When the second Google hit (after Wikipedia) for "corporate cronyism" links to a speech by Sarah Palin, you know why progressives need Occupy Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street's power lies in the "We are the 99%" theme. The poignant and evocative stories on the Tumblr of that name feature hard-working, settled, middle-class families who have had the rug pulled out from under them by recent economic conditions. A single mom who put herself through college and grad school only to lose her job due to chronic illness, who now can't sell her house and worries that her children and grandchildren don't have much of a future. A 38-year-old cancer survivor, unemployed and with $50,000 in student loans, who can't get health insurance. A 21-year-old making $10.50 an hour at one job and looking for another so she no longer has to choose between paying bills and eating, who sleeps in her car because she can't get approved for an apartment. Her parents can't help because her father lost his job, "the bank took our house," and her mother is sick and can barely afford her medicine.
These are stories of the tremendous toll taken by the Great Recession on middle-class Americans who have done everything right: they work hard, seeking a second job if the first cannot support them; they scrimp and save to buy a house; they pay their bills on time. And then they tumble out of the settled middle class due to illnesses, or a lost job, or an accident -- things over which they have no control.
These are stories of the group that has shifted sharply Republican since 1970. Actually, it's only the whites in this group who have shifted: Blacks of all classes still vote overwhelmingly Democratic. But Democrats have lost many nonunionized whites in what Theda Skocpol has called the "missing middle" -- the middle 50% of Americans, whose median income is $64,000. I will call them blue collar, although the sad fact is that many of the blue-collar jobs that offered a stable middle class life have long since disappeared, leaving many in low-paid pink or routine white-collar jobs that offer very low pay and no benefits.
Occupy Wall Street's focus on this group is a big change from the Democrats' focus, since about 1965, on the poor -- the bottom third of Americans whose median income is $19,000. While the poor no doubt need help, so do the missing middle. While the standard of living of blue-collar families doubled between the end of World War II and 1973, blue-collar jobs disappeared after that, and the standard of living in blue-collar families stalled out despite the fact that wives entered the workforce. Even more devastating, the cherished stability these families enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s evaporated due to the "great risk shift" documented by Jacob Hacker. That's the message of the "We are the 99%" movement.
Understandably, Republicans are alarmed. They have launched a counteroffensive called "We are the 53%" -- that's the percentage of Americans who pay federal income taxes. This represents a move that, for Republicans, is tried and true: it seeks to bond the missing middle to the business elite. For once, progressives are contesting this narrative by articulating in very clear and concrete terms what blue-collar families share with newly vulnerable professionals.
So Occupy Wall Street has definite potential. It's worth pointing out, though, that this potential can easily be squandered. Republicans already have begun to malign the movement as composed of "trust fund hippies." This is a smart move. One of the things that drove blue-collar whites out of the Democratic camp was the rise of hippies and yuppies (or trustafarians) whose willingness to take risks were -- unbeknownst to them -- perceived as enactments of upper-middle-class privilege. It didn't help when hippies called the police -- who had good, stable, respected blue-collar jobs -- "pigs."
I hope that Occupy Wall Street avoids all this. If they reinforce the trust fund narrative, their activism will further reinforce the hold of Wall Street Republicans. But if they avoid that, and if the Democrats take the hint and begin to listen to the 99%, Occupy Wall Street could be the beginning of something big.
Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.
Follow Joan Williams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JoanCWilliams
This is not new. There never was a middle class. Just working poor with a new coat of paint.
2. This financial disaster which started in late 2008 and is still going on ---- who has done the perp walk for this? NOBODY! NOBODY! As a matter of fact, not only has nobody done the perp walk but these foxes guarding the henhouse got bailed out with our money and even preserved their big money bonuses in the process.Who should do the perp walk ? People who rated
absolute garbage debt as AAA,profiting while doing so. Corporate execs who stand up at a meeting and tell the public their company is healthy when they know that it is a house of cards.I lost alot of money in my 401k because of these irresponible clowns. The fact that nobody has gone to jail for this fiasco just makes your average working person feel that the game is rigged.
3. I've got kids who's future I'm very concerned about. Can you imagine how it must feel to come out of college with 100k- 200k of loan debt and the job prospects are almost none ? These kids have been sold down the river before they even get started.
The politicians on both sides of the aisle and the corporate exec who's attitude is "let em eat cake" needs to know that there is a very large segment of the population that has had it with all of them and is just about reaching a boiling point.
