I’ll go with the first commenter from your link: “Jump, you fuckers!”
3.
ET
Example of why people hate “Wall Street.”
4.
WaterGirl
The bastards are taunting us openly now. I guess that’s progress.
Edit: I love the JUMP! You Fuckers! sign – I think you guys should add that photo to every post about Occupy Wall Street. It just makes me feel good to see it.
5.
Malaclypse
At least we know who belongs up against the fucking wall.
The funny thing is that they’re NOT in the 1%. The 1% don’t work in office buildings. They have lackeys for that. The people who put those signs up are a bunch of Grima Wormtongues who think they Saruman, house slaves who think they’re better than field slaves because they get to eat the master’s left-overs after the fancy dinner party is over.
7.
SRW1
Well, the ‘Let them eat cakes’ needed some updating, didn’t it?
8.
Lurking Canadian
At least when Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake”, she [1] was expressing upper class cluelessness and privilege. If she had been a bond trader, it would have been more like, “Fuck ’em. I get to eat cake and it’s GOOD!”
[1] Nobody is being wrong on the Internet. I know it wasn’t Marie who said that, if anybody did. There’s no need to correct me.
9.
LanceThruster
At least we know the ability to feel shame is not part of their character.
10.
pragmatism
shouldn’t they be eating what they kill or hitting grounders to the local hs baseball team? also, WOLVERINES!
11.
RandyH
hanging signs in eighth-floor windows that said, “We are the 1%“
How nice for y’all. An that’s why you feel the need to hang the signs on 8th floor windows, too high for anyone to throw rocks at.
12.
Comrade Carter
Waitin’ for the clampdown.
13.
Corner Stone
What a bullseye target for Anonymous. How easy it is to figure out who works in that space.
The funny thing is that they’re NOT in the 1%. The 1% don’t work in office buildings.
I suspect you’re right. Twenty-somethings giddy at the thought of that lakefront condo or $100,000 car. Convinced that eventual migration to Kenilworth and the condo in Aspen is as inevitable as their thirtieth birthday. And they earned it, dammit. It has nothing to do with the fact that their father is on the board!
18.
Corner Stone
I’m probably going all occupy, all the time, btw .
Old fogies and current non Republicans inbound in 3..2..
Screw the ‘Jump you fuckers’ outrage. This whole thing is a warning to that 1% & if they keep going where they appear to want to go, that 99% is gonna go up and push their sorry asses out those 8th floor windows.
@RandyH: I was watching a documentary on the French Revolution the other day*, and I’m fond of the term, “National Razor.” AP Euro teacher never told us about that!
*-I loved History 2’s rollout. It was a collection of all the good shows History Channel used to air.
After watching “Food Inc.” I’m here to report we have much, much more effective technology these days.
Efficient isn’t the point, though. Emotionally satisfying is, and a means of execution that’s violent and gory is more likely to meet that need. Of course that suggests that drawing and quartering or something similarly barbaric might be in the offing.
34.
Spaghetti Lee
Honestly, though, I wonder why anyone would do this. They know it’s going to get people angry. They must be supremely confident that nothing’s going to come of these protests, so either they’re all one step ahead of us or are just too dumb and too arrogant to live.
“…Carboard and sharpies cost money! You should have just pissed and shit out the window like I told you to, dammit!”
38.
Scott P.
When the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Army was already more than a year old. Manifestos can only do so much.
Honestly, though, I wonder why anyone would do this.
For the same people get “My SUV cancels out your Prius” bumper stickers. Pissing off the other guy is its own reward.
41.
Nemesis
@Citizen Alan: Well, yes, that could be a correct summation.
Yet another answer might just be that the right wing in America has been fed a constant diet of “Librulism is terrible” for over 30 years. Fact being, the right simply hate us. They hate us with a white-hot intensity. So it should be expected that non-1%ers will take up the cause, yet again, for their elite masters.
The 1%ers can prly do just about anything (short of getting caught with their hands down the pants of an 8 year old boy) and their dedicated supporters will march lockstep right over the cliff as directed, because, you know, liberals are the problem and are to be hated, mocked, derided and smeared.
42.
Gilles de Rais
They might as well have posted “Fuck You America” in the windows, but they probably don’t know how to spell “America”.
Someone needs to invent a time-traveling machine, go back in time, and kill Ayn Rand.
The funny thing is that they’re NOT in the 1%. The 1% don’t work in office buildings.
The top 1% started at about $380k/year in 2008, which is the most recent year I can find. Funnily enough, that was actually lower than the 2006 & 2007 cutoff points, so even the rich were seeing their incomes go down that year as a result of GOP policies — remember, Obama didn’t take office until January 2009.
Anyway, $380k/year includes a fair number people who still show up at an office. We’re talking CEOs, EVP’s, even SVPs at some companies, senior partners in law firms, traders, hedge fund managers, some doctors, etc.
Really, it’s not until hit the top tenth of a percent, $1.8 million/year in 2008 (less than the cutoff points for 2005-2007) that you’re solidly in the doesn’t show up at an office territory.
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47.
Bago
You musn’t forget the usages of irony and snark. Obviously these people need are the types with access to the mailroom.
48.
Cat Lady
Dougerhead is your best yet.
49.
4tehlulz
I know this is baiting, but hey, someone is volunteering to be the first office to be sat in.
50.
Karen in GA
So that’s what they do all day at Peak6 Investments?
PEAK6 Investments, L.P. (“PEAK6”) announced today that a lease has been finalized at the Chicago Board of Trade Building located at 141 W. Jackson Boulevard for PEAK6 to expand and extend its occupancy into the 7th and 8th floors
For the same people get “My SUV cancels out your Prius” bumper stickers. Pissing off the other guy is its own reward.
Which is a major problem, because I don’t know how you counter this sort of thing. It’s just so mean spirited and counterproductive…it reflects, I think, a sense of denial of limits. I actually heard some guy, who runs an investment agency and has a little commentary two minute show every morning on a local news radio stations, say that the resources of the planet were infinite..that we need not worry about “peak oil” or shortages of key commodities. Yet, by the most basic observation, it’s painfully obvious that they cannot be…it only seems that way from the perspective of a hairless ape who isn’t paying fucking attention.
53.
singfoom
@Citizen Alan: This 100x. A real 1% doesn’t do that shit, they have other people for that. And they certainly wouldn’t do it at their place of business….
54.
jayjaybear
@The Dangerman: Yup. Replace the “are” window with “fellate”.
55.
Morbo
Chicago? You mean where Rick Santelli performed his famous rant? Wonder if it was one of the people over his shoulder.
56.
El Tiburon
I’m probably going all occupy, all the time, btw .
Good. The only other news worthwhile, it seems, is the status of Elizabeth Warren.
Occupy and Warren seem to be the only two shining lights on the hill overlooking the city by the sea.
The whatever-the-hell-it-was they used on the hog slaughterhouse killing floor was enough to give me nightmares for days–more than Saddam’s grisly hanging, that’s for sure.
Not that I gave up bacon, mind.
58.
beltane
@Gilles de Rais: Ayn Rand is one piece of “wretched refuse” that should never have been granted entry into the USA.
This whole thing is a warning to that 1% & if they keep going where they appear to want to go, that 99% is gonna go up and push their sorry asses out those 8th floor windows.
I look forward to welcoming our future defenestrating overlords.
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60.
El Tiburon
These d-bags and the Champagne Brigade along with NYPD are Occupy’s best friends.
61.
lol
I’m glad I was wrong about the protests – I figured they’d fizzle out after a week or so. They’re definitely learning and evolving.
I know this is baiting, but hey, someone is volunteering to be the first office to be sat inagainst the wall and machine-gunned down when the revolution begins.
Minor fix for accuracy.
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63.
Judas Escargot
I’ve been noticing something this week, at least online and on twitter. It’s odd how, universally, the only real expressions of “opposition” to OWS have all been along these lines (i.e. just this sort of generalized, sniping, content-free nastiness).
I’ll rephrase, because for some reason I’m having a hell of a time expressing this thought coherently. There seems to be no one even trying to make a coherent counterargument against OWS. They just make nasty little comments that serve no real rhetorical or political purpose.
This feels new. Up until now, the right’s MO on any question has been to either obfuscate the question with supply-side “arguments”, or to just create facts out of whole cloth and use those as the “argument”. But there’s none of that here.
It’s as if they’ve finally stopped trying to rationalize the status quo.
If it’s true that the Right has finally been reduced to, essentially, “Nyah, Nyah, IGMFU, Losers!” and nothing else… what are the implications of that? You’re not going to be able to dial yourself back from that position, once you’ve taken it.
The guillotine was invented to make the suffering as short as possible. It was a humane execution method!
Yes, indeed, that’s how it was sold.
There’s a scene in the Hornblower mini-series episode “The Wrong War” where a French nobleman has returned to France (this is 1793 or thereabouts) to reclaim his feudal domain, and starts using the guillotine on his former peasantry who drove him out of his chateau and off to England. He makes this a priority over securing the countryside and pushing forth the military objectives of the campaign to restore the Bourbons.
Things go badly..the forces of the Revolution are prevailing in the fight, and when the tables turn at his little village, he’s the one with his head in the guillotine…but he’s looking up at the blade as it descends…
And sharpen the blades really nice. Don’t sharpen the blades at all.
In fact, smack the blades with hammers to put serious defects in them, requiring several drops of the blade to “do the job.” So sorry, millionaire/billionaire thief, that we just couldn’t afford to keep the blade sharp and it took five drops of the blade to chop your f’ing head off. But someone stole all of our money.
that the resources of the planet were infinite..that we need not worry about “peak oil” or shortages of key commodities. Yet, by the most basic observation, it’s painfully obvious that they cannot be
It’s inevitable that St. Thomas Aquinas succeeds Reince Priebus as the head of the RNC:
Et antiquum documentum / Novo cedat ritui:
Praestet fides supplementum / Sensuum defectui.
Let old teaching yield to a new cult.
Let faith provide what is missing when the evidence of the senses fails.
Party like it’s 1299….
67.
singfoom
@Judas Escargot: You think at long last they’ll compromise? They don’t want to dial back. For those who have gone that far over the hoverround cliff, liberals are not really American and they don’t want us in this country.
68.
suzanne
That’s not too bright. I seem to remember some planes being flown into a couple of buildings in Manhattan a few years back.
69.
Steve
I just received this email from my office manager:
Please be advised that the protestors now occupying Zuccotti park located on Liberty Street are planning to march down Broadway today around 4:30 p.m. The building has been in contact with the NYPD who assures them that the protestors will be escorted by uniformed patrolmen, therefore eliminating any threat to the Broadway side of the building. The building suggests anyone entering or leaving the building when the protest begins to use the back entrance.
