We Are

Over the last few weeks, a growing group of people have occupied Wall Street in protest of the greed and corruption that has run rampant there in the last few years. They have rightfully pointed the spotlight on the organizations most responsible for our economic malaise at present.

Behind all of this is the We Are The 99 Percent movement. . This is their credo.

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

What we are seeing here is the beginning of a minority block that will likely eclipse the conservative base. Hell, some conservatives may end up joining them. We've had unemployment for quite a long time in this country and it was clearly a simple matter of time before they organized into a force with which to be reckoned. We may even be seeing the beginning of the end of the self defeating plutocracy that has grown over the last decade.

Now, I've got a few issues with these people that I'd like to get out of the way. First, they remind me a great deal of the WTO protesters (see: Protectionism). VERY bad idea. Look at the world 50 years ago and look at it today. Overall, we are better off. Lifespans are longer in Global South countries and it is because of liberal trade practices. If these people are concerned about world hunger and poverty, the best way to solve it is free trade. No tariffs, quotas, non tariff barriers, or any other government restrictions that impede the global market. This means that the labor pool is going to grow which means demand will be lower thus the growing pains. They are going to have to accept this if they want the world to be better off.

Of course, this doesn't mean that MNCs (multinational corporations) have leave to pillage and burn the world. A completely unrestrained free market easily slides into this due to the basic human impulse of greed. So, there does need to be consequences for those that abuse this freedom. Obviously, this is a very complex issue and I don't think the occupiers fully understand the various intricacies of it.

This brings us to another issue I have with the occupiers of Wall Street. Are they so anarchistic in nature that they can't see the benefits of banks and investments? They are the very backbone of our culture. No doubt, they have been abused by people but that simply means that they should be put in "pound me in the ass prison" for 6 months. That would end this bullshit immediately. That means regulators are going to have to grow a pair and get it done. Tearing down the whole system will make things worse.

The occupiers also seem to not have a central message or leader. That's fine for now, I guess. But they do need to figure how exactly they are going to effect the change they desire. The best way for them to do this is vote and, more importantly, get the 40 percent of the people in this country that don't vote out at the polls every year-including the odd years! It's pretty clear to me which party has more in common with them and that's who they should support. Certainly, there are some Democrats who have supported our slide to malaise in the last decade but it's the near entirety of the conservative base that is fighting tooth and nail to support our plutocracy. Their blind anger (similar to the Tea Party's) is keeping them from seeing this simple fact.

In his piece, "Keeping America's Edge," Jim Manzi talks about the importance of social cohesion. An entire section of his treatise on the sad state of our affairs is entitled "Inequality as a Symptom."

Economic inequality is likely to cause problems with social ­cohesion — but far more important, it is a symptom of our deeper ­problem. As the unsustainable high tide of post-war American dominance has slowly ebbed, many — perhaps most — of our country's workers appear unable to compete internationally at the level required to maintain anything like their current standard of living. And a shrinking elite portion of the American population, itself a shrinking fraction of the world ­population, cannot indefinitely maintain our global position.

There it is in a nutshell, folks. We will not continue to maintain our position in the world unless we take very serious steps to support the 99 percent. And by "we" I mean EVERYONE, not just the government (federal, state, local). Giving more tax breaks and less regulation to the wealthy people in this country is going to make things far worse. As Robert Reich said recently,

This isn't a zero-sum game. A lot of wealthy people are beginning to understand that they would do better with a smaller percentage of a rapidly growing economy than with a big chunk of an economy that's dead in the water.

Indeed they are. The Patriotic Millionaires Club is a fine example of what needs to be front and center in the discussion. People like Doug Edwards, a former Google executive, who stood up at a recent town hall with the president and said, "Will you please raise my taxes?" also need to come forward and demand common sense. Edwards was right when he expressed great concern for the future of federal student loans, infrastructure projects and job-training programs if the government does not obtain new revenue. We're not simply talking about our economy here. We're talking about the erosion of our hegemonic power in the world that has guided the global marketplace towards an LIEO (liberal international economic order).

Imagine if a country like China, for example, was the hegemenon. There's no way to sugar coat this, folks, and this isn't hyperbole: freedom would be lost. The intransigence against spending must stop. Clearly, we can't afford to spend like we did post World War Two but we can't go to the exact opposite of that and become maniacal cutters. We also have to cease the daily beat downs of government because this is the entity that has kept us a major power in the world and will continue to do so in the future. Without our federal government, the freedom of the global market that we created at Bretton Woods will be threatened.

I'm not sure that the 99 percenters see themselves as the large turning point that I do. Thankfully, I'm not the only one. E.J. Dionne, from his latest column

The anti-Wall Street demonstrators have created a new pole in politics. Americans have always been wary of concentrated power. The Tea Party had great success in focusing anxieties on what it argues is an excessively powerful federal government. Now an active and angry band of citizens is insisting that the concentrated power Americans most need to fear exists on Wall Street and in the financial system.

It's going to be very interesting to see what happens next.