I feel this movement crosses normal political boundries. I am sympathetic to elements of the tea party message and I also can sympathize with some of what the Wall St protestors are complaining about.
Here are 3 issues that are bugging me.
1.I'm a union member who works for Verizon.Verizon is a healthy,profitable company.They make billions in profit every quarter.They paid no federal income taxes the past 2 years and somehow even got a tax refund.They also took 1.5 billion $ in bailout money from you and me even though the CEO stated that they did not need any bailout money. So, how do they repay this country and their workers ? By trying to take away my pension, my healthcare plan and most importantly by moving as many American jobs as they can overseas! How does this help America's economic recovery ? Who are the politicians that allow this? Oh ,and the CEO makes the same amount of money as 300 average employees but I'm not supposed to mention this little fact because if I do then I'm engaging in class warfare. This corporation has no allegiance to
this country,only to the stock price. The media won't say anything for fear of losing ad revenue. There has got to be a middle ground between corporate profits and maintaining a viable middle class in this country.
The 1% are the international corporations/bankers/wall streeters/speculators/hedge fund managers and their paid for Republicans buddies who have given them tax cuts for 30 years to create jobs.
They are all in bed with communist rulers/dictators. and creating jobs for cheap $2.00 a day salary
everywhere in world except USA. They also stole our homes, investments, retirement accounts.
We the American consumers srooed up by buying new products made by American international corporations when they we not giving us a paycheck. Let them sell their stuff to their workers wherever they are.
If we cannot find new, Made in the U. S. We need to buy used and keep our money circulating locally. Manufacturing jobs were destroyed by unfair trade arrangements and busted unins and now federal, state, local governments revenues are not enough to pay for police, teachers and federal employees and entitlement ,
The Republicans signed NO TAX PLEDGE to their Master Grover Norquist so they will not tax millionaires . They do not represent the 99% . Filibuster senator Mcconnel and his republicans filbustered/voted no to 5% tax on millionaires to fund jobs.
Then the movement is stringently self-limited to the previously converted. Because OWS or Ox or whatever is not the 99%. Claiming they are the 99% results in a severe rejection reaction among most Americans. Ergo, a severely self-limiting movement, and captive of their own lie.
The top 2/3rd (67%) of America is the most uniformly prosperous, equitable, livable, and just nation on Earth. The bottom 1/3rd (the remaining 33%) of America has detached itself from the culture and behaviors of prosperity and drifted off into the Sea of Despair.
And now they declare themselves to be ninety nine percent. Ha, it's foolish to lie when the lie is so obvious. Unless, I suppose, one's tactic of choice is The Big Lie.
Germany faced this same issue when the prosperous West Germany has to reabsorb their government-dependent and mandated impoverished East German cousins. They are stills struggling with how to get the former East Germans back online. Of course, the Germans could depend on a profound, unconditional affection of Germans for Germany. We here in America not only must figure how to help the adrift bottom 1/3rd reattach themselves to prosperity. We must do it in the face of the highly conditional, judgmental, and sporadically manipulative relationship that many in that group hold for America.
Good luck, 33%ers, the Nation wishes you well.
Democrats!!!!
Republicans don't mind if you protest Wall St., They are just upset that you decided to do it "Collectively".
It reminds them of Unions!
Maybe those folks I just mentioned need to exert a little of that "personal responsibility" republicans are so fond of pushing down the throats of the poor.
Thomas Jefferson, (Attributed)
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
http://merriamassociates.com/2011/10/the-occupy-brand/
Not an end to capitalism...just responsible capitalism.
That being said, when you represent 99% you get a broad range of opinions.
The Free Market is a good thing, Capitalism is a bad thing. The only way to have Capitalism work for people who have less resources than those who do, is to level the playing field. "Wealth redistribution" as people like to term it these days was previously, from the 40's until Reagan, the main cause for our prosperity. Since the advent of Reaganomics, regulation and taxation of extreme wealth have become increasingly demonized and the average worker has suffered as a consequence. Neutral Economics don't trickle down. Neutral Economics don't further our people as a whole. The only thing that happens is that people with more resources are in a better position to accumulate more resources, the opposite being true for the poor.
There is big money in Washington and politicians have the power to make people rich with their laws.
Until that changes, not much else matters.
Government approved energy auditors.
.NO one else is allowed to do that work. . .