I love the word “threat,” as if the protestors are likely to take a torch to our rather nondescript office building. The only threat is that the city might go bankrupt from all the overtime the NYPD is collecting as a result of these protests.
70.
Monkey Business
Apparently the 1% didn’t pay attention in world history when they talked about what happened in France in the 1780s and 1790s when the wealthy aristocracy started mocking the commoners.
Instead of guillotines, let’s use lasers this time.
71.
Monkey Business
Apparently the 1% didn’t pay attention in world history when they talked about what happened in France in the 1780s and 1790s when the wealthy aristocracy started mocking the commoners.
Instead of guillotines, let’s use lasers this time.
72.
MattR
@Villago Delenda Est: You can’t try and convince those people. All you can do is present a reasonable counter argument that you hope will reach the audience watching.
As I was reading the Ezra Klein column that somebody linked above I realized that the message that Ezra was so hopeful about, that these were young people who had done what they were told and gotten an education and not there is nothing waiting for them except debt payments, will be met by right wingers decrying the lack of responsibility for racking up student loans and then expecting others to pay for them. Unlike Ezra, they don’t see the quest for a college education as a good thing. They see it as a sign of liberal elitism. But you can’t let that vocal minority get you down. Hopefully the message Ezra described will resonate with a large percentage of the public, especially those who feel like they did everything right but got screwed by the housing crisis, etc in 2008/2009.
“The guys who are protesting are not filing legal briefs,” he said. “They are expressing the populist, genuine view that people have been ripped off. It’s a fundamental identification of the fact that people are getting taken for a ride by powerful interests who are getting away with murder.”
__
“The worm is finally turning on the nonsense of blaming the wrong people for what happened in 2008,” said Feingold, whose new group, Progressives United, was formed to counter the Citizens United decision and corporate influence over politics.
__
“The American people are saying, wait, we have the boot of corporations on our necks, and we’re sick of it. This is a significantly coherent message at the beginning of something like this.”
__
Feingold said he was moved to speak out because of condescending media coverage of the issue, adding that it’s crucial to understand that Occupy Wall Street is rooted in the emotional reality of people’s everyday experiences of the economy.
__
“This is a populist movement based on genuine suffering and fear,” he said. “Anyone who really lives out in working America knows that people are feeling very scared. This movement would probably not have this fuel if not for that reality.”
__
Asked whether the Obama administration and the Democratic Party’s insufficiently confrontational approach towards Wall Street is partly to blame for all the frustration, Feingold noted that there are still signficant differences between the two parties. But he offered Obama some advice.
__
“The White House should realize that this would be beneficial to the president and his reelection chances if he recognizes how correct the protesters are to be upset,” Feingold said. “It would be a mistake to try to co-opt this. I’m hoping a mass movement will encourage the White House to listen to and respond to these concerns. It would be politically smart and the right thing to do.”
__
“This is like the Tea Party — only it’s real,” Feingold said. “By the time this is over, it will make the Tea Party look like … a tea party.”
Anyway, $380k/year includes a fair number people who still show up at an office. We’re talking CEOs, EVP’s, even SVPs at some companies, senior partners in law firms, traders, hedge fund managers, some doctors, etc.
Uh-uh. $380K a year isn’t just senior partners — it’s senior associates at some law firms, once you count in the bonus. $380K a year is no longer boss-level income, which just goes to show you how far boss-level income has risen relative to the median income in this country.
89.
Spaghetti Lee
You always said you wanted to live like a queen, so go stick your neck under that guillotine.
Screw the ‘Jump you fuckers’ outrage. This whole thing is a warning to that 1% & if they keep going where they appear to want to go, that 99% is gonna go up and push their sorry asses out those 8th floor windows.
In another, far distant time, we lop off their heads, stick em on the end of a pike, and put em out at the castle gate as a warning to the rest.
91.
Trinity
Something is happening….
I like it.
92.
suzanne
I do wonder, though, in all seriousness, how much blood would (or will) have to be shed before the 1% loosens their death grip on our collective nuts.
93.
JGabriel
@Rafer Janders: You’re right, I meant and should have said associates, not partners. Thanks for the correction.
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94.
greenergood
I am SO looking forward to Thanksgiving Dinner with my hedge-fund manager brother, trophy wife, and their children who each have at least 40 pairs of shoes.
You try it. You can be angry and shocked and horrified and all too familiar and sad at the same time. Lots of people are, and have been throughout history.
Go look up the lyrics to “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.”
96.
El Cid
@greenergood: I’ve got like 20 but that’s only because I won’t throw away the 10 pair that are crap and the 2 or 3 which seem to be useful around the yard.
It’s as if they’ve finally stopped trying to rationalize the status quo.
I’m not trying to go all conspiracy theory on you but lets be real, a lot of the “conversations” the American public are privy to are extremely scripted so those counter arguments are built in. I can’t recall the last time I saw somethign on the news that wasn’t filled with pre-arranged questions/ideas that were easy to rebut. The OCW protests are unscripted and unplanned. It takes them a little time to get their shit together. The counter-top inspections will begin shortly.
98.
suzanne
@Rafer Janders: God, why didn’t I become a lawyer? DAMN.
I keep getting calls about needing to pay my credit card bill. I feel like telling the credit card company that I’ve changed my number, and give them those dooshes’ number.
99.
suzanne
@greenergood: You can come over to my pad. You can even have some leftovers.
I have cute pets. I don’t even serve them as part of the meal. I’m thinking of saving that honor for a member of the 1%.
100.
suzanne
@greenergood: You can come over to my pad. You can even have some leftovers.
I have cute pets. I don’t even serve them as part of the meal. I’m thinking of saving that honor for a member of the 1%.
@suzanne: Well, here’s the thing, as I noted on a previous thread: their death grip on our collective nuts is there only at our permission.
I mean, I can see these folks are clueless enough that they might manage to just piss everyone off enough that a movement to “Tell the Fuckers to Eat That Debt” movement could pick up steam. Imagine everyone in the country sitting down the same week and writing out letters to each of their creditors that say, “fuck you, I’m not paying anymore.”
We live with this notion that they have this hold on us – but that hold only is there because we allow it. If we collectively decided to tell them to all go fuck themselves, what would they do about it? Can you imagine if even 1/4 of those with big debt did this? There aren’t enough collection agencies, law enforcement officers, courts, credit reporting agencies, etc etc etc to process a voluntary default on the part of even a sizable portion of us. What are they going to do, build huge debtors’ prisons?
Obviously that would not be an ideal outcome because there would be a lot of really bad economic fallout from such an action, but it exists as a possibility. Their hope is that it doesn’t occur to enough of us collectively to add up to an actual threat. At the same time, they don’t seem to be smart enough to accept their lousy 3% marginal income tax hike and keep their fat mouths shut, so…it could get to that point.
I do wonder, though, in all seriousness, how much blood would (or will) have to be shed before the 1% loosens their death grip on our collective nuts.
You could probably pull it off by having the death squads target the most conservative quarter of the top hundredth of a percent. I’m guesstimating that’s in the low thousands.
It would be very French Revolution-like, but with guns & knives instead of pitchforks & guillotines.
Do I actually want something like that to happen? No, not really. Do I want the richest conservative fuckers to fear the possibility and rein in their excesses in response? Hells yeah.
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104.
Trinity
@El Cid: I think that link should be mandatory viewing for all Villagers. Powerful.
Honestly, though, I wonder why anyone would do this. They know it’s going to get people angry. They must be supremely confident that nothing’s going to come of these protests, so either they’re all one step ahead of us or are just too dumb and too arrogant to live.
TBogg linked to the classic FYIGM love note from Wall Street.
My favorite section:
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
It means you keep after them. That is all they’ve got left, and they can’t keep it up forever.
Maybe. One does get a sense that they’ve shifted their weight to their back legs now, so to speak. But why the sudden shift? And why over OWS? It’s still just (in practical terms) a bunch of people, standing on the street with signs and talking.
I try to put myself inside the head of someone who looks eight floors down and thinks “Hey! Let’s put up signs and taunt the little fuckers!”. And I fail to comprehend, even in the abstract. No financial gain in it. Doesn’t enhance your connections, or social position. And (unless you have a helo parked on the roof) you’re going to have to go back down to walk amongst those very same ‘little people’ at some point.
It just feels new. At least in this particular context.
109.
Mary
This is in Chicago? Of course. Fucking Chads. I bet they’re Cubs fans, too.
110.
fasteddie9318
Does anybody else besides me think that this is heading toward a nation-wide strike?
OK, is anybody else besides me hoping that this leads to a nation-wide strike? How else short of violence do you make these fuckers pay attention? Instead of eating what they kill, let them eat from the big piles of rubbish that collect on their front lawns with no trash collection, since truckers won’t be bringing any food to market.
@Judas Escargot: Some of it is that Twitter doesn’t allow for much by way of coherence in 140 chars… Even still, I’ve been seeing some objections to OWS from lefties in my Twitter timeline, mostly those who’ve been long-time activists, mostly non-whites.
Does anybody else besides me think that this is heading toward a nation-wide strike?
No.
Nation-wide protests yes, but striking isn’t the right form of protest when jobs and the economy are so vulnerable.
The corporate employers will use it as and excuse to identify and fire their more troublesome employees, the small employers will fail.
113.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
The janitors probably put the signs up to make the richies look bad. At least I hope they did.
114.
Li
I think that all of this violent talk is foolish. Attempting something like that (at least, that is, before several brutal crackdowns on peaceful people) would only empower the masters of violence to rain down real hell on our heads. Our guns might be swift, and our knives sharp, but if we attack the 1% directly they will have the use of flying killer robots and bombs that weigh more than your car in their counterattack.
@Judas Escargot: New in this context is correct, because they’ve been thumbing their noses at us increasingly over the past 10 years or so. First it was the first Bush campaign, where they made no pretense that they were going to buy the office for their hand-picked idiot son of privilege (this was why Bush was the first ever to decline public financing in the primary, because so many rich guys were handing them money), and when they weren’t able to buy it with mounds of cash, they stole it, right out in the open. Once they got away with that, all bets were off. “Let’s cut our taxes and bankrupt the government!” “Let’s have a war to reward our defense contractor and oil company campaign benefactors!” And so on and so on and so on. Recall it wasn’t until the 2000s that you ever heard anyone refer to working people as “moochers” and “parasites”. We had the spectacle of elected officials talking about how unemployed people were just “lazy” or drug users, how the people who couldn’t afford to get out of the way of natural disasters were to blame for being stuck in a disaster zone (and criminal, to boot) and on and on and on. It was only a matter of time until it showed up in this context, too.
