Occupy Wall Street is getting positive reviews and is viewed favorably by most Americans. Does OWS indicate the US political process has hit bottom and Americans are ready for radical change?
Recent polls indicate that Americans view Occupy Wall Street favorably. Poll respondents have a more favorable view of protestors than they do of Washington politicians or denizens of Wall Street. What counts most is public sentiment on key issues and here, too, Occupy Wall Street seems to be winning. The most recent CBS News/New York Times poll asked: "Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among more people?" 66 percent of respondents answered yes.
Nonetheless, it's one thing to believe that money and wealth is distributed unfairly or that government is broken or that the US is spiraling downward, and quite another thing to say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Are American voters -- the 99 percent -- at the point where they are willing to take to the streets and join Occupy Wall Street? No.
Americans may be disgusted with the way things are going, but they're not in enough pain to get up out of their easy chair and take action. That's the conclusion Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Lewis reached in his article California and Bust. Lewis considered "the pressure point in American finance: the fear that American cities would not pay back the money they had borrowed. The states that had enjoyed the biggest boom were now facing the biggest busts." Not surprisingly, the biggest problem is California. Lewis discussed California with former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the mayor of almost bankrupt San Jose, and the city manager of Vallejo that declared bankruptcy in 2008.
Mayor Chuck Reed remarked that San Jose suffers from "service-level insolvency," adding, "I think we suffered from a series of mass delusions." UCLA neuroscientist Peter Whybrow observed, "We've created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of society." Lewis concluded that Californians "want services and not to pay for them."
California's situation reminded Lewis of "Bernard Madoff's investment business. Anyone who looked at Madoff's returns and understood them could see he was running a Ponzi scheme; only one person who had understood them bothered to blow the whistle, and no one listened to him."
Occupy Wall Street is a collective exercise in whistleblowing. Judging from the number of ordinary folks stepping forward to describe how the American system has failed them OWS is asking us to recognize that the US economy has become a form of Ponzi scheme -- where the wealthy 1 percent take money from the 99 percent with promises of returns that do not materialize. Sadly many of the 99 percent have been brainwashed to not listen to the grim truth.
Americans entered the twenty-first century hypnotized by three basic tenets of Reagonomics: 1. Greed is good:helping the rich get richer would help everyone else, 2. The free market is your friend: global markets were inherently self correcting and therefore there was no need for government regulation; and 3. Government is your enemy: trust the market.
Then came two calamities. On September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the United States. The message from Washington to the 99 percent was "we've got this handled; go on with your lives; don't worry, keep shopping." Then on September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Investment Bank filed for bankruptcy triggering a financial meltdown. Once again the message from Washington to the 99 percent was "we've got this handled; go on with your lives; don't worry, keep shopping."
The Reagan era sold the Ponzi scheme with its dogma that unrestrained self-interest ultimately benefited everyone. But the Bush Administration took the same magical thinking to an absurd new level with its assertion that the US could engage in two wars and not pay for them. Then in 2008 the Bush White House told the biggest fib of all "we can't hold any of the big banks responsible for the financial meltdown, because that would be bad for the economy, so we will bail them out but you, the average citizen, won't be affected."
More than a decade of dreadful leadership has produced the current crisis: the US is broken financially and politically. But during the same period many Americans were lured into a "cult" that preached: "self-indulgence is good," "government is bad," "debt is good," and "You can enjoy government services without paying for them." While many of the 99 percent feel the current system is unfair they're stuck in a state of conditioned helplessness. As a consequence, they won't be able to take action until they are deprogrammed.
Occupy Wall Street is a step in the right direction, but it won't produce radical change until most of the 99 percent take control of their lives. That's asking a lot. It's unlikely to happen until conditions in the US get much worse.
Things will get worse ==> No one is going to do anything about it, therefore whatever I do won't help ==> No one does anything about it ==> Things get worse
That's the problem with OWS. It's not reflective of reality insofar as we live in a country founded on principle of individualism and individual achievement.
The movement is less about anger (at the "1%") and more about anguish (with thier own circumstance). These are people who did what they thought they were supposed to do in order to have a nice life or who were prevented from doing so by a lagging economy and rising college costs.
That's not a 1% problem. It's a wage-skill differential problem. Most Americans simply lack the specialized technical (science and math-based) skill required in today's marketplace.
They should be protesting the government for having failed to prepare them by letting public schooling in this country deteriorate so drastically.
Funny answer, since that is not a yes or no question.
We need to trap the extra billions of tons of carbon dioxide, and switch everything world wide to renewable resources. We are running the risk that with global warming the ice caps will melt over night, that Long Island will become Cod Land, that the Gulf Stream will shift - that we will lose the Westerlies so all the rains - inches every day fall east of the Appalachians with a couple feet of snow every day all winter along the East Coast beginning in October until April, and from Appalachia to the Rockies a dry dust waterless plain.
OWC is only the tip of world wide riots and unrest - unless the innovators are allowed to speak and show the way.
The worse news...................things are going to get a lot worse.
When our election system is financed by legalized corruption (bribery) what other result can be expected? To say nothing of the effects of the Supreme Court's Citizen United Decision, which congress has addressed by ..........................doing nothing.
Best Congress money can buy..................................and it shows.
The Great Depression led into 40-50 years of good American financial government.
Not perfect but good.
We had higher tax rates, strict rules and regulations on Wall Street and banks, enforcement.....
America CAN do it again.
But things have to get REALLY bad first.
Sad that the oligarchs and politicians will wait until it is unbearable and the people are rioting and carrying pitchforks.......before they will realize something has to be done for their own sakes (self-preservation) never mind for America and the rest of Americans.
Nobody likes a pessimist, but the truth is that those in the OWS representing the 99% don't have the 99%'s active support, and that severely limits the movement's clout. The reason for the lack of really meaningful support from the movement's natural brethren is the fact that their fellow Americans are either a) complacent because they remain in a comfortable enough lifestyle, b) politically apathetic/tuned out of current events, or c) "brainwashed" into believing in conservative economic dogma, as this article contends, which runs contrary to the real solutions.
Where I disagree with the article is in one of its conclusions. OWS isn't going to accomplish much by doing what it is doing now, but I still strongly believe that it has the potential to achieve much more if it becomes organized into a proper political movement. There is a possibility of that happening.
Unfortunately, it's easily possible that the movement will gradually dissipate, and in that case, those of us who want reform will most likely have to wait for things to get worse before they get better.
So far.
However, if things don't improve OR get worse.....especially if they get worse......the next batch or protesters will make the politicians, oligarchs, and cops hope the OWS protesters come back.
When people are suffering and lose all hope for the future, THEN they usually start getting out of control.
****And it will NOT be just lefties.