To understand the root causes of the Occupy Wall Street protests-or why, no matter how much pepper spray or billy clubs you use-the genie may not go quietly back into the bottle.
That’s not to say that the OWS movement does not have its problems-and it seems clear to me now that its time to move to phase two. Pack up the tents and transition to political activism. The point has been made and is out there-people, even those who don’t want to, have started thinking about income inequality.
Even those who have nothing but contempt for the ideas that the protesters espouse.
The critics, the really virulent ones, tend to fall into the easy route of stereotypes, that the OWS folks are nothing but lazy degenerates. Dipshits like Malkin and the especially vile John Hinderaker of Power Line, have beaten this thread again and again.
Still others lament the fact that there are thousands of young people out serving the empire in hell holes like Afghanistan and Iraq-and getting no attention. The point that seems to be lost in the telling-is that many of those serving Soldiers, Airman, Sailors and Marines are equally as much a part of the 99%, they are losing the economic battle. If not right now-potentially down stream when the excitement stops, but the the earning has to continue. For every technical expert-there are also others who are not able to translate their skills into useful civilian careers. And if they stay the course-they become trapped by the decisions they did not make earlier in life-because they enjoyed the service they chose. Those people who lament the lack of coverage of their sacrifices ignore another obvious fact. That for many those sacrifices are not doing anything to benefit the country in the long term. They aren’t even doing that much to benefit the people they are supposed to be helping. Certainly the 1% who are benefiting from their efforts, are not out there on the front lines. There is no money in it. They went to the trading floor instead.
If there actually is anyone out there who believes we should be focused on closing the income gap no matter the cost to growth, I’ve never met them. There are however, plenty of folks who worship at the altar of growth at any cost-no matter how much inequality it generates. People like Paul Ryan, who would rather throw your Grandmother under the bus-than do anything constructive to help them.
This is why I think its decision time for the OWS folks. They need to emulate the tea sniffers to a degree-and make politicians afraid of them. In that regard they are failing to a great degree. They have made the headlines-but they need to impact the political process if their is going to be the type of changes to the laws that underpin the rise of income inequality.
The people who are zeroing in on the idea of the OWS folks as just lazy, filthy deadbeats-who took the wrong major in college, are missing the point. Ultimately, income inequality impacts growth-and so puts the hard work they brag about at risk too. Without a level playing field for the middle class, capitalism, although maybe the best system, won’t survive without actual workers. With all the industry and manufacturing being shipped overseas , for the sake of the bottom line, we don’t stand a chance.
Furthermore-without a fair set of regulations, capitalism it is not by itself a stable system. Capitalism rewards those who are good at making money and punishes those who are not. Left to its own devices, capitalism devolves into a small class of fabulously wealthy people and a much larger class of serfs. In the absence of some countervailing force, feudalism is a stable economic state, but capitalism is not.
When the government serves to counter the natural tendency of capitalism to concentrate wealth, it stabilizes capitalism. Such actions include minimum wage laws, child labor laws, environmental laws, OSHA regulations, allowing unions to form and protecting them, progressive taxation, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. Too much government intervention is in itself a problem, but we are so far from that, it’s not relevant. Our problem right now is that the lower 99% has so much less money than it used to, it can’t buy the goods and services created by the top 1%.
And that’s a problem even for the snarky set.