116.
fasteddie9318
I just don’t think protests alone cut it. This is an internationalized overclass that by now thinks that the bottom 99% could fuck off and die without affecting their quality of life in the slightest. Their key employees (for those who actually make shit) are all earning 50 cents/day in another country, and for the rest, well, banks can just keep trading in fake money and manipulating the stock market, and you don’t need peons for that. If the protests actually started to make trophy wife #3 cry into her morning bowl of pearls, fuck it, these guys will jet off and live someplace else, with lower income taxes to boot. Somehow they need to understand that they have a stake in how this country operates just like the rest of us.
@Jennifer: Boy, do I suck at math. I think I had in mind that statistic about how the top 400 in the country take home some ridiculous amount of the income/wealth.
Most conservative quarter of the top .01% would be something like 7,000 – 8,000 people. My bad.
@fasteddie9318: depends on the type of protest. If it morphed into debt protests where people refuse to pay, or labor protests where people didn’t show up for work, they’d figure out where our mutual interest lie in a big hurry. As a matter of fact, that type of thing has always been the ONLY thing that has ever made them figure it out.
If it’s true that the Right has finally been reduced to, essentially, “Nyah, Nyah, IGMFU, Losers!” and nothing else… what are the implications of that? You’re not going to be able to dial yourself back from that position, once you’ve taken it.
—
What does it mean?
I think it’s actually a result of not making specific demands. If you demonstrate for something specific to be done, then you get a counter-argument or at least mocking of why it isn’t practical, and then you have to try to explain why it is, and then we’re into “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
Instead, this is about how we’re all getting screwed, even though we’re good citizens who worked hard to get ahead, because the rich financiers got to rig the system. Everyone who isn’t a Randian “everyone deserves however much they have” acolyte knows this is true, so the opposition is left with only “Dirty hippies! Get a job! Shut up!”
This is a good sign.
120.
fasteddie9318
@Jennifer: That’s why I was thinking strike, but as bad as the jobs situation is, wrb may be right that it’s not the way to go. I think a debt protest would be fantastic, but as you say it would have to be in huge numbers to work, and if it failed then those who participated would be in deep shit.
121.
greenergood
@El Cid: All three kids are under age 7, and their shoes are all Merrells, Keens, etc. The boys wear Gap, the girl wears Lilly Pulitzer – her closet contains clothing that is worth more than I earn in a year, maybe two years. They each have a nanny. The family is probably nearing the 1% threshold. I love Thanksgiving, such a family holiday …
To be accurate, that’s only high-level lawyers at firms with an affluent client base. For every lawyer earning that’s much there’s ten who can’t even find a paying job in the current climate.
That, or they see it as uppity peasants trying move above their divinely ordained station in life.
@suzanne
@Rafer Janders: God, why didn’t I become a lawyer? DAMN.
Going to law school is a stinking rotten deal. A very very small percentage of students who graduate from law school land big fancy high paid jobs and of those I would say most burn out of law firm life within 5 years. Four years into my career and I fucking hate being a lawyer, but with six figure debt and no other marketable skills my only other option is to fake my own death and move off the grid.
Just don’t think strikes would be a brilliant form of protest at a time when people are begging for work, small employers are on the verge of failure, and big employers would be happy to fire current workers and hire new ones for half the pay.
125.
soonergrunt
@Lurking Canadian: Well, SOMEBODY is wrong on the internet. Most likely these days it’s the cousin-fucking hicks whining about ESPN benching Hank Williams, Jr, being the same as censorship.
But it’s not you being wrong today.
@RandyH:
I have thought about your idea of an upgraded guillotine for some time.
1) It should be made of a surgical-grade stainless steel so it can be power-washed at the end of a big day.
2) The bearing surfaces should be upgraded to at least Teflon.
3) It might be a good idea to assist gravity in speeding the blade downward—I vote for compressed air.
The folks who put those signs up are more than likely 20 something douchbag ex-Frat boys who see themselves as Galtian Heroes. Money firms are filled to the brim with these guys.
You might get a hint by reading your American history, circa the Gilded Age and so-called Progressive Age, and up to the Depression and WWII. Lotsa blood shed by brave, hard working people (I have a picture of my grandfather, bleeding heavily from the face and head, during the USW struggle to organize the Jones and Laughlin Steel mill in Aliquippa, PA) to get the benefits, rights, and wages that they are so eager to take away from us a hundred years later.
@Villago Delenda Est: how about just putting these guys in the projects, sans cell phones and cars but letting them keep all of their bling…. it’ll be like The Warriors in reverse, a bunch of sophisticated day traders left on Coney Island, having to bop their way back to the safety of Wall Street.
Most conservative quarter of the top .01% would be something like 7,000 – 8,000 people. My bad.
Yup, that’s more like it — it’s the figure for the entire population. I think about a quarter of the population files returns, so we’re probably talking about the top 2000 of those, give or take.
@JGabriel: The top 1% started at about $380k/year in 2008, which is the most recent year I can find. Anyway, $380k/year includes a fair number people who still show up at an office. Really, it’s not until hit the top tenth of a percent, $1.8 million/year in 2008 (less than the cutoff points for 2005-2007) that you’re solidly in the doesn’t show up at an office territory.
Thank you. I harp on this a lot: treating the top quintile, or even the top 1%, as a single class still papers over an incredible disparity in income and personal wealth.
Nobody I know makes over $100K (most make more like $30k) and so to us, $250,000 a year sounds “rich.” And on an objective, worldwide scale, maybe it is. But while $300k may get you a vacation home and a comfortable retirement, it doesn’t make you an NBA star or a venture capitalist.
We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension.
What kills me about the “we eat what we kill” quote is that they’re so disconnected that they don’t realize that this describes tons of jobs NOT on the Street which make far less money. Let’s see if they’re willing to put in 12 hour days for a teacher’s salary…
142.
Jebediah
@Jennifer:
Love it! I’m picturing the Monopoly banker guy on it… wish I had any Photoshop or drawing skills.
143.
Amanda in the South Bay
@cleek:
Ah, I see now. I’ll admit, C++ so far seems like a bizarre hybrid of C mixed with OOP.
144.
ChrisNYC
Ok, so on the livestream this is getting a bit hijacked by unions. Seems not so well received on the twitter. OWS needs to make a decision. I know it’s boring but they really do need an ask — of their own — they did this, they get to run it.
Thank you. I harp on this a lot: treating the top quintile, or even the top 1%, as a single class still papers over an incredible disparity in income and personal wealth.
It’s exponential. Some bozo in the top 0.1% could buy out the guy in the lower part of the top 1% with his pocket change. But, of course, it’s never enough, because some other bozo on the next block has more than Mr 0.1%. This sort of pointless hypercompetitiveness is a fucking mental illness.
Friendly design amendments are welcome.
Laser guide for precision cuts, and 45 degree compound miter cut capability so you can even out the rows of heads when the angle gets a little off. Compressed-air pike mounting attachment with pike magazine so you don’t have to reload every time. Electric pump for the blood pooling. Oh yeah, and a multiple-cut watermelon blade for snack time: this work makes a body hungry, donchaknow.
@El Cid: Too bad Feingold only talks the talk and doesn’t walk the walk.
Before the mid-term election, Feingold personally went to the White House and begged them not to raise taxes on the rich. (Via Digby)
149.
Cat
@cleek: I can get two, scope and storage, whats the third? Or are you counting how a static member function behaves differently from a static function, which I lumped into scope?
@replicnt6: I gave this some thought and its not obvious to me how to do “pure virtual method called” when all the definitions are in the same compilation unit. I can do it using DLL’s though.
150.
Bmaccnm
@cleek: Or, in the presence of prolonged rupture of membranes and moderate variability, are decelerations of the fetal heart rate that begin after the onset of contractions concerning or reassuring? In my business, it’s considered bad form to kill things, and worse form to eat them
151.
MattR
@Svensker: That rant from the Wall Streeter was missing the caveat “but we will only do that if you pay us $200K or more with massive bonuses” which is really the crux of the problem. They think they are the super productive while the riff-raff are lazy without realizing that by funneling all the money upwards they removed all incentive for the masses to try and be super productive. But give em five years of working those same hours for a $60K a year job (to be generous) with absolutely no bonus or recognition of their hard work and they will be singing quite a different tune. Hell, all anyone had to do a year or so ago was threaten to alter their current bonuses and they shrieked like they were mortally wounded.
What kills me about the “we eat what we kill” quote is that they’re so disconnected that they don’t realize that this describes tons of jobs NOT on the Street which make far less money. Let’s see if they’re willing to put in 12 hour days for a teacher’s salary…
A teacher’s salary? At least that’s middle class and somewhat fulfilling. Let’s pay them $12/hour — well over minimum wage — and let them work at some shit job with no benefits, of course. Also, too, an asshole boss who is trying to get into their pants (yeah, right, sue him! That’s always a job keeper these days). Or maybe like one place I worked (for 3 days — I quit, because I could) where the employees were not allowed to speak to each other. At all. Since I was new and had no idea how stuff worked or where anything was, I needed to ask other staff, but they were too terrified to talk to me. It was brilliant. A large, very rich firm, too.
Arrogant and clueless is a terrible condition — I hope they all get cured, one way or the other.
Hell, all anyone had to do a year or so ago was threaten to alter their current bonuses and they shrieked like they were mortally wounded.
Yeah, my bankster friend had to buy used ski equipment for his kids’ trip to Aspen. Can you imagine? He was really upset about it. At the time we were making room in our house for another friend who had been unemployed for over a year and was homeless, so I was only marginally sympathetic. (What really slayed me about the latter is that we had a small house and not a lot of extra space or money but we made room for our friend. He had asked his “best friend” who lives in a 14-room mansion and is one of the most prominent doctors in very rich Bergen County, but that guy couldn’t see his way clear to letting his poor friend live in his basement for a few months. Rich doctor is also a big Republican. Color me surprised.)
@ChrisNYC: Ok, so on the livestream this is getting a bit hijacked by unions. Seems not so well received on the twitter. OWS needs to make a decision. I know it’s boring but they really do need an ask—of their own—they did this, they get to run it.
Why is this a bad thing? It’s not like they’re getting co-opted by Coca-cola. Their protest is transforming, at the hands of the people who invented the word “solidarity.”
155.
Cassidy
11% unemployment amongst veterans and rising. A generation of kids trained for war and used said skills to help them become the 1%. If they weren’t so clueless, they’d be shitting themselves in fear. lol
156.
Betsy
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
I was thinking secretaries, but I’m otherwise right there with you. I was surprised no one mentioned this possibility yet.
Never worked for MS. My manager at my previous job wanted me to be the bad cop technical interviewer. I’d never done technical questions before. I was amazed at how quickly people folded when asked to write simple code. I’d feel OK about an interviewee from the general “What have you worked on” questions, then we’d get to the actual technical questions. Very very few made to the pure virtual function call question. A surprising number choked on implementing a linked list.
We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
Honestly, this statement reminds me of my years teaching school.
