I'll try to explain exactly what my issue with OWS is.
1] The slogan is "We are the 99%". This is a direct reference to income and the divergence of income growth directly correlates to the dropping of the marginal tax rate from around 85% to 35%. If they clarified their goal as purely to re-establish that rate to where it was beforehand then at least I'd understand their programme. It would be simple, clear, effective, and comprehensible.
2] The issue of corporate/political corruption is a combination of guilt by association and genuine complaints about specific individuals. These two things have to be separated or nobody with any money to speak of will see OWS as anything except purely anti-corporate and anti-business. If they can do this then the pressure ought to be on the judicial processes and not the legislative processes. Wrong venue, in other words.
3] Many of the ancillary issues (poor economy, sluggish growth, arcane contribution laws, innuendo about some "corporate/political complex", outsourcing, etc) have absolutely nothing to do with the stated 99% per cent goals and are close to crazy talk. A perfect example is Michael Moore's stupid braying about outsourcing being un-American. If you're trying to "fix" income disparity then you can't throw tools out of your economic policy toolbox.
4] I am convinced that these OWS'rs have simply taken the Tea Party boilerplate and tie-dyed it a different colour. They are likely looking for the Democrat versions of Michelle Bachmann to force their way inside. This kind of brazen politicking will doom the hackey-sack players who honestly think they're doing something positive.
5] Finally, of course, I maintain that people who hold a principled position against business and against corporations should be looking longer term because the economy doesn't stay bad forever. This is what I'd said before. If they really are anti-business and think that all corporate/government links should be severed then this has to apply in both the good times and the bad. When Corporation X comes to your town, opens a plant, hires all your formerly out-of-work clowns on stilts and unicyclists, what is going to happen to your "movement"? If it's dependent on the economy (and that's prone to fluctuation) then at least half the time your "movement" will be moribund and you'll have to gear it all back up again about every five to fifteen years. That's wasteful and counter-productive.
Does that help a bit?
Fascinating and well written. Worth taking the risk of answering honestly, instead protectively. Please keep in mind that I am only focusing on what I see as problems, because my positive views are already well known. This does not mean that I am negating any previous view, only that it is complex and I am exploring another side.
1) The 99% - I could fill a book with my feelings about this. My biggest problem is that it focuses on people, not corporations. Sure, to a liberal like myself, the Koch Brothers are an easy symbol. But it's their corporate, not personal power that makes them figureheads. (I also think the psychology of it is wrong. People admire the exceptional, even to some extent the exceptionally bad. Pointing out just how exceptional is only going to make them seem deserving of recognition.)
2) That is the most muddled message. My take? It is not specific individuals who are the problem, it is an environment which allows corporations to be responsible only to their shareholders creating a system of privatized gains and socialized losses. I personally would prefer that it be framed in those terms.
3) Can we please just drop party-lines and come together to muzzle Michael Moore? A nouveau riche loud mouth professing disingenuous empathy with the common man in order to feed his massive narcissism is not my idea of a spokesperson.
Addressing the symptoms is an easy way to explain that there is an illness. No there should not be an exclusive focus on any one symptom. And yet for many people that symptom (unemployment, stagnant wages, loss of equity, insane cost of higher education) is the reason they are protesting. They are being directly affected. Because they are fallible humans, these negative affects have lead to a bit of paranoia or even conspiracy theory-type thinking. Mostly because finance issues & regulation are incredibly complex.
4) Some of the core issues addressed by the tea party share a common root with OWS but you are wrong in thinking that that OWS wants to put forth a candidate. Although many individual people within OWS support specific politicians (Elizabeth Warren, for example) the OWS movement does not want to put a specific face to their movement. It would sort of defeat the purpose.
5) Whether or not the economy recovers, the issue of corporate influence must be addressed. I personally think that we can not have a complete recovery without it. Even if that's not the case, I seriously doubt that more supply-side economics will be the cure. You are also relying on the fallacy that OWS is primarily made up of the unemployed. That is not the case.
I would love to go into this more but I'm in retail and this time of year is crazy-busy. I'll try to drop by on breaks. Please don't take silence as disinterest.
