Thursday, October 20, 2011

Comedy Returns Tomorrow, Hopefully


If Wall Street wanted to occupy my wallet with 1% of their money, I’d be okay with that


What would you do with all that money?


What are the people who have it doing with it?


Fair point.


So today's Sametime Status is in reference to the Occupy Wall Street protests that are still going on in New York and various other places around the world...and nobody really knows why.  I get that there is a lot of unhappiness among them, but I just don't understand what they expect to happen out of the whole thing.  

The corporate world is built around growth of profit in order to increase stock prices.  There is no corporation in the world that will willingly sacrifice a couple years' worth of profits and risk the wrath of the stockholders, mainly because the heads of the companies will be replaced by people who will go back to the singular focus of increasing the stock price.  The issue right now is that corporations have forgotten how to make money.  Most sales aren't growing by the desired pace (mostly because nobody has any money left) and all that's left is to increase profits by lowering costs...which amounts to little more than taking money away from the people who already don't have it.  Ostensibly, it seems like a pretty self-destructive spiral that's been going on for the last 30 years or so and shows no signs of stopping before it crashes.  I don't know what the answer is, and neither do the protesters, or the 1% of the people they're protesting against.  

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