated from the previous posting of this story which also incorrectly stated the amount of money Merck has off-shore.
Hi PharmaBoy,
Thanks for taking the time to point this out. I've gone back and corrected this.
Regards ed
That will be the day when Pfizer is actually didicated to the people who work for them. SO far they are only dedicated to making money anyway they can, and paying lots of money to their corrupt senior management team. THey get rid of anyone who tries to follow company policy and that is fairly easy to prove.
I find it interesting that this is happening in Connecticut. Pfizer was also a key player in one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions involving eminent domain (Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)) The case involved involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another to further economic development. Short story is City of New London took private property to open up commercial development. Pfizer was to open a facility there and got special tax incentives. With the merger with Wyeth the decision was changed and they consolidated facilities elsewhere, but only after gaining some favorable tax treatment by the state. End of the story is there is an empty lot there today.
By the way, thanks to Disgusted and dzieczko.....
Disgusted, I think that your handle is quite appropriate since there was a picture the other day from a UK newspaper of one of the protestors relieving himself on an NYPD police car. Somehow in light of this, Zuccotti Park holds little attraction for me.
I have a better idea: In the movie "Soylent Green" when there was excess population inhabiting the streets, Charlton Heston proclaimed "Get the Scoops", and if you couldn't outrun the scoops you became part of the food supply. I'm sure the protestors wouldn't mind since they probably favor recycling.
The picture of the "reliever" article from the Daily Mail is too gross to post, so I'll only post the title, and you can decide if you want to look it up for yourself:
"Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters accused of living in filth as shocking pictures show one demonstrator defecating on a POLICE CAR".
Since one photo may not speak 1000 words, here's an entire slide deck from Yahoo Finance of this freak show. You can decide for yourself. Don't worry, it's G rated, as they tastefully left out the pictures of the unclothed women that were only slightly more tasteful than the trash piling up in Zuccotti Park.
http://beta.finance.yahoo.com/photos/occupy-wall-street-1317855370-slideshow/?sec=topStories&pos=2&asset=&ccode=
OWS may become a serious grass root movement that will lead to waking up of American people. It is time we stand up to big biz in general and the gov't that supports it unconditionally because they are the "job creators" as they call them nowdays to distract us from going after them for what they are and what they did in 2008 and are back doing it again. Going after specific companies and specific individuals is the way to go. They must be scared into giving up their ways for we can't use violence in democracy at least not for now. If this movement fizzles out and they win, there is no telling what they will do to us afterwards. All bad I am sure. So stand up for yourselves and do something about the worse injustice since before you kicked out the English.
@ PharmaBoy - Don't worry about the 45 B *off-shore* - we'll send the USA military to make the withdrawal on their way home. Just keeping the money safe in a bank until time to pay the *labor*...
@OII - wow, what a news flash - NYC is dirty and full of strangely dressed people...time to *cloud* the internet with an artistic presentation of "The Filthy Streets of NYC" photo contest....
Only a dumb ass like "original whatever" would focus on urination as opposed to the bigger picture of what corporate america including pharma have done to rape this country. The people of Occupy Wall street should be an inspiration to us all. But keep talking trash cause it appears that's what you do best.
Disgusted, I'm no stranger to protest. In fact I was involved with a protest that dwarfs this one following the Kent State student killings in May, 1970, my senior year in college. During the days immediately following the killings there oe likes ccured a massive student strike the likes of which have never been seen since. The protests were grounded in fact; all you needed to see were the dead bodies on the campus.
These "protests" on the other hand are driven by hyperbole, half-truths and deliberate distortion, pitting the "good 99%" against the "evil 1%". Here is one speicific example of distortion and hyperbole: Today Mayor Bloomberg asked the OWS protestors to temporarily leave Zuccotti Park so that it could be cleaned by NYC Sanitation Dept. The operative word here is TEMPORARY. Bloomberg even offered to have the park cleaned in stages, whereupon the protestors could return to each section of the park as soon as it was cleaned, a request that most people would consider reasonable.
However, the OWS crowd saw this as an opportunity to stir up trouble by claiming that Bloomberg and the NYC police goons were forcibly trying to evict them PERMANENTLY, which is completely untrue, but makes good press. Here is what they are saying on occupywallstreet.org:
When such simple matters like cleaning the park are distorted beyond reality how can one be expected to consider their more pressing demands seriously?