If it were obvious, it wouldn’t be a fun question. You don’t need separate compilation units.
It was really a discussion question, and I’d steer them in the right direction as they tried to puzzle it out. I didn’t really expect anyone to just know. Unless they’d written a C++ compiler. In which case it wasn’t an interesting question. But assuming they hadn’t written a C++ compiler, it gave some insight into their depth of understanding of polymorphism and ability to think on their feet.
161.
MattR
@Svensker: Geez. Another thing that occurred to me about that rant is how easily it can be flipped around. If every investment bank in the world decided that playing by the new rules and having to pay a more reasonable portion of their profits in taxes was too harsh for them and decided to go out of business, new firms would pop up to replace them because there is still money to be made even with those “horrific” new restrictions. (EDIT: And those new firms would be staffed by people who were just as competent as the previous group but who accepted the new tax rate)
I also love that they expect me to believe that while they currently work their ass off to take home about $6000 of every $10000 over 250K they earn, they will cut back their work (and salary) if they can only take home $5500 of that $10000 instead. I don’t believe for a second that someone making $260K would leave that $5500 on the table, let alone someone who was making a $1.25 million cutting back to $250K and giving up the $550,000 after taxes. In fact they have shown themselves to be such greedy bastards, that my biggest fear with raising taxes is that they will become more motivated to make money in shadier and shadier ways to make up for the loss of take home profit. (EDIT: But of course they are so greedy that I am pretty sure their motivation level is already pegged to the ceiling)
162.
singfoom
@replicnt6: That’s just evil. Quick question about the process, by the time they’ve gotten to the live interview with tech questions, have you gotten a code sample?
Like a solution to a small scale problem? I’ve always found that weeds out the people who can’t get past saying the latest buzzwords for development.
Personally, after I’ve gotten past the technical questions, I always like to ask people “Are you a classist or a mockist?”
It’s a stupid interview question, but they get points if they know what I’m talking about, and bonus points if they choose a side and defend it well. If they’re really smart, they’ll tell me where and when classes should be used for testing rather than mocks. Only 1 person has gotten there so far…
163.
Cat
@replicnt6: I looked it up after I posted as I thought my solution was way to complicated to be a very good interview question and the most common answer on the internet is one I’d never run into.
Somehow I’ve gotten lucky and never slice objects in 10 years or so of writting C++.
Ah, I see now. I’ll admit, C++ so far seems like a bizarre hybrid of C mixed with OOP.
well, that’s basically what it is.
165.
nancydarling
@Amanda in the South Bay: I think of you sometimes, Amanda. Are you doing well? Hadn’t seen you around in a while.
166.
ChrisNYC
@Cris (without an H): I don’t know, I think they (OWS) did it. In politics, there is so much glomming on — things that energize people get co opted into something else because there are all these interests swirling, just looking for face time, voters, money. I love unions but who knows, these kids (and when I was there they were kids) have different goals, maybe. They created it, they own it. They should say what goes, I think.
Have to say, after I posted that comment there was a fierce pushback on the union bashing and lots of talk about “THEY are trying to divide us — don’t let it happen!!!!” OWS is totally adorable in many ways.
167.
Cat
@singfoom: Most c++ coders won’t get it at all, java coders are more likely to, but anyone whose worked on a SaaS project had better be able to answer that question.
168.
Bill Arnold
@techno:
A friend made a guillotine as a prop for a Halloween party we held (theme – revolution) a decade ago. Blade was foam in a wood carrier, but it made a satisfying noise when it dropped, and all the drunken conversations stopped for 5 or 10 seconds. Halloween is approaching…
The people who put up that sign aren’t part of the 1%. They think they’re part of it, but they’re not.
The real 1% can’t be bothered to engage in such petty squabbling. They know damn well they’re the 1% and don’t have to advertise.
True. But, they are a helluva lot closer than the people they literally and figuratively look down upon. That is the key. The true 1%’ers learned you need to co-opt a few to help you drink the milk shakes of the millions. They have done a pretty fair job with media and that helps limit the amount of co-opting they need to do. My brother, who is comfortable but not wealthy asked me last year in a voice dripping with derision “How do feel about someone living of YOUR production?” There are hooks; there are lines, and there are sinkers. The folks who can be brought to swallow can amaze.
For these fuckers I would design a new type of “National Razor”, more like a National Rusty Ripsaw. No sharp, heavy blade dropping from on high, nosiree. It would use a sawing action, dropping down an eighth of an inch per cut.
No fast and clean punishment, let them suffer. If that’s too inhumane then human catapults located on skyscrapers would be a viable option for punishment.
171.
arguingwithsignposts
Two things: There’s a site for the pampered whiners: White Whine. And there’s a whole series of movies that has already explored advanced guillotination: It’s called the Saw franchise.
No need to reinvent the, erm, wheel.
172.
gelfling545
@cleek: I got a nice chuckle from picturing any one of them standing in front of a class of 36 middle-schoolers.
So, OWS has a contingent at the community board meeting tonite. They have apparently been the subject of noise complaints, some talk of “evictions.” (The park itself is actually private property, owned by Brookfield Properties but with public access due to tax credits.) Hard to imagine who lives in that immediate area and would hear noise but I am glad that they are cognizant of regular people who live/work around there. It’s a claustrophobic place, people stacked on top of each other.
I find the C++ standard library a big improvement over C’s.
178.
ChrisNYC
Very inside baseball now but there is an issue at the meeting about barricading. OWS says it is Homeland Security but residents are pissed. Have to say, the park is two short blocks from Ground Zero. Separate from huge security presence, which has been true since 9/11, the place is just crawling with people, looking at the site, vendors, random crazies. I’ve been there at 1 am and it’s buzzing. OWS has to deal with that, it’s not going away and it’s not directed at them or at hippies. I love the local stuff so, sorry.
179.
Lurking Canadian
@replicnt6: I’m having a hard time envisioning code that would fail in that way, but still make it through the compiler in the first place, since the compiler shouldn’t let you instantiate that class, or any derived class that doesn’t override that function.
I imagine you might be able to fool the compiler if you used an unsafe cast (reinterpret_cast or old-style cast) to cast an equivalent sized array to your abstract base class, then passed it as a parameter to a function that took an abstract base class * as input. Then again, that seems equally likely to result in a null pointer exception. It is, at any rate, a really good question.
I find the C++ standard library a big improvement over C’s.
The standard template library is so good that I would answer any interview question about implementing a linked list with “Nobody should ever implement a linked list when the STL is right there. It is an error-prone waste of time. But, since you insist…”
@Gilles de Rais:
Not defending Rand’s “work” here but it’s not her fault that so many idiots have taken what is at best, a 3rd rate novel and tried to make a lifestyle out of it. I mean it is so bad the best movie they could make out of it is less interesting than watching snails shit. And whose contribution to mankind is worth even less.
182.
triangular gutters
@El Tiburon: These d-bags and the Champagne Brigade along with NYPD are Occupy’s best friends.
Funny thing, that. Ignore the NYPD. Let’s say you’re a /b/astard with a /b/alcony, or a goon in a cube on the eighth floor. Not only do you get troll points for the champagne and signs, you invigorate the protests. As a tactic for supporters, the trolling is a win.
I know, as always “really clever troll, or really that stupid?” is murky and odds are usually on “stupid”. But if you were inside and wanted to amp up the protest, what would you do?
I know all the talk about guillotines isn’t serious, but in all seriousness the Terror really wasn’t so much about killing the rich as it was the Jacobins killing their suspected enemies, mainly the Girondins. Thomas Paine, hardly a French noble, was in prison during the Terror and awaiting execution. And the last guy to get the chop was Robespierre, himself.
The Jacobins more or less fucked everything up and led to the military dictatorship of Napoleon, who plunged Europe into long and bloody continental warfare.
Violent revolutions have often gone places nobody planned for.
186.
triangular gutters
Oh yeah. When interviewing, I do have a couple of questions for people who write C++ on their resume, because the range of knowledge and competence in the language is so huge.
But I don’t know the language very well; I just see shadows of disasters show up in the linker and ABI so I can trip people up with that. If somebody were to ask me a C++ question in a job interview, I’m going to be turning that around into finding out why exactly the hiring organization is using C++ and which subset of language features are seen as important for that. Cthuloid disaster of an application programming language.
Yeah, that would be EPIC. Once. But I don’t know if the trolling were done with a wink that DougJ would have put it on the front page and blustered about going full #occupy.
If the entire conversation was insiders, the people in the office could taunt with EFG….
I’m having a hard time envisioning code that would fail in that way, but still make it through the compiler in the first place, since the compiler shouldn’t let you instantiate that class, or any derived class that doesn’t override that function.
The standard template library is so good that I would answer any interview question about implementing a linked list with “Nobody should ever implement a linked list when the STL is right there. It is an error-prone waste of time. But, since you insist…”
This. I’ve been working with C# for the last three years and I can’t believe they didn’t do a better job of their template library. STL is a work of art.
I know this because I did it once trying to be too clever by half.
Ironically, I also hit this once trying to be too clever by half. After I’d made it my standard last interview question.
I originally encountered it as a result of a bug in the Microsoft C++ compiler optimizer. Back in the day when you could submit a bug report via email and get a reply. Must have been C++ 4.00 or 5.00.
@techno:
You are thinking of making it more efficient. That will not give the most satisfying results.
1. Blade does not have to be sharp, just heavy.
2. Rust sounds good but the pain is not going to be any different.
3. Face up, not blindfolded, heavy, dull blade with no assistance. Gives them the chance to see it coming and it is not over super fast. If the first hit is unsuccessful, raise the blade and take another shot.
You may notice that I’m not for humane methods in this instance as inhumane methods are all these fuckers know.
I told a friend of mine about this and her response was “well maybe the friend stole the TV to buy drugs . . . I hesitate to pass judgment without more information.”
Call me crazy, but I think that’s part of the problem. These are people who have given us every reason to pass judgment, because they act like assholes without even being prompted.
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Villago Delenda Est
“Please. Put me in the tumbrel.”
Spaghetti Lee
I’ll go with the first commenter from your link: “Jump, you fuckers!”
ET
Example of why people hate “Wall Street.”
WaterGirl
The bastards are taunting us openly now. I guess that’s progress.
Edit: I love the JUMP! You Fuckers! sign – I think you guys should add that photo to every post about Occupy Wall Street. It just makes me feel good to see it.
Malaclypse
At least we know who belongs up against the fucking wall.
Citizen Alan
The funny thing is that they’re NOT in the 1%. The 1% don’t work in office buildings. They have lackeys for that. The people who put those signs up are a bunch of Grima Wormtongues who think they Saruman, house slaves who think they’re better than field slaves because they get to eat the master’s left-overs after the fancy dinner party is over.
