How is NO one talking about... (Occupy X Protests)

[Drake Wingfire]

Wait, you make $9.40 and live on your own? :o

This bodes well for me.  ;D

On my own? Oh god damn freaking hell no XD I would starve to death even at the place I am living now in Duncan on the island here..

$9.40 when I am rooming with my mate who makes $10.30 means we can actually afford rent, both our cars AND food at least decently enough, but it still means saving money for school or anything is an extremely slow process when you can only manage very small amounts every month.

In regards to Selkit; yeah this is true, I live in one of the more "lower income" citys on the island here and $500/mo no utils is the best deal me and my mate found, everywhere else wanted at least close to $700/mo for a 1 bedroom of comparable size. Don't get me wrong, I love Duncan cause its nice and small and not so crowded and full of druggies, but BC has become the Florida of Canada, we are bringing in too many rich retirees and its been jacking housing and commodity prices way up. Unless the government truly does something then Alberta and Saskatchewan are gonna keep seeing skilled BC workers moving over to where the costs of living are lower and the wages are significantly higher. In other words, BC is trying to fix our local economy like a shotgun would fix the hull of a boat.

[EmoFox]

Yeah. i mean, even if the world DOES end in 2012, what good is panicking gonna do about it? :p
But it'll be interesting to see if any of this 'end of civilization' "fall of American empire" 'spiritual revelation' stuff happens. It makes me kinda giddy just thinking about it, XD *is a loser*

[Haemish]

I'm thinking of checking it out, looks like a nice bike ride for Saturday morning.

I was able to live on my own (well, with a roommate) on minimum wage 7 years ago.  Not having a car helped, and I hardly spent *any* money on things that weren't important.  It is do-able.

[Tonk]

But that is just one of many things why I fear the government.

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
-Thomas Jefferson

[Kuviare]

I hope I'm not the first here to bring up the whole 'Remember the Y2K scare?' thing... But really. That one had a semi-not-really-but-it-scared-the-techturtles-reasonable reason behind it, with the old clocks resetting. With 2012, it's based on an interpretation of an old civilization we don't fully understand, and then sensationalized and publicized until it becomes fact, or at least popular myth.

Honestly.

The reason everything seems to be going terribly is because of the speed and power of our communication. We haven't even had anything heavy hit home yet in North America. Sure, the storms out east, and oil and food prices hiking... housing as well... but imagine how it must have felt after the first Great War. All the soldiers, well more importantly, very few of the soldiers come home, and what happens? Spanish Flu. Kills millions, whole towns deserted with one or two paranoid souls left, bodies burning... This is nothing.
We're just far more aware of how much stuff there is going on in the world. And how terrible a large amount of it is.

Now I'm not saying things aren't getting worse, I mean, Greece has defaulted, a large amount of the Middle East is in turmoil, there's the newer Occupy things going on... but it's not all a bad thing. These changes, these struggles, are all important, and many good.

Change is the thing that keeps systems working properly. It's either change and adapt or stagnate and die, and s a race, as the only active sentient entity on this earth... we owe it to the land that spawned us to not bolluck it up. We need to change, we will adapt... and we'll prosper for it. We've discovered a virus that kills cancer cells with 100% effectiveness and no ill side-effects to the host. We're making more powerful solar cells and other green energy types, and cybernetics is no longer a thing of fantasy and imagination. We have machines that can sense our very thoughts, lenses that can look as far within as without, and we're finally getting a handle on just how we really fit into the world.

In all this turmoil and pain all I can do is look forward, eagerly, and push things along as best as I can.

Thus I'll be there at the support protest. Hope to see you there!

{edit} Fixed any language and the odd double-post thing

[squashNstretch]

I want to know what OWS is trying to accomplish. Yes I read their site and some information on them, but it's not clear what they want to do, beyond annoy the free market and get their 15 minutes on TV.

It's about a whole bunch of different things for different people. Students are mad they pay monster tuition fees for jobs that aren't available. People are angry at all the real estate speculation in Vancouver that has blasted home ownership out of the reach of the average citizen. In the states it the sub prime loans that banks were selling to people, then betting *against* them in the market and repo-ing their houses when they couldn't make payments when prime went up a hair. It has been reported that the top 1% of all earners own 40% of all the wealth. This may not be exactly the stat in Canada, but I've read the gap is actually larger up here (No source, admittedly. Sorry). This is particularly troubling when you consider how much of this is 'old money'. Trust fund kids of the USA richest families: http://www.nndb.com/lists/439/000127058. To expand on this, I would love to see a progressive estate tax imposed in Canada akin to what Warren Buffet is talking about: http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/14/us-buffett-congress-idUSN1442383020071114

For a good, and brief tidbit. Here is our own Canadas worst 'reporter' Kevin O'leary getting told what OWS is about from pulizter winning Chris Hedges. If that makes you mad, know that your taxes pay to put Kevin O'Leary on the air.

Chris Hedges smacks down Kevin O'Leary [© CBC]

Truth be told, things are not as bad up here in Canada as they are in the USA... But this is a general protest against the established double standard given to corporations over citizens, the rich over the poor. To quote Richard Beale famous speech from 'The Network': I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[Zen]

I made reference to that speech before, from Network, but removed the embedded youtube vid. (Stupid auto-embed.)

