Is OWS a million strong?

[yella_dawg]

So how deep does support for OWS run?

If a million Americans moved their accounts to locally owned banks or credit unions, the banks would notice. If they then, all one million of them, opened safety deposit boxes and "escrowed" all bills owed directly to banks in the safety deposit box, before ninety days passed, the banks would capitulate, if they survived. If there are five million real OWSers, the whole thing would work much faster.

The power of the pocketbook. We've always had it. Maybe it's time to remember that.

[Zorra]

1. Organize this through OWS and use it as a show of strength and resolve.

Great idea!
:thumbsup:

[ixion]

2. Including all the unions and groups that have endorsed it, yes, it is

[FarCenter]

3. Why would the banks care?

First, the 1% have the money.

Second, all the major banks have software which analyses profitability on a per customer basis. It is questionable whether customers who would move and account because of a $5/month fee on accounts with no direct deposit and with a minimum balance less than $1500 are customers that are very profitable.

I'm sure they are watching who is leaving and how profitable those customers are.

[pipi_k]

4. This bothers me...

"...before ninety days passed, the banks would capitulate, if they survived."

if they survived

Not that I care so much about the banks themselves.

It's all the people working at them.

Seriously...can people really think it's a dandy idea to force even MORE people out of work?

And those people who suffer won't be the ones at the top who already have tons of money to tide them over until they find something else.

The ones losing out will be the little guys, right down to the people who clean the offices and get rid of the trash.

It's amazing how cavalier we can be about the livelihoods of people we'll never know, who have done nothing wrong.

I think it would be nice to let THEM decide what they're willing to sacrifice.

[humbled_opinion]

5. It is "We the People" that always suffer

The rich are not altruistic. IMO the only solution seems to be a Flat Tax. If you don't even file a return because there are no loopholes to take advantage of because you pay a specific rate on your income then you can't very well escape paying your fair share.

The conundrum of course is how do we stop the rich from passing those costs onto consumers i.e., they stop buying yachts and jets etc., etc built in America because the tax rates are so high and they start buying them overseas. The American workers that live off of the sale of those luxury items are now impacted.

Rich business owners just pass the increased tax costs back down to the consumers i.e. you want to raise my taxes by 10 percent, fine then its going to cost you all a nickle extra for your Coca Cola. etc.....

So inevitably the middleclass and the consumer base in America are the ones that wind up paying for all the tax increases and all the government regulations that are put on business and corporations...

It takes alot of skill and leadership to figure out a way to get the rich to pony up more taxes and take it out of their own bottom line...

I really don't know how to do it and would be interested in thoughts on this.

[starroute]

6. You may not be thinking of it that way, but that's a right-wing argument

It gets pulled out every time there's a proposal that might shut down some polluting industry or limit some military weapons boondoggle. It's amazing how conservatives who never care about the workers under ordinary circumstances start crying crocodile tears when one of their favored corporations is under scrutiny.

So please, don't be taken in by those kind of arguments. They do the workers no favor and only weaken our own willingness to take action.