SRW1
Well, the ‘Let them eat cakes’ needed some updating, didn’t it?
Lurking Canadian
At least when Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake”, she [1] was expressing upper class cluelessness and privilege. If she had been a bond trader, it would have been more like, “Fuck ’em. I get to eat cake and it’s GOOD!”
[1] Nobody is being wrong on the Internet. I know it wasn’t Marie who said that, if anybody did. There’s no need to correct me.
LanceThruster
At least we know the ability to feel shame is not part of their character.
pragmatism
shouldn’t they be eating what they kill or hitting grounders to the local hs baseball team? also, WOLVERINES!
RandyH
How nice for y’all. An that’s why you feel the need to hang the signs on 8th floor windows, too high for anyone to throw rocks at.
Comrade Carter
Waitin’ for the clampdown.
Corner Stone
What a bullseye target for Anonymous. How easy it is to figure out who works in that space.
Li
The peasants are hungry?
Let them eat collateralized debt obligations.
Davis X. Machina
I’d like to rent the windows opposite — shouldn’t cost much. I only really need two. One for “Mark” and one for “8:36”
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
Heh. Just posted almost the exact same thing in the last thread.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Citizen Alan:
I suspect you’re right. Twenty-somethings giddy at the thought of that lakefront condo or $100,000 car. Convinced that eventual migration to Kenilworth and the condo in Aspen is as inevitable as their thirtieth birthday. And they earned it, dammit. It has nothing to do with the fact that their father is on the board!
Corner Stone
Old fogies and current non Republicans inbound in 3..2..
RandyH
@SRW1:
Let’s build some new American-Made Guillotines. And sharpen the blades really nice.
geg6
@Corner Stone:
You and I don’t agree on much, but on this, we are like one mind.
Corner Stone
I wonder if some intrepid blogger/reporter has called the company yet and asked them if they support the message on their advertising space?
TPM? Are you going to be TPM or CNNlite ?
Davis X. Machina
@Corner Stone: When the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Army was already more than a year old.
Manifestos can only do so much.
I would like to know more about Anonymous.
lacp
Glad to see they’re finally acknowledging that we’re going into the hot phase of the class war.
Litlebritdfrnt
@Malaclypse:
Nice of them to point themselves out is it not?
kindness
Screw the ‘Jump you fuckers’ outrage. This whole thing is a warning to that 1% & if they keep going where they appear to want to go, that 99% is gonna go up and push their sorry asses out those 8th floor windows.
trollhattan
@RandyH:
After watching “Food Inc.” I’m here to report we have much, much more effective technology these days.
“Have you seen the little piggies…”
Gawd, I’m channeling my inner Charlie Manson.
beltane
If they are the 1% why couldn’t they afford a better sign?
Skepticat
@Citizen Alan: Spot on. I wish someone there could display an answering sign making that point.
wrb
@RandyH:
Don’t get all humanitarian now.
Dull, rusty blades are more encouraging.
MeDrewNotYou
@Corner Stone: /gets popcorn
@RandyH: I was watching a documentary on the French Revolution the other day*, and I’m fond of the term, “National Razor.” AP Euro teacher never told us about that!
*-I loved History 2’s rollout. It was a collection of all the good shows History Channel used to air.
Spaghetti Lee
@Corner Stone:
I think CNN is CNNLite.
4tehlulz
Whoever is their CEO needs to metatroll and fire these guys for wasting company resources.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Efficient isn’t the point, though. Emotionally satisfying is, and a means of execution that’s violent and gory is more likely to meet that need. Of course that suggests that drawing and quartering or something similarly barbaric might be in the offing.
Spaghetti Lee
Honestly, though, I wonder why anyone would do this. They know it’s going to get people angry. They must be supremely confident that nothing’s going to come of these protests, so either they’re all one step ahead of us or are just too dumb and too arrogant to live.
Litlebritdfrnt
Ezra has a really nice piece up about the 99%ers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/who-are-the-99-percent/2011/08/25/gIQAt87jKL_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein
Tom Levenson
“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Spaghetti Lee
@4tehlulz:
“…Carboard and sharpies cost money! You should have just pissed and shit out the window like I told you to, dammit!”
Scott P.
Not the Framers of the Declaration of Independence. The Committees of Correspondence.
Spaghetti Lee
@4tehlulz:
“…Cardboard and sharpies cost money! You should have just pissed and shit out the window like I told you to, dammit!”
Roger Moore
@Spaghetti Lee:
For the same people get “My SUV cancels out your Prius” bumper stickers. Pissing off the other guy is its own reward.
Nemesis
@Citizen Alan: Well, yes, that could be a correct summation.
Yet another answer might just be that the right wing in America has been fed a constant diet of “Librulism is terrible” for over 30 years. Fact being, the right simply hate us. They hate us with a white-hot intensity. So it should be expected that non-1%ers will take up the cause, yet again, for their elite masters.
The 1%ers can prly do just about anything (short of getting caught with their hands down the pants of an 8 year old boy) and their dedicated supporters will march lockstep right over the cliff as directed, because, you know, liberals are the problem and are to be hated, mocked, derided and smeared.
Gilles de Rais
They might as well have posted “Fuck You America” in the windows, but they probably don’t know how to spell “America”.
Someone needs to invent a time-traveling machine, go back in time, and kill Ayn Rand.
Villago Delenda Est
@wrb:
Incentivize!
Zifnab
I support this.
The Dangerman
I don’t recall a photo the screams the need for farking more than this one; stupid fuckers should know better. We know Photoshop.
JGabriel
@Citizen Alan:
The top 1% started at about $380k/year in 2008, which is the most recent year I can find. Funnily enough, that was actually lower than the 2006 & 2007 cutoff points, so even the rich were seeing their incomes go down that year as a result of GOP policies — remember, Obama didn’t take office until January 2009.
Anyway, $380k/year includes a fair number people who still show up at an office. We’re talking CEOs, EVP’s, even SVPs at some companies, senior partners in law firms, traders, hedge fund managers, some doctors, etc.
Really, it’s not until hit the top tenth of a percent, $1.8 million/year in 2008 (less than the cutoff points for 2005-2007) that you’re solidly in the doesn’t show up at an office territory.
.
Bago
You musn’t forget the usages of irony and snark. Obviously these people need are the types with access to the mailroom.
Cat Lady
Dougerhead is your best yet.
4tehlulz
I know this is baiting, but hey, someone is volunteering to be the first office to be sat in.
Karen in GA
So that’s what they do all day at Peak6 Investments?
http://cmegroup.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=2980&pagetemplate=article
ed drone
@RandyH:
No, man! Saw-toothed! Sharp ones cut short (bad pun!) the suffering.
Ed
NOTE: The guillotine was invented to make the suffering as short as possible. It was a humane execution method!
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Which is a major problem, because I don’t know how you counter this sort of thing. It’s just so mean spirited and counterproductive…it reflects, I think, a sense of denial of limits. I actually heard some guy, who runs an investment agency and has a little commentary two minute show every morning on a local news radio stations, say that the resources of the planet were infinite..that we need not worry about “peak oil” or shortages of key commodities. Yet, by the most basic observation, it’s painfully obvious that they cannot be…it only seems that way from the perspective of a hairless ape who isn’t paying fucking attention.
singfoom
@Citizen Alan: This 100x. A real 1% doesn’t do that shit, they have other people for that. And they certainly wouldn’t do it at their place of business….
jayjaybear
@The Dangerman: Yup. Replace the “are” window with “fellate”.
Morbo
Chicago? You mean where Rick Santelli performed his famous rant? Wonder if it was one of the people over his shoulder.
El Tiburon
Good. The only other news worthwhile, it seems, is the status of Elizabeth Warren.
Occupy and Warren seem to be the only two shining lights on the hill overlooking the city by the sea.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
The whatever-the-hell-it-was they used on the hog slaughterhouse killing floor was enough to give me nightmares for days–more than Saddam’s grisly hanging, that’s for sure.
Not that I gave up bacon, mind.
beltane
@Gilles de Rais: Ayn Rand is one piece of “wretched refuse” that should never have been granted entry into the USA.
JGabriel
@kindness:
I look forward to welcoming our future defenestrating overlords.
.
El Tiburon
These d-bags and the Champagne Brigade along with NYPD are Occupy’s best friends.
lol
I’m glad I was wrong about the protests – I figured they’d fizzle out after a week or so. They’re definitely learning and evolving.
JGabriel
@4tehlulz:
Minor fix for accuracy.
.
Judas Escargot
I’ve been noticing something this week, at least online and on twitter. It’s odd how, universally, the only real expressions of “opposition” to OWS have all been along these lines (i.e. just this sort of generalized, sniping, content-free nastiness).
I’ll rephrase, because for some reason I’m having a hell of a time expressing this thought coherently. There seems to be no one even trying to make a coherent counterargument against OWS. They just make nasty little comments that serve no real rhetorical or political purpose.
This feels new. Up until now, the right’s MO on any question has been to either obfuscate the question with supply-side “arguments”, or to just create facts out of whole cloth and use those as the “argument”. But there’s none of that here.
It’s as if they’ve finally stopped trying to rationalize the status quo.
If it’s true that the Right has finally been reduced to, essentially, “Nyah, Nyah, IGMFU, Losers!” and nothing else… what are the implications of that? You’re not going to be able to dial yourself back from that position, once you’ve taken it.
What does it mean?
Villago Delenda Est
@ed drone:
Yes, indeed, that’s how it was sold.
There’s a scene in the Hornblower mini-series episode “The Wrong War” where a French nobleman has returned to France (this is 1793 or thereabouts) to reclaim his feudal domain, and starts using the guillotine on his former peasantry who drove him out of his chateau and off to England. He makes this a priority over securing the countryside and pushing forth the military objectives of the campaign to restore the Bourbons.
Things go badly..the forces of the Revolution are prevailing in the fight, and when the tables turn at his little village, he’s the one with his head in the guillotine…but he’s looking up at the blade as it descends…
RandyH
@wrb:
@ed drone:
In fact, smack the blades with hammers to put serious defects in them, requiring several drops of the blade to “do the job.” So sorry, millionaire/billionaire thief, that we just couldn’t afford to keep the blade sharp and it took five drops of the blade to chop your f’ing head off. But someone stole all of our money.
Pity.
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s inevitable that St. Thomas Aquinas succeeds Reince Priebus as the head of the RNC:
Et antiquum documentum / Novo cedat ritui:
Praestet fides supplementum / Sensuum defectui.
Let old teaching yield to a new cult.
Let faith provide what is missing when the evidence of the senses fails.
Party like it’s 1299….
singfoom
@Judas Escargot: You think at long last they’ll compromise? They don’t want to dial back. For those who have gone that far over the hoverround cliff, liberals are not really American and they don’t want us in this country.
suzanne
That’s not too bright. I seem to remember some planes being flown into a couple of buildings in Manhattan a few years back.
