I just visited the 'Solidarity Against Austerity' web site to see what it is about. The web site has a poster with the slogan "Strike debt!"

http://www.solidarityagainstausterity.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/matador-w-info-231x300.jpg

I am not sure what "strike debt" means in this context. Can somebody explain?

Another word might be "default".

My response was exactly the same: What austerity?

Hilarious. Lets go tax somebody, especially the other guy. Oregon's Corp. tax is already one of the highest in the nation. Who really pays the taxes anyway? The consumer as the tax is passed through as another expense item.

We already have spent too much muny that we don't have. We need to be smarter about what we are spending our muny on. Streetcars running on empty, bicycle infrastructure for 2% of the trips, crime trains to nowhere at $220 million a mile that nobody wants for what .5% of the trans. trips. How about a sculpture for 700k at the Hawthorne bridge (should have been spent on mental health care for some of the street people IMHO). I don't understand how almost 14k per student(k-12) per year PPS is defunding schools?

Okay now I understand, I must be a hater or better yet I am part of the 1%. Ha wish my lifestyle reflected anything like it.

I'm all kinds of mixed up on what's going on here. Can you help me understand?

First of all, these folks want "stable", i.e. ever-increasing revenue for education, or whatever their pet social cause is. Private funding doesn't seem to be an option. If it doesn't go up every year, then it's an intentional act of "austerity".

They want this revenue to be taxed (or straight-up confiscated) from "the rich", whom they otherwise seek to impoverish (or destroy). They are unhappy that the rich have money (or even exist), and it's not getting shunted to the causes they want.

They burn their ballots (and $$$), because they absolutely don't trust a government run by "the rich" (and Zionists), and they want a different system (unspoken, but I can guess based upon the red/black flags, Occupy slogans, &c. watch the videos).

Even so, they want this same untrustworthy government to take this Federal currency - at the point of a Federal gun - and somehow redistribute it directly to these fine young folks, and their pet social causes. Do I have that right? Okay then.

No really, go watch the videos from the various opdxlive feeds, it has all the hallmarks of the other Occupy and Black Bloc "events", including heartfelt pleading to the mommy government who (in the same breath) must be overthrown due to evil influences.

The poetry, dancing, repetitive chanting, &c. is cringe-worthy as you might expect. Parting thought - If you took every last dollar from every United States millionaire, this government would burn through it in three months, and then be dead-broke again.

In 1974, Oregon corporations paid 18 percent of the state's total income tax revenune. Today, corporations pay 6 percent.

http://truth-out.org: which in Portland have caused devastation to public schools and other social services.
JK: Have you ever considered NOT giving developers about $100 million of property taxes each year. That is money that would have gone schools, social services, fire protection and police.

This outrage was done by city council. Charlie Hales was an early promoter of it. Smith didn't use it as a campaign issue, presumably because he approves.

Thanks
JK

"attack on public sector workers" my arse.

Marchers misspelled word "ruckus" on their sign. See Oregonian pic, spelled "rukus" . Really? How many of them graduated HS? maybe they burned their ballots because they couldn't read them.

Austerity? In Portland??
Occupy please.

Roger, have you ever thought why tax revenue from corporations since 1974 has decreased (assuming your claim is correct) even though the corp tax rate has gone up?

Many of these corporations have moved out of state; re-organized tax accounting to reflect their other state or country business; we've lost several Top 500 corporations; and our Oregon economy is one of least performing of all states based on corporation revenue. Now why did they move? Maybe because of the tax rates.

Maybe if government wasn't so infatuated with spending on their special interests, we'd have stable basic services. But instead we must have "LEED-certified" buildings, we must have light rail and streetcar, we must have Convention Centers and hotels and Conference Centers and Sustainability Centers and art museums...

Cops and jails and courthouses and fire stations and K-12 schools...they aren't so important. We must build the Sam Adams Heritage Center, to LEED-double-Platinum rating, with walls that double as solar panels, and wind turbines and a green roof...a four level basement bicycle parking facility, it's own light rail AND Streetcar stops... Schools and police stations and fire stations - the peasants can wait for basic services.

If you watch the video feeds (and I reccomend it), you'll see that these young folks spend a great deal of time arguing over who got it worse from the police.

It's a contest to see who can induce the worst "abuse" from the PPB, and then brag about every little drop of pepper spray that you may have seen from afar. Immaturity.

The poetry reading was EPIC. So weepy and overwrought, like the world is going to end, and these stalwarts are the last, best line of defense. Time to grow up...

That is until your dollar gets devalued royally, maybe $75 = $1.

I was at a convention at the Doubletree across the street from that park. The protesters were noisy (I could hear them in my room on the 8th floor on the opposite side of the hotel from the park), and the police (both on bikes and on horses) used the hotel driveway to assemble--all in all it disrupted my convention experience quite a bit.

Doesn't there have to be some sort of actual austerity before you can protest against it?

Don't most economists consider tax increases to be a form of austerity, especially during recessions?

MJ wrote: Doesn't there have to be some sort of actual austerity before you can protest against it?

If you check their website, they consider austerity to be a "program" -- an active economic practice. It's a conscious decision to starve the wee ones:

http://www.solidarityagainstausterity.org/?p=135

What is austerity?

Austerity is a program of a failed economic model that forces cuts to services, privatization of our public resources, and burdensome amounts of individual debt as a ‘solution’ to slowing economies and increased national debt."

Sounds kind of stilted to me. The way I see it, "austerity" is an effect, rather than a cause. It's what happens when a government finally runs out of other people's money, and is forced to make tough decisions and cut spending.

Hardly seems like a new, shocking, creepy phenomenon to me... maybe it's because we just got through with Halloween. Want to beat back "austerity"? Find a way to increase tax revenues, then you can spend more. Ask France how that's going lately.