Time to think a bit about what’s been going on and what it means.
First off, there’s a certain mindset about the people behind Occupy Wall Street and the other Occupy locations: namely, they’re a bunch of filthy hippies with nothing better to do. Well, if they don’t have a job, then at least this is doing something, namely, exercising their freedom to assemble and speak. I have no issue with that, and neither should anyone else.
To try and capture the mindset of this group of people, you have to look at some facts and figures. I know, numbers are boring and hard to comprehend. But if you want to understand the frustration in America right now, you have to look at these:
Now, please pay attention to the fact that this chart only goes up to 2006. That’s before the housing crash and the major recession that came along with it.
We’re taught to invest in stock and mutual funds. Do we?
Nope.
What about income relative to inflation? How have we done there?
As a matter of fact, when you adjust for inflation, wages essentially haven’t gone up in 50 years.
What about “upward mobility”? We believe in that in America, right?
A small one at best.
Well, what about taxes? Everyone has to pay their fair share, right?
They may pay more dollarwise, but as a ppercentage of what they make, it’s nowhere close to what it has been. And that chart only goes up to 2004.
Where is inequality the worst in the U.S.?
Yup. Wall Street. Texas is close behind, though.
What the protest is about is simply this: the rich have bought their way into government, into great tax rates (and if you’d like to see how the rich are able to not pay taxes, give this link a read), and basically benefit while the rest of us struggle. And frankly, I don’t really struggle right now. I have a great job that I enjoy doing, and as long as that holds, everything’s great. If I lost my job, however, I’m not entirely sure how long whatever savings we have would last. Money gurus advocate at least a thousand bucks in a savings account. Others advocate 3 to 6 months worth of expenses. Let’s just say I’m not there.
What was the government’s role in this? When the mortgage-backed securities market completely crumbled under the weight of greed and misguided belief that the default on home mortgages would be constant even as new and ridiculous loans popped up, the government had to prop up the banks. However, nothing came under scrutiny as to why the propping up was necessary. No traders, no dealers, no people who created the securities or rated the securities were investigated for ruining not just the economy, but also people’s lives. One of America’s greatest traits to me is our ability to always blame things on other people. The JFK assassination? It was Oswald, unless you want to blame the Communists and the mafia in conjunction with the Freemasons.
So this time, it’s blame the people who have successfully purchased the system. They’ve used money for quasi-political purposes (google the Koch brothers) to benefit themselves. They have resources. The people who are sleeping in tents have voices. They also have votes, but the issue quickly turns into “which is less bad?” We have a government right now in Washington that is literally doing nothing of importance, because it’s a political game. The Republicans want to blame the lack of progress on the Democrats. The Democrats want to do the same to the Republicans, but Obama has always wanted to try and work with the other side, because he still believes that compromise is the way to move forward on divisive issues. This is where I differ from Obama only in the sense that you can only compromise with people who are like-minded and have the same goals as you. That is not the case for the Republican leadership. Their goal is to get Obama out and push through their agenda (which, if they get the chance, they should do. After all, winning has its privileges).
So we can blame the super-rich, we can blame the government, we can blame corporations who move jobs overseas and offer training in services that are approaching glut-levels of people, or better yet, blame all of the above. I’m okay with that.
The big question is, what’s the next step? How do you change a system that appears to be broken and resistant to fixing? The recent raid on Zucotti Park in New York gave us a hint of what the powers-that-be care about: order. Not the rights of people. Not the rights of journalists. Just–order. Bloomberg’s move may well be the tipping point that forces the rest of the nation and my generation to have their Vietnam, or Equal Rights, or Suffrage.
If you don’t think about this, please start.