Steve
I just received this email from my office manager:
I love the word “threat,” as if the protestors are likely to take a torch to our rather nondescript office building. The only threat is that the city might go bankrupt from all the overtime the NYPD is collecting as a result of these protests.
Monkey Business
Apparently the 1% didn’t pay attention in world history when they talked about what happened in France in the 1780s and 1790s when the wealthy aristocracy started mocking the commoners.
Instead of guillotines, let’s use lasers this time.
Monkey Business
Apparently the 1% didn’t pay attention in world history when they talked about what happened in France in the 1780s and 1790s when the wealthy aristocracy started mocking the commoners.
Instead of guillotines, let’s use lasers this time.
MattR
@Villago Delenda Est: You can’t try and convince those people. All you can do is present a reasonable counter argument that you hope will reach the audience watching.
As I was reading the Ezra Klein column that somebody linked above I realized that the message that Ezra was so hopeful about, that these were young people who had done what they were told and gotten an education and not there is nothing waiting for them except debt payments, will be met by right wingers decrying the lack of responsibility for racking up student loans and then expecting others to pay for them. Unlike Ezra, they don’t see the quest for a college education as a good thing. They see it as a sign of liberal elitism. But you can’t let that vocal minority get you down. Hopefully the message Ezra described will resonate with a large percentage of the public, especially those who feel like they did everything right but got screwed by the housing crisis, etc in 2008/2009.
suzanne
@Roger Moore:
It’s like you just painted me a picture of matoko_chan.
Spaghetti Lee
@Judas Escargot:
It means you keep after them. That is all they’ve got left, and they can’t keep it up forever.
Jennifer
Jesus, all this gory talk of guillotines. Atrios has fainted dead away by now, I’m sure.
suzanne
@Gilles de Rais:
I said something similar about the mom of the dude that invented hackysack. But I think you’re even more right than I.
trollhattan
@Jennifer:
And, we all get “Moore” awards from Sully. I hope that includes a Madonna CD so I can run over it with my commie car.
Villago Delenda Est
@Monkey Business:
Sharks.
With frickin’ laser beams on their heads!
El Cid
Russ Feingold speaking to Greg Sargent:
Spaghetti Lee
@Monkey Business:
That’s an old spiritual, isn’t it?
“God gave Noah the ‘Jump you fuckers’ sign.
No more guillotines, the lasers next time.”
Jennifer
I’m gonna make up a bunch of T-shirts with a picture of a guillotine on them that say, “Care to dance with my date?”
Spaghetti Lee
“This is like the Tea Party — only it’s real,” Feingold said.
So it’s like the gritty reboot?
TooManyJens
@Spaghetti Lee: What’s to wonder about? They’re assholes.
suzanne
@Spaghetti Lee:
Oh my God, WIN.
Have an internet.
Spaghetti Lee
@Jennifer:
Public guillotinings-a great way to get ahead!
El Cid
@Spaghetti Lee: Tea Party II: Pekoe’s Revenge.
Jennifer
Or perhaps, picture of a guillotine with the legend: “Tell me the one about how you’re a “producer” and I’m a “parasite” again.”
Rafer Janders
@JGabriel:
Anyway, $380k/year includes a fair number people who still show up at an office. We’re talking CEOs, EVP’s, even SVPs at some companies, senior partners in law firms, traders, hedge fund managers, some doctors, etc.
Uh-uh. $380K a year isn’t just senior partners — it’s senior associates at some law firms, once you count in the bonus. $380K a year is no longer boss-level income, which just goes to show you how far boss-level income has risen relative to the median income in this country.
Spaghetti Lee
You always said you wanted to live like a queen, so go stick your neck under that guillotine.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@kindness:
In another, far distant time, we lop off their heads, stick em on the end of a pike, and put em out at the castle gate as a warning to the rest.
Trinity
Something is happening….
I like it.
suzanne
I do wonder, though, in all seriousness, how much blood would (or will) have to be shed before the 1% loosens their death grip on our collective nuts.
JGabriel
@Rafer Janders: You’re right, I meant and should have said associates, not partners. Thanks for the correction.
.
greenergood
I am SO looking forward to Thanksgiving Dinner with my hedge-fund manager brother, trophy wife, and their children who each have at least 40 pairs of shoes.
El Cid
It’s been linked before, but I just can’t read this stuff without weeping: http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
You try it. You can be angry and shocked and horrified and all too familiar and sad at the same time. Lots of people are, and have been throughout history.
Go look up the lyrics to “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.”
El Cid
@greenergood: I’ve got like 20 but that’s only because I won’t throw away the 10 pair that are crap and the 2 or 3 which seem to be useful around the yard.
D. Mason
@Judas Escargot:
I’m not trying to go all conspiracy theory on you but lets be real, a lot of the “conversations” the American public are privy to are extremely scripted so those counter arguments are built in. I can’t recall the last time I saw somethign on the news that wasn’t filled with pre-arranged questions/ideas that were easy to rebut. The OCW protests are unscripted and unplanned. It takes them a little time to get their shit together. The counter-top inspections will begin shortly.
suzanne
@Rafer Janders: God, why didn’t I become a lawyer? DAMN.
I keep getting calls about needing to pay my credit card bill. I feel like telling the credit card company that I’ve changed my number, and give them those dooshes’ number.
suzanne
@greenergood: You can come over to my pad. You can even have some leftovers.
I have cute pets. I don’t even serve them as part of the meal. I’m thinking of saving that honor for a member of the 1%.
suzanne
@greenergood: You can come over to my pad. You can even have some leftovers.
I have cute pets. I don’t even serve them as part of the meal. I’m thinking of saving that honor for a member of the 1%.
Jennifer
@suzanne: Well, here’s the thing, as I noted on a previous thread: their death grip on our collective nuts is there only at our permission.
I mean, I can see these folks are clueless enough that they might manage to just piss everyone off enough that a movement to “Tell the Fuckers to Eat That Debt” movement could pick up steam. Imagine everyone in the country sitting down the same week and writing out letters to each of their creditors that say, “fuck you, I’m not paying anymore.”
We live with this notion that they have this hold on us – but that hold only is there because we allow it. If we collectively decided to tell them to all go fuck themselves, what would they do about it? Can you imagine if even 1/4 of those with big debt did this? There aren’t enough collection agencies, law enforcement officers, courts, credit reporting agencies, etc etc etc to process a voluntary default on the part of even a sizable portion of us. What are they going to do, build huge debtors’ prisons?
Obviously that would not be an ideal outcome because there would be a lot of really bad economic fallout from such an action, but it exists as a possibility. Their hope is that it doesn’t occur to enough of us collectively to add up to an actual threat. At the same time, they don’t seem to be smart enough to accept their lousy 3% marginal income tax hike and keep their fat mouths shut, so…it could get to that point.
Mojotron
@Morbo:
Yep, that’s the building where Rick Santelli railed against paying the “losers’ mortgages” in a rant that gave birth to the tea party.
Burn the building and salt the earth.
JGabriel
@suzanne:
You could probably pull it off by having the death squads target the most conservative quarter of the top hundredth of a percent. I’m guesstimating that’s in the low thousands.
It would be very French Revolution-like, but with guns & knives instead of pitchforks & guillotines.
Do I actually want something like that to happen? No, not really. Do I want the richest conservative fuckers to fear the possibility and rein in their excesses in response? Hells yeah.
.
Trinity
@El Cid: I think that link should be mandatory viewing for all Villagers. Powerful.
Svensker
@Spaghetti Lee:
TBogg linked to the classic FYIGM love note from Wall Street.
My favorite section:
Jennifer
@JGabriel: Actually, I think the most conservative quarter of the top hundredth of a percent would be something like less than 100 people.
Yes, it’s that out of whack.
Trinity
@Jennifer: This.
Judas Escargot
@Spaghetti Lee:
Maybe. One does get a sense that they’ve shifted their weight to their back legs now, so to speak. But why the sudden shift? And why over OWS? It’s still just (in practical terms) a bunch of people, standing on the street with signs and talking.
I try to put myself inside the head of someone who looks eight floors down and thinks “Hey! Let’s put up signs and taunt the little fuckers!”. And I fail to comprehend, even in the abstract. No financial gain in it. Doesn’t enhance your connections, or social position. And (unless you have a helo parked on the roof) you’re going to have to go back down to walk amongst those very same ‘little people’ at some point.
It just feels new. At least in this particular context.
Mary
This is in Chicago? Of course. Fucking Chads. I bet they’re Cubs fans, too.
fasteddie9318
Does anybody else besides me think that this is heading toward a nation-wide strike?
OK, is anybody else besides me hoping that this leads to a nation-wide strike? How else short of violence do you make these fuckers pay attention? Instead of eating what they kill, let them eat from the big piles of rubbish that collect on their front lawns with no trash collection, since truckers won’t be bringing any food to market.
protected static
@Judas Escargot: Some of it is that Twitter doesn’t allow for much by way of coherence in 140 chars… Even still, I’ve been seeing some objections to OWS from lefties in my Twitter timeline, mostly those who’ve been long-time activists, mostly non-whites.
wrb
@fasteddie9318:
No.
Nation-wide protests yes, but striking isn’t the right form of protest when jobs and the economy are so vulnerable.
The corporate employers will use it as and excuse to identify and fire their more troublesome employees, the small employers will fail.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
The janitors probably put the signs up to make the richies look bad. At least I hope they did.
Li
I think that all of this violent talk is foolish. Attempting something like that (at least, that is, before several brutal crackdowns on peaceful people) would only empower the masters of violence to rain down real hell on our heads. Our guns might be swift, and our knives sharp, but if we attack the 1% directly they will have the use of flying killer robots and bombs that weigh more than your car in their counterattack.
Jennifer
@Judas Escargot: New in this context is correct, because they’ve been thumbing their noses at us increasingly over the past 10 years or so. First it was the first Bush campaign, where they made no pretense that they were going to buy the office for their hand-picked idiot son of privilege (this was why Bush was the first ever to decline public financing in the primary, because so many rich guys were handing them money), and when they weren’t able to buy it with mounds of cash, they stole it, right out in the open. Once they got away with that, all bets were off. “Let’s cut our taxes and bankrupt the government!” “Let’s have a war to reward our defense contractor and oil company campaign benefactors!” And so on and so on and so on. Recall it wasn’t until the 2000s that you ever heard anyone refer to working people as “moochers” and “parasites”. We had the spectacle of elected officials talking about how unemployed people were just “lazy” or drug users, how the people who couldn’t afford to get out of the way of natural disasters were to blame for being stuck in a disaster zone (and criminal, to boot) and on and on and on. It was only a matter of time until it showed up in this context, too.
fasteddie9318
I just don’t think protests alone cut it. This is an internationalized overclass that by now thinks that the bottom 99% could fuck off and die without affecting their quality of life in the slightest. Their key employees (for those who actually make shit) are all earning 50 cents/day in another country, and for the rest, well, banks can just keep trading in fake money and manipulating the stock market, and you don’t need peons for that. If the protests actually started to make trophy wife #3 cry into her morning bowl of pearls, fuck it, these guys will jet off and live someplace else, with lower income taxes to boot. Somehow they need to understand that they have a stake in how this country operates just like the rest of us.
