Have been down to Wall Street a number of times, now and one thing is clear. This is a movement of neither the right nor the left but of a group of citizens who have gotten tired of being screwed.
I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!
A lot of you are too young to remember this. Look it up, it absolutely applies now.
Despite both the right and the left trying to hijack the movement for their own needs it has, so far, been able to maintain its own structure and integrity. And if you haven’t noticed, it isn’t just Occupy Wall Street anymore, it’s now Occupy Anyplace That Will Help Point Out the Problems.
The whole thing made me start thinking not only about why this is happening, but how it is being handled and if there is a realistic solution to the problems that have created it.
What it is, hasn’t come to a head yet. It hasn’t found any kind of clear voice, but one thing is fairly obvious, unlike the Tea Party this group is demonstrating against the right people.
I was there in the ‘60s when we were writing the blueprints for this and a thousand other demonstrations around the world. Then we had a specific cause, Stop The War. Now there seem to be a number of causes, not all of them clear or well enunciated. Two things are clear through; people are sick of Wall Street taking all the money and producing nothing, and the NYC police have dropped the ball.
This second is surprising because for more than a couple of decades we have prided ourselves on having the best police force in the country. Why then are they acting like the Oakland PD or the Gestapo?
In the ‘60s demonstrators faced a goon squad called the TPF, Tactical Patrol Force if I remember correctly, riot specialists who rode, sometimes on horseback into crowds creating violent situations where none existed. They were later disbanded, I believe by Ed Koch, in one of the smarter mayoral moves of the 20th century.
Some of the police I have seen handling the present demonstrations appear to be the illegitimate sons of the TPF. I have deliberately made the comparison to the ‘60s & 70’s brutes because it seems that the white shirted cops, who I have been led to believe are the older, higher ranked ones, are the chief perpetrators of violence.
I am surprised and disappointed that Commissioner Ray Kelly has allowed this kind of sub-human behavior to exist among his troops. I realize that it only takes one bad apple, but so does he, and I have seen way more than one at work so far. Let’s hope it stops now.
On the Wall Street side we have greed. A worst-case scenario actually exists, whereby 1% of the people have as much wealth as 99% of the people. Why is this a worst-case scenario? A couple of reasons; one is because that means that while a few enjoy all the perks a great many enjoy none and of those, many are below the poverty line. Another is that because a few control the majority of the money they have also come to control the government. Money brings political power and the politicians who win are then in thrall to those whose money provided the victory, so they legislate in favor of their benefactors. If you don’t think that’s where the Bush tax cuts for the rich came from then you just don’t think. It’s really much worse than that because even those who lose the elections are beholden to their rich benefactors so we end up with no one in office who isn’t being run by some rich benefactor. That is the end of fair legislation. That is the end of balanced decision-making and good governance. That is the end of democracy.
If there is anyone out there who thinks we went to war with Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction they had better get their heads out of the dark place and think again, We went to war with Iraq to hold onto oil for the oil companies, to transport troops and the goods of war for the airlines and shipping companies, to create a new and great need for product for those companies that manufacture, often in cheaper overseas facilities, the goods of war; guns, food, equipment, explosives, billions of dollars worth of business and most of it went to the friends of Bush/Cheney, the largest percentage to Cheney’s old company Halliburton.
We are presently living in a country where the concept of economic balance is a joke, where college coaches make millions and top professors and scientists make a pittance.
This is not a diatribe against all the rich. We all know that there are plenty of rich people who understand that there is only so much money they can spend. They give it away, form organizations that do good works and have any number of charitable activities that take their time and extra income. This is great but it still leaves the problem that they are sucking the air out of the economic bubble and their good works often end up giving charity to people who don’t want a handout, who actually want to work for a living but can no longer do so because the opportunities for the work they do, no longer exist, usually because the same people who are giving them charity moved their jobs to China, India or Taiwan to take advantage of cheap labor.
Our manufacturing base has been moved overseas so that management can make a greater profit by using cheaper labor. This is, unfortunately, a short sighted and self-defeating strategy because even as they create that cheaper product that is more competitive, they destroy the consumer base that buys that product. When enough American workers have been shut out of jobs by moving the manufacturing process overseas, the consumer base they represent will cease to exist. The product they used to manufacture but is now manufactured overseas by cheaper labor will have no one to buy it. Will the overseas market pick up the slack? Some of it, but being as the overseas labor force is being paid so much less, they still haven’t risen to a plateau where they can purchase the product the American laborers did with their higher salaries. The market dies, the company dies, economic suicide.
So, the result of corporate greed in this scenario is;
No work for American labor.
No market for the product they used to make,
Bankruptcy for the company that has destroyed its own market,
No more work for the foreign labor who depended on this now bankrupt company,
No dividends for the shareholders
But
Big separation bonuses for the executives whose bad decisions destroyed the company, (leopards don’t change their spots)
Further reducing the sale value of the assets of the company that is now out of business.
And
Completely screwing the stockholders the company executives were trying to impress in the first place.
Wouldn’t these companies be better off taking a little less profit, supporting the American consumer of their product and maybe paying taxes at a realistic rate on what they make recreating a strong business climate like the one we had from WWII through the ‘70s?
It must be understood that the people who work for these companies will eventually come to a point where they also want more. It has happened throughout history, but at that point, management will deal with it the way they have before and we will continue the, often bitter give and take of labor vs management, but at least we will have a vibrant economy instead of the mess we have now.