These folks complain about living in a "police state". Wait until they start resisting "eviction" from the park and they may get a better appreciation of what a police state is all about.
http://occupywallst.org/
Basel, their is one word in your post that I definitely agree with. The word is "grass", although it may be in a different context than you intended.
Take a look at the actual coverage of the "protest".
http://ledyard.patch.com/articles/a-dozen-protest-job-cuts-outside-pfizer-in-groton#photo-8102016
It's 12 people outside Pfizer for one hour.
And I wasn't there for the 60's, but these folks don't exactly look like hippies. (I guess they don't have hippies in Connecticut?)
One final note -- At least protesters, while small in number, were focused on point. I have been down to Zuccotti Park. It's like ADHD-on-posters. From complaints of high tuition and gas prices, to protesters claiming JnJ hired an assassination squad.
@Basel - from the book "Reckless Endangerment" that names names is this bottom line, "....Glass-Steagal, the Depression-era law that had protected taxpayers from rapacious bankers for almost 70 years....". Next up - SCOTUS to inflict psychological terrorism (AKA *law*) - they're going to rule that the IRS can charge the taxpayer a $$$ penalty for not buying a for-profit health insurance policy....
meanwhile the multi-billion techno-gizmo security apparatus erected as Homeland Security to spy on *labor's* savings deposits in banks has no hard evidence on who's got a couple of tons of heroin for sale on the global exchange...go figure...
I guess they're foaming at the bit, hungry like OII is, to bring out the next course of the rapacious gorge fest - policia spiced ala moussada...what dressing would you like with that...?
Basel lair, you are one crackpot! You actually sound a little dangerous. I hope "they" track you down and give you safety from yourself and others. Word is pharma most certainly can help with the type of disorder you are displaying. Get off your duff so "they" can sanitize the disease ridden area. Hell pharma will need a bailout next to inoculate us all.
You idiots are making fools out of yourselves.
Finally the cops are pushing back in Denver, even if Bloomberg wimped out. Here's a blog from one of my fellow 1%ers:
"As usual, all the talk, but no action!!...These home grown terrorists walked away with their tails between their legs when the riot police showed up..LOL..Back to their mommys basement to play X-Box and m*****bate all day...Next time, don't let them leave..Round them up and water board them like their fellow towel headed terrorists..
Amen, brother.
John, you have to understand that threats from Socialists are empty words. Rather than coming home to mommy, this is what I would say to the protestors , in the words of my hero Margaret Thathcher:
-"If you want to cut your own throat, don't come to me for a bandage."
As for wimpy Bloomberg, Lady Thatcher would say
-"I seem to smell the stench of appeasment in the air". I would tell Mrs Thatcher that same said stench wafting past her nostrils is more than just appeasment, now that the park can't be cleaned.
Another conservative hero of mine, Ann Coulter has paid homage to the great unwashed, with her own name for the OWS movement, which is a takeoff on an actual movement, the tea party:
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-10-12.html
sometimes I'm sad I'm not a christian, because then I would be able to take comfort in knowing there's a very cold place in hell waiting for people like this.
@oii
Ever been to the Hoover Dam?
Wait, let me guess, you were there when they were building it, right? Your idea was to make enough material theft unnoticeable until you erected your house out of nowhere - good thing that didn't work out through tight regulation - it's serious business the quality control standards for the density of the dam material.
Rivers of currency, directed at will to where it's needed. I still like the grandest version of that project that too soon was buried in the sands of time because of wars - there would have been no devastating floods in the heartland because the connections would have been made everywhere - the southwest desert receiving the outflow.
It's the vision thingy.
dz, I've never been to the Hoover Dam, but I do think that the excellent cleanup job the protestors are doing in Zuccotti Park will set them up nicely when they attempt to establish Hoovervilles in Central Park. I say "attempt" because that's not legal anymore after the original ones. Maybe they can get some architestural ideas from this picture:
http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/the-hoovervilles-of-new-york-city/
Sorry, oii, I have to ask - do you get the economic connection between Hoover Dam and Hoovervilles?
That would be the Glass-Steagel Act as a pre-emptive strike against nurturing economic conditions leading to Hoovervilles again, like duh...