Jennifer
@Jennifer: Boy, do I suck at math. I think I had in mind that statistic about how the top 400 in the country take home some ridiculous amount of the income/wealth.
Most conservative quarter of the top .01% would be something like 7,000 – 8,000 people. My bad.
Jennifer
@fasteddie9318: depends on the type of protest. If it morphed into debt protests where people refuse to pay, or labor protests where people didn’t show up for work, they’d figure out where our mutual interest lie in a big hurry. As a matter of fact, that type of thing has always been the ONLY thing that has ever made them figure it out.
Redshift
@Judas Escargot:
I think it’s actually a result of not making specific demands. If you demonstrate for something specific to be done, then you get a counter-argument or at least mocking of why it isn’t practical, and then you have to try to explain why it is, and then we’re into “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
Instead, this is about how we’re all getting screwed, even though we’re good citizens who worked hard to get ahead, because the rich financiers got to rig the system. Everyone who isn’t a Randian “everyone deserves however much they have” acolyte knows this is true, so the opposition is left with only “Dirty hippies! Get a job! Shut up!”
This is a good sign.
fasteddie9318
@Jennifer: That’s why I was thinking strike, but as bad as the jobs situation is, wrb may be right that it’s not the way to go. I think a debt protest would be fantastic, but as you say it would have to be in huge numbers to work, and if it failed then those who participated would be in deep shit.
greenergood
@El Cid: All three kids are under age 7, and their shoes are all Merrells, Keens, etc. The boys wear Gap, the girl wears Lilly Pulitzer – her closet contains clothing that is worth more than I earn in a year, maybe two years. They each have a nanny. The family is probably nearing the 1% threshold. I love Thanksgiving, such a family holiday …
Rafer Janders
@suzanne:
To be accurate, that’s only high-level lawyers at firms with an affluent client base. For every lawyer earning that’s much there’s ten who can’t even find a paying job in the current climate.
Mary
@MattR:
That, or they see it as uppity peasants trying move above their divinely ordained station in life.
@suzanne
Going to law school is a stinking rotten deal. A very very small percentage of students who graduate from law school land big fancy high paid jobs and of those I would say most burn out of law firm life within 5 years. Four years into my career and I fucking hate being a lawyer, but with six figure debt and no other marketable skills my only other option is to fake my own death and move off the grid.
wrb
@fasteddie9318:
I agree.
Just don’t think strikes would be a brilliant form of protest at a time when people are begging for work, small employers are on the verge of failure, and big employers would be happy to fire current workers and hire new ones for half the pay.
soonergrunt
@Lurking Canadian: Well, SOMEBODY is wrong on the internet. Most likely these days it’s the cousin-fucking hicks whining about ESPN benching Hank Williams, Jr, being the same as censorship.
But it’s not you being wrong today.
Mack Lyons
The people who put up that sign aren’t part of the 1%. They think they’re part of it, but they’re not.
The real 1% can’t be bothered to engage in such petty squabbling. They know damn well they’re the 1% and don’t have to advertise.
yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)
A crucial first step is to gain acknowledgement that the system is broken (well, for the rest of us, anyway).
This would seem to point toward that acknowledgement.
techno
@RandyH:
I have thought about your idea of an upgraded guillotine for some time.
1) It should be made of a surgical-grade stainless steel so it can be power-washed at the end of a big day.
2) The bearing surfaces should be upgraded to at least Teflon.
3) It might be a good idea to assist gravity in speeding the blade downward—I vote for compressed air.
Friendly design amendments are welcome.
cleek
@Svensker:
try it.
but first: in C++, what are the three meanings of the keyword ‘static’ ?
hmmm… what’s that blank look about?
redshirt
The folks who put those signs up are more than likely 20 something douchbag ex-Frat boys who see themselves as Galtian Heroes. Money firms are filled to the brim with these guys.
Spaghetti Lee
@techno:
Sound-effects. You know, “Shinnnng! Splatt! Roll-roll-roll.” That sort of thing.
geg6
@suzanne:
You might get a hint by reading your American history, circa the Gilded Age and so-called Progressive Age, and up to the Depression and WWII. Lotsa blood shed by brave, hard working people (I have a picture of my grandfather, bleeding heavily from the face and head, during the USW struggle to organize the Jones and Laughlin Steel mill in Aliquippa, PA) to get the benefits, rights, and wages that they are so eager to take away from us a hundred years later.
piratedan
@Villago Delenda Est: how about just putting these guys in the projects, sans cell phones and cars but letting them keep all of their bling…. it’ll be like The Warriors in reverse, a bunch of sophisticated day traders left on Coney Island, having to bop their way back to the safety of Wall Street.
Spaghetti Lee
@cleek:
Hey, bro, I’m a producer! I’ll just withhold my awesome talents from that computer until it finally needs me!
techno
@Spaghetti Lee:
Excellent! I had not thought about sound effects. Good idea.
Amanda in the South Bay
@cleek:
Mew, WTF? A static class is one that can’t be instantiated.
I’ll get back to you with the rest when I take my C++ final in December :)
ChrisNYC
I’m watching the livestream and the 1199 guy just said, “We know the answer. Tax the rich!” I wish wish wish they (OWS) would make that the demand.
ETA: 1199 is the SEIU local.
JGabriel
@Jennifer:
Yup, that’s more like it — it’s the figure for the entire population. I think about a quarter of the population files returns, so we’re probably talking about the top 2000 of those, give or take.
.
cleek
@Amanda in the South Bay:
hint: they came from C
Cris (without an H)
Thank you. I harp on this a lot: treating the top quintile, or even the top 1%, as a single class still papers over an incredible disparity in income and personal wealth.
Nobody I know makes over $100K (most make more like $30k) and so to us, $250,000 a year sounds “rich.” And on an objective, worldwide scale, maybe it is. But while $300k may get you a vacation home and a comfortable retirement, it doesn’t make you an NBA star or a venture capitalist.
YoohooCthulhu
@Svensker:
What kills me about the “we eat what we kill” quote is that they’re so disconnected that they don’t realize that this describes tons of jobs NOT on the Street which make far less money. Let’s see if they’re willing to put in 12 hour days for a teacher’s salary…
Jebediah
@Jennifer:
Love it! I’m picturing the Monopoly banker guy on it… wish I had any Photoshop or drawing skills.
Amanda in the South Bay
@cleek:
Ah, I see now. I’ll admit, C++ so far seems like a bizarre hybrid of C mixed with OOP.
ChrisNYC
Ok, so on the livestream this is getting a bit hijacked by unions. Seems not so well received on the twitter. OWS needs to make a decision. I know it’s boring but they really do need an ask — of their own — they did this, they get to run it.
replicnt6
@cleek:
Meh. When I want to brutalize an interviewee, I ask them to write code that produces the error “pure virtual method called” at runtime.
ericblair
@Cris (without an H):
It’s exponential. Some bozo in the top 0.1% could buy out the guy in the lower part of the top 1% with his pocket change. But, of course, it’s never enough, because some other bozo on the next block has more than Mr 0.1%. This sort of pointless hypercompetitiveness is a fucking mental illness.
Laser guide for precision cuts, and 45 degree compound miter cut capability so you can even out the rows of heads when the angle gets a little off. Compressed-air pike mounting attachment with pike magazine so you don’t have to reload every time. Electric pump for the blood pooling. Oh yeah, and a multiple-cut watermelon blade for snack time: this work makes a body hungry, donchaknow.
ruemara
@replicnt6:
let me guess, HR Manager at Microsoft?
Jenny
@El Cid: Too bad Feingold only talks the talk and doesn’t walk the walk.
Before the mid-term election, Feingold personally went to the White House and begged them not to raise taxes on the rich. (Via Digby)
Cat
@cleek: I can get two, scope and storage, whats the third? Or are you counting how a static member function behaves differently from a static function, which I lumped into scope?
@replicnt6: I gave this some thought and its not obvious to me how to do “pure virtual method called” when all the definitions are in the same compilation unit. I can do it using DLL’s though.
Bmaccnm
@cleek: Or, in the presence of prolonged rupture of membranes and moderate variability, are decelerations of the fetal heart rate that begin after the onset of contractions concerning or reassuring? In my business, it’s considered bad form to kill things, and worse form to eat them
MattR
@Svensker: That rant from the Wall Streeter was missing the caveat “but we will only do that if you pay us $200K or more with massive bonuses” which is really the crux of the problem. They think they are the super productive while the riff-raff are lazy without realizing that by funneling all the money upwards they removed all incentive for the masses to try and be super productive. But give em five years of working those same hours for a $60K a year job (to be generous) with absolutely no bonus or recognition of their hard work and they will be singing quite a different tune. Hell, all anyone had to do a year or so ago was threaten to alter their current bonuses and they shrieked like they were mortally wounded.
Svensker
@YoohooCthulhu:
A teacher’s salary? At least that’s middle class and somewhat fulfilling. Let’s pay them $12/hour — well over minimum wage — and let them work at some shit job with no benefits, of course. Also, too, an asshole boss who is trying to get into their pants (yeah, right, sue him! That’s always a job keeper these days). Or maybe like one place I worked (for 3 days — I quit, because I could) where the employees were not allowed to speak to each other. At all. Since I was new and had no idea how stuff worked or where anything was, I needed to ask other staff, but they were too terrified to talk to me. It was brilliant. A large, very rich firm, too.
Arrogant and clueless is a terrible condition — I hope they all get cured, one way or the other.
Svensker
@MattR:
Yeah, my bankster friend had to buy used ski equipment for his kids’ trip to Aspen. Can you imagine? He was really upset about it. At the time we were making room in our house for another friend who had been unemployed for over a year and was homeless, so I was only marginally sympathetic. (What really slayed me about the latter is that we had a small house and not a lot of extra space or money but we made room for our friend. He had asked his “best friend” who lives in a 14-room mansion and is one of the most prominent doctors in very rich Bergen County, but that guy couldn’t see his way clear to letting his poor friend live in his basement for a few months. Rich doctor is also a big Republican. Color me surprised.)
Cris (without an H)
Why is this a bad thing? It’s not like they’re getting co-opted by Coca-cola. Their protest is transforming, at the hands of the people who invented the word “solidarity.”
