mheslep said:
Yes. A precise definition of fascism is illusive but I think the "occupiers" can be safely said to have common cause with traditional fascism.
You do realize that you cherry picked a set of facts to support your fallacy. The fallacy you used is some variant of
Reductio_ad_Hitlerum[/quote]
Anyway, neither the left or right have a monopoly on fascism but I will address each point individually.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/"
[*]Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Small tariffs aren’t a terrible idea anyway, as people should prefer goods from their own country and prices should reflect this. The current situation subsidizes the negative externalities which result from transporting goods over long distances. It also makes any stimulus efforts incredibly difficult. An alternative way to achieve this would be through a negative income tax. Now if everyone didn't fear starvation you might argue that this would kill the incentive to work. However if nations stopped manipulating their currencies world wages would adjust to much more natural levels and this would maintain the incentive to work. I can’t help but believe that a big part of the motivation of free trade is to break organized labor.
[*]Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market...
I have no opinion on this.
[*]Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
This can be solved with a negative income tax.
[*]Free college education.
A better alternative is to make the access to the means of education free. For instance if I can watch a lecture at home on a video there is no need for me to go to a classroom. Harvard has actually proposed that most learning should be done outside the classroom and the purpose of the classroom should be to discuss what is learned.
[*]Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
I don’t think the technology is here yet.
[*]One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Without looking at it further this is sort of an arbitrary number.
[*]One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
This seems like sort of a random request.
[*]Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Isn’t this already protected?
[*]Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Doesn’t this sort of contradict labor protection?
[*]Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Not sure if this would be more or less susceptible to abuse.
[*]Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, ... And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
This sounds quite extreme. Surely they all can’t be advocating this.
[*]Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Interesting proposition.
[*]Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
Not sure the current status of collective bargaining laws.
[/QUOTE]
I can tell you were there.