How about just passing a prop on the ballot in California to establish a Viagra War Chest Fund for the health needs of military war veterans - something men can feel good about besides just the sex - a higher cause...?
dz, we have a Karmic connection. You mention Glass Steagall. People trash Glass Steagall, but it did establish the FDIC. The rest I can live without, thanks to another good guy, Dr. Phil Gramm. This is one Dr. Phil who really has his finger on the pulse on the the mentality of modern American citizen, as reflected in his interview with The Washington Times:
..."You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession;”
...“We have sort of become a nation of whiners. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy" ...“We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years";
“Misery sells newspapers. “Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day.”
The lefties have finally gone off the deep end. Here's a cut of lefty loon Donny Deutsch calling for a "Kent State Moment". Donny, be careful what you wish for. You were only 13 years old when the real Kent State happened. Leave the incendiary comments to those who were old enough to accurately remember what went on.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/14/donny_deutsch_occupy_wall_street_needs_a_kent_state_moment.html
To John Q (who ain't John Q the public) and others like him who speak like they belong to uber-greedy 1% but don't and never will: you will be sorry for not joning the OWS movement for this is the one that will turn into the first democratic revolution, ever. No violence just pure democratic revolution that will save America from current itself. If you are not joining why not go and at least clean up that park. I mean really clean it up.
How Merck is escaping the attention of this anti-greed movement, I'll likely never know. Behind BoA they are laying off the most people in this country.
Now that's funny. Me act like I am one of the 1%? Yes you are high. Just because I understand capitalism and believe in the values of America, I'm "uber-greedy"? Violence was your words not mine. See Basel lair, that's one of the problems with your little whinny group. If you were not so strung out and covetous of others advantages you would understand we get what we work for. Clean up your own squalor and dung. You might then unravel supraliminal.
John Q, the key word as you say is "work". Why work when you can live rent free in parents' basement, drink beer with your HS friends, hang with the rents when you need to, and stay cool, while you selfishlish ruin your parents dream of retiring to a different location as you play the role of Freddiw the Freeloader. It certainly beads rooming with four of five other guys and splitting the rent, and maybe having to do actual chores. But that would seem too much like real work.
http://www.clown-ministry.com/index_1.php/articles/freddy_the_freeloader_red_skeltons_famous_hobo_clown/
Forgot to special thanks to "John Q" whatever it stands 4: I've been called many thinks as I am sure you and your type have 2, but never "dangerous". So thank you 4 that and I'll be looking over my shoulder for "they" as they track me down. Apologists like you for the current unfair down right brutal unsustainable neo-capitalist system that would put the robber baron era to shame, are also the ones the wonderful OWS people will have to deal with. Yes "they" will not protect you 4 U are not their kind but they apreciate your blind support for what "they" are doing to the rest of us. Can you say GROSS INEQALITY? This is not claimed only by OWSers but some of the best brains in the world including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett who are top of the top of that 1% yet decent human beings that see where this road of ruin is leading to for all including the nasty 1%. Also just because you push pills for some bigpharmafia co and/or for someone else does not make you a "doctor" as many of you bigpharmafia wiseguys think you are after basic training given by your pharma-dons. American values according to you? That is laughable.The OWS people will work out the new and improved values that will not only look after the 99% but even that 1% inspite what they did to us, but at mush higher personal tax rates for them, like 90% as it used to be and that is the fair share they must pay to be part of society, when you drain that kind of loot from common wealth.
Basel, while you and your friends are out there today trying to improve the world, I will be trying to improve the handicap for my golf game. You see, being in that 1% gets me a free round of golf courtesy of my Wall St buds, who, trust me are only worried about getting pizza stains on their $200 Paul Stuart neckties from carelessly eating demonstrators.
Bloomberg needs to take a cue from the late, great Mayor Richard J Daley of Chicago. When asked to comment on the demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention, Daley replied: "The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder".
Since the title of the blog has the word Pfizer in it, here's a sampling of what some of our Pfizer friends think of all this, from another website:
"The protests are relevant to pharma because of all their filth, defecating in public, urine smelling, rat and roach infested, venereal disease spreading living conditions will be a boom for pharma. Truth be told - the idiots and low lifes and miseducated youth are showing us what little value our tax dollars return to the hard working, patriotic and law abiding citizens."