Cassidy
11% unemployment amongst veterans and rising. A generation of kids trained for war and used said skills to help them become the 1%. If they weren’t so clueless, they’d be shitting themselves in fear. lol
Betsy
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
I was thinking secretaries, but I’m otherwise right there with you. I was surprised no one mentioned this possibility yet.
replicnt6
@ruemara:
Never worked for MS. My manager at my previous job wanted me to be the bad cop technical interviewer. I’d never done technical questions before. I was amazed at how quickly people folded when asked to write simple code. I’d feel OK about an interviewee from the general “What have you worked on” questions, then we’d get to the actual technical questions. Very very few made to the pure virtual function call question. A surprising number choked on implementing a linked list.
birthmarker
@Svensker:
Honestly, this statement reminds me of my years teaching school.
wrb
@Svensker:
Why should they live such a life of luxury. These days a lot of Americans are hoping for a job at minimum wage.
Take home pay, if working 40/hrs/ week= $241.96/week
However many employers limit workers to 30 hours a week so they don’t have to pay benefits = $181/week
or
$9436.40/year
replicnt6
@Cat:
If it were obvious, it wouldn’t be a fun question. You don’t need separate compilation units.
It was really a discussion question, and I’d steer them in the right direction as they tried to puzzle it out. I didn’t really expect anyone to just know. Unless they’d written a C++ compiler. In which case it wasn’t an interesting question. But assuming they hadn’t written a C++ compiler, it gave some insight into their depth of understanding of polymorphism and ability to think on their feet.
MattR
@Svensker: Geez. Another thing that occurred to me about that rant is how easily it can be flipped around. If every investment bank in the world decided that playing by the new rules and having to pay a more reasonable portion of their profits in taxes was too harsh for them and decided to go out of business, new firms would pop up to replace them because there is still money to be made even with those “horrific” new restrictions. (EDIT: And those new firms would be staffed by people who were just as competent as the previous group but who accepted the new tax rate)
I also love that they expect me to believe that while they currently work their ass off to take home about $6000 of every $10000 over 250K they earn, they will cut back their work (and salary) if they can only take home $5500 of that $10000 instead. I don’t believe for a second that someone making $260K would leave that $5500 on the table, let alone someone who was making a $1.25 million cutting back to $250K and giving up the $550,000 after taxes. In fact they have shown themselves to be such greedy bastards, that my biggest fear with raising taxes is that they will become more motivated to make money in shadier and shadier ways to make up for the loss of take home profit. (EDIT: But of course they are so greedy that I am pretty sure their motivation level is already pegged to the ceiling)
singfoom
@replicnt6: That’s just evil. Quick question about the process, by the time they’ve gotten to the live interview with tech questions, have you gotten a code sample?
Like a solution to a small scale problem? I’ve always found that weeds out the people who can’t get past saying the latest buzzwords for development.
Personally, after I’ve gotten past the technical questions, I always like to ask people “Are you a classist or a mockist?”
It’s a stupid interview question, but they get points if they know what I’m talking about, and bonus points if they choose a side and defend it well. If they’re really smart, they’ll tell me where and when classes should be used for testing rather than mocks. Only 1 person has gotten there so far…
Cat
@replicnt6: I looked it up after I posted as I thought my solution was way to complicated to be a very good interview question and the most common answer on the internet is one I’d never run into.
Somehow I’ve gotten lucky and never slice objects in 10 years or so of writting C++.
Comrade Kevin
@Amanda in the South Bay:
well, that’s basically what it is.
nancydarling
@Amanda in the South Bay: I think of you sometimes, Amanda. Are you doing well? Hadn’t seen you around in a while.
ChrisNYC
@Cris (without an H): I don’t know, I think they (OWS) did it. In politics, there is so much glomming on — things that energize people get co opted into something else because there are all these interests swirling, just looking for face time, voters, money. I love unions but who knows, these kids (and when I was there they were kids) have different goals, maybe. They created it, they own it. They should say what goes, I think.
Have to say, after I posted that comment there was a fierce pushback on the union bashing and lots of talk about “THEY are trying to divide us — don’t let it happen!!!!” OWS is totally adorable in many ways.
Cat
@singfoom: Most c++ coders won’t get it at all, java coders are more likely to, but anyone whose worked on a SaaS project had better be able to answer that question.
Bill Arnold
@techno:
A friend made a guillotine as a prop for a Halloween party we held (theme – revolution) a decade ago. Blade was foam in a wood carrier, but it made a satisfying noise when it dropped, and all the drunken conversations stopped for 5 or 10 seconds. Halloween is approaching…
TuiMel
@Mack Lyons:
Odie Hugh Manatee
@RandyH:
For these fuckers I would design a new type of “National Razor”, more like a National Rusty Ripsaw. No sharp, heavy blade dropping from on high, nosiree. It would use a sawing action, dropping down an eighth of an inch per cut.
No fast and clean punishment, let them suffer. If that’s too inhumane then human catapults located on skyscrapers would be a viable option for punishment.
arguingwithsignposts
Two things: There’s a site for the pampered whiners: White Whine. And there’s a whole series of movies that has already explored advanced guillotination: It’s called the Saw franchise.
No need to reinvent the, erm, wheel.
gelfling545
@cleek: I got a nice chuckle from picturing any one of them standing in front of a class of 36 middle-schoolers.
gelfling545
@birthmarker: Oh yes, indeed.
Frank
it made it to boing-boing
ChrisNYC
So, OWS has a contingent at the community board meeting tonite. They have apparently been the subject of noise complaints, some talk of “evictions.” (The park itself is actually private property, owned by Brookfield Properties but with public access due to tax credits.) Hard to imagine who lives in that immediate area and would hear noise but I am glad that they are cognizant of regular people who live/work around there. It’s a claustrophobic place, people stacked on top of each other.
Amanda in the South Bay
@nancydarling:
Busy as hell with school. And other life related stuff that is sorta overwhelming. I suppose its fine, but just busy as hell.
handy
@replicnt6:
I know this because I did it once trying to be too clever by half.
@Comrade Kevin:
I find the C++ standard library a big improvement over C’s.
ChrisNYC
Very inside baseball now but there is an issue at the meeting about barricading. OWS says it is Homeland Security but residents are pissed. Have to say, the park is two short blocks from Ground Zero. Separate from huge security presence, which has been true since 9/11, the place is just crawling with people, looking at the site, vendors, random crazies. I’ve been there at 1 am and it’s buzzing. OWS has to deal with that, it’s not going away and it’s not directed at them or at hippies. I love the local stuff so, sorry.
Lurking Canadian
@replicnt6: I’m having a hard time envisioning code that would fail in that way, but still make it through the compiler in the first place, since the compiler shouldn’t let you instantiate that class, or any derived class that doesn’t override that function.
I imagine you might be able to fool the compiler if you used an unsafe cast (reinterpret_cast or old-style cast) to cast an equivalent sized array to your abstract base class, then passed it as a parameter to a function that took an abstract base class * as input. Then again, that seems equally likely to result in a null pointer exception. It is, at any rate, a really good question.
@handy:
The standard template library is so good that I would answer any interview question about implementing a linked list with “Nobody should ever implement a linked list when the STL is right there. It is an error-prone waste of time. But, since you insist…”
Roger Moore
@cleek:
What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of SILAC when compared to ITRAQ and Label Free methods for animal studies?
Ruckus
@Gilles de Rais:
Not defending Rand’s “work” here but it’s not her fault that so many idiots have taken what is at best, a 3rd rate novel and tried to make a lifestyle out of it. I mean it is so bad the best movie they could make out of it is less interesting than watching snails shit. And whose contribution to mankind is worth even less.
triangular gutters
@El Tiburon: These d-bags and the Champagne Brigade along with NYPD are Occupy’s best friends.
Funny thing, that. Ignore the NYPD. Let’s say you’re a /b/astard with a /b/alcony, or a goon in a cube on the eighth floor. Not only do you get troll points for the champagne and signs, you invigorate the protests. As a tactic for supporters, the trolling is a win.
I know, as always “really clever troll, or really that stupid?” is murky and odds are usually on “stupid”. But if you were inside and wanted to amp up the protest, what would you do?
birthmarker
@triangular gutters: The pepper sprayer amped it up!
arguingwithsignposts
@triangular gutters:
If they were /b/tards, there’d be a troll face on the signs for epic win.
magurakurin
I know all the talk about guillotines isn’t serious, but in all seriousness the Terror really wasn’t so much about killing the rich as it was the Jacobins killing their suspected enemies, mainly the Girondins. Thomas Paine, hardly a French noble, was in prison during the Terror and awaiting execution. And the last guy to get the chop was Robespierre, himself.
The Jacobins more or less fucked everything up and led to the military dictatorship of Napoleon, who plunged Europe into long and bloody continental warfare.
Violent revolutions have often gone places nobody planned for.
triangular gutters
Oh yeah. When interviewing, I do have a couple of questions for people who write C++ on their resume, because the range of knowledge and competence in the language is so huge.
But I don’t know the language very well; I just see shadows of disasters show up in the linker and ABI so I can trip people up with that. If somebody were to ask me a C++ question in a job interview, I’m going to be turning that around into finding out why exactly the hiring organization is using C++ and which subset of language features are seen as important for that. Cthuloid disaster of an application programming language.
triangular gutters
@arguingwithsignposts:
Yeah, that would be EPIC. Once. But I don’t know if the trolling were done with a wink that DougJ would have put it on the front page and blustered about going full #occupy.
If the entire conversation was insiders, the people in the office could taunt with EFG….
replicnt6
@Lurking Canadian:
This http://support.microsoft.com/kb/125749 is a concise example.
This. I’ve been working with C# for the last three years and I can’t believe they didn’t do a better job of their template library. STL is a work of art.
replicnt6
@handy:
Ironically, I also hit this once trying to be too clever by half. After I’d made it my standard last interview question.
I originally encountered it as a result of a bug in the Microsoft C++ compiler optimizer. Back in the day when you could submit a bug report via email and get a reply. Must have been C++ 4.00 or 5.00.
Ruckus
@techno:
You are thinking of making it more efficient. That will not give the most satisfying results.
1. Blade does not have to be sharp, just heavy.
2. Rust sounds good but the pain is not going to be any different.
3. Face up, not blindfolded, heavy, dull blade with no assistance. Gives them the chance to see it coming and it is not over super fast. If the first hit is unsuccessful, raise the blade and take another shot.
You may notice that I’m not for humane methods in this instance as inhumane methods are all these fuckers know.
Menzies
@Svensker:
I told a friend of mine about this and her response was “well maybe the friend stole the TV to buy drugs . . . I hesitate to pass judgment without more information.”
Call me crazy, but I think that’s part of the problem. These are people who have given us every reason to pass judgment, because they act like assholes without even being prompted.