What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[Lissa]

No, you are still deflecting. Your above comments is a perfect deflection. What you've illustrated is not equality of opportunity, you've described no opportunity. There has to be an opportunity there to even check to see if there is an equality of opportunity, what you've described above is a complete and utter lack of opportunity, something completely different.

I don't see it that way. An open job position is an opportunity for someone, being accepted into college is an opportunity, having a good idea and the means to start a new business venture is an opportunity. Disagreeing with you is not deflecting.

Again, no, it's not. If there is no opportunity, there is no chance for equality. You cannot say that just because there's no opportunity then it's equal to all. You have to have an opportunity to begin with to check on equality of such.

Likewise, I don't know if you've been paying any attention to the tuition situation in this country, but there is definitely not the same equality of opportunity with education right now. When I was in college in the early 90s, tuition was in relative check and there were a lot of people going to college that wouldn't have been able to do so otherwise (I was the first child on my Mother's side of the family to get a 4 year degree) and it was because I worked hard my Junior and Senior years in high school along with good test scores that allowed me to pick my choice of college and because tuition was low, able to go to the college of my choice. If I were to try to do the same thing from 2006 to now, I would find that I would have had to pay triple the amount of tuition along with all the other incidentals to try getting a 4 year degree which would have been extremely difficult under the same circumstances I had back in the early 90s. This is a perfect illustration of inequality of opportunity to get a better education.

We have a higher inequality of opportunity now than we did a decade or two ago.

An example of equality of opportunity is you have a position and five people apply for said position. The position requires either a degree or 5 years experience. Now, let's setup the five people.

Applicant one has a degree in the area you're looking for, some experience in another area (re-educated trying to try a new career), happens to be latino, and has excellent references.

Applicant two has a degree, 5 years experience in the area, happens to female, and has so-so references.

Applicant three has no degree, has 10 years experience, happens to be a white male, with good references.

Applicant four has no degree, has 5 years experience, happens to be asian, and a friend of your boss (their only real reference).

Applicant five has a degree, 2 years experience, has mediocre references, and happens to be a close friend.

Now, in an equality of opportunity, all of the applicants fit the minimum for the position. You interview all of them and your final choice is based on who interviewed best and had the best references.

But the way things work now, applicant four and applicant five would be chosen over the others because of connections with the company (#4 due to being a friend of the boss and #5 due to being a friend of you the interviewer). This is more typical that most people realize as a large majority of jobs are handled by word of mouth than by putting out an advertisement (this was an interesting statistic given to me by someone that helps with job placement when I was looking for work last year). If a large number of positions are going through the word of mouth method, that right there tells you that equality of opportunity does not exist.

Well, yes, in your hypothetical example, hypothetical bad things happened. I'll dig up some real world data first, then respond.

Reports by the EEOC on hiring statistics

Ok, looking at most of the reports, I see the results are more participation by minorities and women across the spectrum. Is it perfect, no, far from it. The report on the financial industry, a bastion of white male power, is moving more slowly than others. Are we moving in the right direction? Yes, I think we are. Could we do better? Yes, we could.

Now, examining what is right, and wrong with your hypothetical situation. As a hypothetical hiring manager, I would be interested in interviewing the women and minorities first, because our company does business with state, and federal agencies which require us to have representative equality in our workforce or we lose our contracts with them. So, I'd be interested in hiring them first, and if one of them fits the need, I'd hire them. I actually faced this when I worked at a railroad. I had to buy my computers from a minority business enterprise (at higher prices), or the railroad would lose federal contracts. But, more to the point, it is the correct moral position to both do what fair for society, and to look out for the interests (increase the profitability) of the company for which you work. You are right though, that some people don't get it.

However, your intimation that inside relationships help is correct in one way, and that is in being able, as a potential candidate, to take your inside contacts out for coffee and pump them for information which would better help you to get the position. This works, even if the inside contact is a friend of a friend, of a friend... hence, why a web site like Linkedin.com is very useful, and successful. But, if you always just help your friends, and those of the boss, you will find yourself slapped with many, many deserved lawsuits. That is if the HR department, if they had any shred of credibility, didn't stop you first. A part of their job is to shield the company from EEOC violations.

But, I've hired thousands of people in my life. I see their resume first, and on that I look at their job history first. If they've been employed in the industry for > 5 years I don't even care about their educational history. Mostly I look at what they've accomplished, and secondly, how many new things they've done. I find less value in someone who does the very same thing for 30 years, than in someone who's moved around every 3-5 years and learned multiple industries. Based on what I see as qualifications in the resume, I'd select 5 to 10 for interviews with HR first. Based on their feedback, I'd choose the top 5 to interview with a member of my technical team first, and then with me. If the position is managerial, I might also have them interview with my boss, because they just might be taking my job some day. Gender and ethnicity don't come into it. Except that, for me, I've tried very hard to find every reason to increase the number of women and minorities in my field because it is white male dominated.

You haven't been doing much in the way of hiring recently then. Perfect example of this is where I work presently for Verizon. With the exception of myself and maybe 5 others out of a team of 45, everyone is interconnected. Some were brought in by the manager, some where brought in by other employees. I was one of the few people that got in due to the merits of my experience, my references, and my education as I had no ties to anyone else in my group. Think about that, a little over 10% of those hired into the team I'm on had no outside connection to anyone involved in the team. And what I've seen is typical, not atypical. The better connection you have with someone in an organization that is hiring, the more likely you are to get hired. Things are very different right now for being hired and it's far more about who you know that what you know.

Err...what? How can you say that people are better off right now than they were a decade ago when the job situation was much better then than it is now? And I would really like to see these young people saying they'll do better than their parents. Every thing I've seen says exactly the opposite, that young people are realizing they will not do as well as their parents unless their parents are truly destitute and they can maybe claw their way up a little. Right now, the situation is far worse for young people then it has ever been in the past century, possibly history of the US. How you could possibly think that they would be better off than their parents is just astounding to me.

The way that the Occupy Wallstreeters see it is thus;



They point to the fact that wages have fallen as a portion of GDP from 50% to 43% since 1947. What they don't acknowledge is that Real GDP per capita has gone from less than $10,000 to more than $50,000 over that same period. Would you rather have 43% of the 50K/p pie, or 50% of the 10K/p pie?

The great recession has caused a big disruption, and I'm not even sure how much we can bounce back from it, but we will bounce back some in the short term(3-5 years), and more in the longer term (5-10 years). It's natural to be pessimistic when you've just been beaten up and thrown in the ditch. But, we will get up, clean ourselves up, and slog on.

Jester covered this very well. The problem I also see with your data is thus; you're looking at $10k in 1947 and comparing that to $50k in 2010, that's really comparing apples to oranges. In order to properly compare those values, you have to either deflate the $50k to 1947 levels or you need to inflate the $10k to 2010 levels.

Taking the following: Inflation Calculator

Then plugging in $10k in 1947 and bring it up to 2010 standards, that $10k turns into a whopping $100.4k of equivalent money. So when you put in proper perspective, hell yes I would take 50% of $10k at 1947 levels over 43% of 50k at 2010 levels.

But again, as Jester pointed out and what I've been saying, the wealth is being concentrated in the top tiers and the bottom is getting squeezed out and is worse off today than it was over 60 years ago.