Spoken like a true pharmaphile.
Basel lair - the title "John Q Public" was given in the last century to describe the common person .... Later replaced by "how will it play in Peoria (I'll)"
That is my guess - unsanitary putting words in other people's mouths, but this is virtual after all.
As for all of the "looking over my shoulder comments," kindly remember that when it comes to drones - you need to look UP. (Especially if you are 'exUS' as they say.)
Dear Mayor Bloomberg:
Please get this situation under control ASAP before it winds up looking like today's protest in Rome.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44912532/ns/world_news/?gt1=43001
Vito Corleone said to keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Therefore I recently reviewed Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" a precis of which I've linked below. It is very clear that the OWS are following Alinsky's playbook in close marching order. Here is my version of Alinsky's Ten Commandments:
1) we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace.... "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.' This means revolution." p.3
2) "Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing." p.6
3) A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism." p.10
4) An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations...." pp.10-11
5) The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means...."
6) The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns.... All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new." p.116
7) "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside... every positive has its negative."
8) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it
9) "One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." (pps.127-134
10) The organizer 'must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm
Battle for Monte Casino, WWII. Their *rules* from Wikipedia:
"Just War Theory (or Bellum iustum) is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin,[1][2] studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers, which holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophical, religious or political justice, provided it follows certain conditions.
More recently, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2309, lists four strict conditions for "legitimate defense by military force": 1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; 2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; 3. there must be serious prospects of success; 4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power as well as the precision of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition."
People HAVE decided there is a Just War to be had - you better start helping avoiding EXTREME violence by shutting up :-)
Thanks for the history lesson, dz, and an especially warm welcome to the OWS crowd from your spiritual guru, Karl Marx, as you take your place in Marx's "Industrial Reserve Army of the Unemployed". You see, capital is not just money; it is machines, people, anything of potential value to an employer. First principles: Capital will ALWAYS flow in the direction in which it is most efficiently used. Unfortunately for the OWS folks that means outsourcing labor to emerging markets like China and India, where labor is cheap, and the population is educated. Read for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
Just wars and Just (violent) uprising are JUSIFIED in the end, if the so called democratic effort become totally ineffective or too slow that the critical mass of people who suffer can not hold back but act. This is happening in MidEast as we type or read this blog and is completely justfied, violence and all. Yes they have another set of issues but we don't have such intorelable system, you say. Wrong, any type of system can develop intolerable issues for the critical mass,(even Swissland could but will not for they are too civilized to allow intlerable sytuations to develop as the rest do) and the "democratic" process would simply not respond or do. With your republican, nerrow minded, rednecks in pockets of corporations it is next to impossible to get anything progressive done. Obama tried but they used the complicated system of gov't you have to block almost everything. Nothing was done to stop the bankers and other greed driven crooks, they are back at it as before. So the OWS was born to try the first DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION as one paricipant of Block the Bay St.(Toronto)defined this movement.OWS is becoming a WORLD movement and nothing will stop it till the job of saving the 99% of people of whole planet is done.
Basel, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't your country home to all of those numbered bank accounts where all of those greedy bankers have been stashing their filthy lucre and laundering their money for many years?
According to the CIA World Factbook, "Switzerland is a major international financial center vulnerable to the layering and integration stages of money laundering; despite significant legislation and reporting requirements, secrecy rules persist and nonresidents are permitted to conduct business through offshore entities and various intermediaries..."
Any comment?
Basel, it is hard to figure out the goals of the OWS movement, so my best guide are the outcomes of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and to ask you if the aims of your movement are similar. The main outcomes achieved by the Bolsheviks were:
-All Russian banks were nationalized. -Private bank accounts were confiscated. -The Church's properties (including bank accounts) were seized and organized religion was outlawed. -All foreign debts were repudiated. -Control of the factories was given to the soviets. -Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war, and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.