I've had one person explain it decently, what the ultimate goal is, but that's it. Beyond their one explanation, this just seems like a vague attention grab session still. It might spark conversation, and some protests, but will ultimately die out.

[squashNstretch]

It could possibly fade out. Then again, the whole Tunisian revolution was sparked by some person getting fed up with being insulted and harassed by a government official. I'm optimistic people wont be lighting themselves on fire, but I'd love to see things shaken up a bit. My personal talking point is the estate tax.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi

[lunar_prodigy]

downtown today ( Saturday Oct 15th) at noon, in front of art gallery. show up and support!

http://act.bcfed.ca/solidaritywithoccupywallstreet/

[Ember]

You aren't supposed to live on your own on minimum wage.

It's the bare bones wage for shitty jobs meant for people with no skils.

Living on your own / having a car / eating well are luxuries that society has reserved for people who have something to give back.

[Ember]

It's minimum livable wage, as in "you wont die if you have this much money"

It's not Minimum live on your own while you drive a car and eat out every day... wage.

[Drake Wingfire]

You aren't supposed to live on your own on minimum wage.

It's the bare bones wage for shitty jobs meant for people with no skils.

Living on your own / having a car / eating well are luxuries that society has reserved for people who have something to give back.

I take it you still live at home then, that or you are one of the "lucky ones" who got in on some good job.
But a little reality check none the less, no one openly chooses to live paycheck to paycheck. And if decent food, being able to simply drive to work and not living on the street is a "luxury" then we are even more fucked than we thought :P

I know dozens of people who got skills alright, people who went to college and actually specialized in something, not one of these lame "personal interest" courses that get you nothing at the end, wanna know where they work? Wal-mart, Starbucks and Mc Donalds because the jobs are not even there or even if they are the hours and wage are shit for the amount of training they went through. Still not sure what you mean by "reserved for people who have something to give back" I just assume you forget about all the taxes that everyone pays on shit or the fact that even the lowest of jobs is providing a service to everyone. Try getting that car, buying that food or getting a house when there is no one working the stores to get the food from, no mechanics or car salesmen to help you with that vehicle, or no tradesmen to build the homes, its a little tricky I would think.

[Univaded_Fox]

The Occupy protesters, along with Amnesty International, will be staging a protest in Surrey at the Sheraton Hotel on the morning of October 20, to protest George W. Bush's speaking engagement (ironically at a summit concerning economics).
http://www.straight.com/article-488596/vancouver/occupy-surrey-protest-welcome-george-w-bush-canada

[drewdle]

You aren't supposed to live on your own on minimum wage.

It's the bare bones wage for shitty jobs meant for people with no skils.

Living on your own / having a car / eating well are luxuries that society has reserved for people who have something to give back.

I want you to think about this the next time you go to WalMart to buy groceries or to an EBGames to pick up your latest entertainment: the people who work there and serve you make very close to or minimum wage. If they weren't there, where would you buy groceries or video games? How can you possible have the pall to say these people don't have anything to give back, or have no skills? What about when you go out for coffee? Or you buy your gas? And on and on.

The gears that grind and work this society are the people with the minimum wage jobs who pump the gas for CEOs and make the coffee of marketing directors. They don't have the luxury of parents who can afford to send them to school; they pay for it on their own with these shitty jobs and through extortionist student loans that our provincial government provide, so that they can afford to "give something back", and so they don't feel like the scum that you make them feel they are. And in the end? They're still working at Starbucks because their degree doesn't guarantee them a job, and now the government needs to be repaid.

Also, it must be nice that while you wait for your skills to develop, you have somewhere to live where you don't have to support yourself, whether that be friends, parents, or whatever. I guess it never crossed your mind that some of our friends or parents don't have the financial backing to support us either, even if they are of "value to society", such as my father, a 30+ year veteran of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a Federal Government department.

As far as I'm concerned, for the amount of shit these "no skills" workers put up with every single day, their minimum wage should be $16/hr. That would put them above the poverty line. We consider shelter, food, clothing, and health to be basic human rights and yet we make people fight for it like animals to the benefit of companies who take the savings and give it all in a fat cheque to their already overpaid CEOs.

No skills workers. To paraphrase Trudeau, fuddle-duddle. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuddle_duddle)

[Rant]

Making $9.40 hourly and living on your own is *not* easy, Ren. Nigh impossible anywhere but Langley or Surrey if you have anything more than basic expenses (Optometry, prescriptions or whatever; Next to no employers take care of these expenses nowadays)

I know it's an old quote, but I've got something for zombies, I make 10 an hour with my bf who makes 20 cents less and together we have difficulty, not to mention with him going to school so he can make more money is very stressful on us both! I was lucky enough for my dad to step in and buy me new glasses. With 'no schooling' jobs... what are we supposed to do? Nelson is expensive, they did a poll on housing and found very little below 750 and that's not mentioning whether its utl. included or no.
I'm just glad that when Remi's done culinary school people will still be needing to eat.