Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 29, 2011

Maybe Freckles is stock boy in a supermarket.

Sitting down? Okay, suppose that at some point down the pike Trudeau exposes Citizen X as a scion of one of the wealthiest billionaire families on the planet.

I remember Trudeau using the “egg freckles” line in a series about the Apple Newton in 1988 or so. It’s apparently a stock random phrase for him …

Interesting article in the NYT about possibly Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul maybe the only Presidential candidates who belong to the 99%. Even that isn’t certain because they report their incomes in a range that starts below the mark for the 1%-$700,000 per year for household- and then goes above it.

OWS calls this “The People’s Microphone”. In linguistics, it’s known as “call-and-return”, and is prone to fostering group- think and collectivist thought. This subordination of individual thought to group goals has had some very unfortunate historical outcomes.

@Susan Newman, it’s because of noise regulations.

A book that almost 35 years ago addressed many of the issues confronting us today is “The Age of Uncertainty” (1977) by John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), an eminent Harvard University economist. (The book is out of print, but you should find it in most libraries.) Galbraith published many books over the years, but I recommend this particular book because it is a comparative easy read for the layman. (Indeed, I consider the book much better than the 10-parts TV series by the same name.) Galbraith was definitely not a devotee of pure laissez-faire economics. His views concerning the rise of corporate power should be unsettling to those reading his works today.

I think you mean Hegel, Acton is famous for his quote that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely

Thanks for the link, I just downloaded it to my iPod.

Obama is part of the 1%. He became so in 2007 from his book royalties. The countries that are taking most of our jobs are not part of NAFTA (even still, I do not support NAFTA). Who would you like to see occupy the White House?

@sharuniboy: He also said “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” People tend to misquote it.

How come actors, directors, athletes, and television personalities who earn hundreds of millions are exempt from the anger? Is it because they are on the correct side politically? Why aren’t they sharing their money with me?

Corporate raiders look for flailing companies, buy stock, get control, sell off the assets, reap the money, go away leaving the company an empty shell and the employees lose their jobs. Mitt Romney’s career: instead of reaping, he revamps the company, gets it running good again, then sells his stock and goes on to the next, having saved the employees their jobs and the consumers that brand of product. I think I’d like to see him in the WH, see what he’d do.

The current cutoff for the 1% is $700,000 per household. In 2007 it was $350,000. According to government reports an private studies the income for working and middle class Americans has remained stagnant since 2001, if not longer. This means that gap between the rich and the rest has grown bigger and the rich have gotten richer even during the Great Recession.

About Obama being in the 1%. ..who can begrudge an individual who profits from a product, an invention, a sports or artistic career, a book or other published item including a comic strip. Rather,it bugs the 99% that an atrocious amount of cash and benefits is given to individuals to enter and leave high positions in multimillion/billion dollar corporations, or other glaring examples of obscene rewards or entitlements.

It was Santayana who said that those who don’t remember history are threatened to repeat it, and Hegel who said that nobody ain’t never learned nothin’ from history. Just search Google quotes for these folks for the grammatical versions.

There are many jobs for Americans who have apprenticeship certificates (and usually little or no student loan debt), and few jobs for college graduates with advanced degrees in Creative Writing (and often massive student loan debt).