There appear to be some similarities between the Godless Communists, but you and the protestors would have a better handle
a) Yes our banks are handling crooked money but our bankers are not crooks like yours.As Cesar said about the coins he collected in his public washrooms; "Money does not smell" even from washroms let alone from crooked deals made by your crooked bankers by pushing a computer key.They also do not get paid those enormous un-deserved takes/loot and pay high % in taxes so our country and people can be looked after super well. Have you ever visited Swiss anything? Go now and if you find anything looking 10% as bad as 90% of America, send us your real name and we'll open a Swiss account worth 10 Mill. SwissFranks for you.No risk there for our entire country is like a super well kept garden you may find in houses owned by your crooked bankers if they have any taste or style.Besides it is no sin to take the loot from the sinner, keep it for them, charge them interest (we charge you interest for quite a while for keeping your money)counting on them never to withdraw that loot and when they are gone that loot with interest is used for good cause, not as bonuses for our "honest bankers". b)If you can't figure out the goals of OWS movement, after what they already said, that means you are completely out of tuch with what is going on in your own country and around the world. So you are not as smart as you would like us to believe by your "smartass" commentary.There was nothing wrong with Bolshevik Revolution, which stared well considering the conditions in Russia at the time. It would have worked out well to this day had it not been for crazy Stalin who betrayed it, ruined it and eventually turned people all over the world against his type of system and terror. Lenin did warn the pary in his political testament against Stalin's takeover of the party saying he was crazy and dangerous and would destroy the movement and Russia but no one heeded that.Sort of like those warnings by many decent people in USA against the presidency of G.W and no one stopped him so you know what happened to America and you and the whole world are paying for it to this day.Perhaps Obama with help by OWS movement once it grows to critical mass, will fix it.Unfortunately for Russia there has not been anybody still who could fix what G.W Salin (he had the same infamous initials, funny No?) destoyed. Capicce?
@OII - that is your line in the sand in regards to the future of health care of the human species - slave labor?
Okay, then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
Americans have produced their own great minds.
It's absurd political noise at this point in time to be talking about Marx or Communists. Both were just totalitarian delusions - tyranny with a smattering of psuedo-science.
dz, the term slave labor is not mine. But as Marx said, capital, whether human, monetary or equipment will always seek its most efficient means of utilization. Also, slavery is not just a monetary thing. The average Chinese worker makes $1.86/hour and I have not heard them call themselves slaves. On the other hand the Detroit auto union worker making $40/hour complains about slave wages.
Marx's Labor Theory of Value states that the value of a commodity is related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity. Thus if a Chinese worker or a robot can produce a product more cheaply than a US worker that product will have a higher economic value. The logical extension is what we are actually seeing now. Median annual salary for US worker dropped from $53K to $49K over the past 20 years. I expect it wall continue to fall even farther over the next decade. Even at $49K I wouldn't exactly call that slave wages.
Basel, Your bankers meet the classical definition of "Chutzpah" when you state that technically they are not crooked because they only handle money they know to be crooked. In my country that's called bank fraud but I guess it's seen differently by the Swiss banking system.
What part of my pervious post to you with the attached link did you not understand? All of it?
Then let me put it this way - no one gives a flying fig newton about Marx and what he had to say about labor or investment or how to build and maintain a civilization and advance it. And I am talking about Western Civilization, which only includes an individual contribution, now and then, from the Messed-up-potamia Mediteranean Basin which happened only when they were living in peace with smooth running empires, so to speak, around them. They NEVER had success being in charge of it all - go figure.
Like everything else, *economic models* have to be subjected to the same scrutiny as nuclear containment - do a small pilot batch first as proof of concept :-)
Marx is a walking dead ghost of a *idea* about anything real. If you insist on pursuing that mirage, let's get entertaining with it - someone run the software that shows what 2 people's genes contribute to the looks of an offspring - what would the offspring of Marx and Rand look like?
dz, many of the Wall Street Protestors are facing long term unemployment or underemployment. I only offered Marx and Engel's model of capitalism as an explanation for why these folks are destined to be part of the Industrial Reserve Army of Labor. If you have another explanation please provide, rather than just going on an anti Marx rant. I am Primo Capitalista, and therefore don't believe in the ultimate downfall of Capitalism, but I thing M&E at least provide a reasonable hypothesis to explain the current situation of the proletariat storming the barricades of Wall Street these days.
Here's another article to explain the same, written by someone other than Marx:
http://monthlyreview.org/2004/04/01/disposable-workers-todays-reserve-army-of-labor
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