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The people behind this poster think they get it. They think that the people in this poster are clueless and naive and every bit as greedy as the Wall Street banksters are made out to be. After all, the corporations these rabble-rousers are rabbling and rousing against furnish every least comfort they've ever known.
For example, many of those folks in that poster own some sort of iDevice, developed in large part by the late Steve Jobs. Jobs was a one-percenter: his net worth at his death was something on the order of $8.7 billion. Do the protesters hate Jobs and Apple? Likely not. They gleefully use their Apple product without a thought as to the effort and money that went into it. They don't hate Apple: supposedly, they hate "corporations". Well, Apple is a corporation. Not just that, it's the richest corporation on the planet.
The people behind this poster do not get it. The people in this poster do: contrary to popular misconception, they're not protesting against "corporations". The movement is called "Occupy Wall Street", not "Occupy Cupertino and Redmond".
Corporations contribute something tangible to the world. Some of them do so by nefarious means--Monsanto immediately springs to mind--but even Monsanto has invented the occasional useful product in its relentless pursuit of profit at all costs.
The American economy used to be based entirely on this sort of thing. It was run by makers: people who harvested or manufactured or otherwise produced items of worth, which were then sold to their neighbours; gradually, the definition of 'neighbour' expanded until it included first countrymen, then other citizens of the planet. Some of these makers got a ways beyond themselves and were often characterized as 'takers': the great 'robber barons', some of whose names are still around today.
Of course, today, America's economy is somewhat...different. It's the most consumerist, arguably the most materialistic, society on earth, but it mostly consumes material they had no hand in making. Many corporations have abandoned the U.S. in whole or in part, choosing instead to do business somewhere without all those pesky environmental regulations and even peskier unions demanding "exorbitant" wages for workers--in other words, the kinds of wages that workers used to have in the 1950s and 60s: a time when one factory income was sufficient to feed, clothe and house a family of four or five.
"Every time history repeats itself," says Ronald Wright, "the price goes up." Last year, the richest one percent of households took a larger percentage of total income than at any time since 1928.
And what have they done to earn such largesse?
Well, some of them have done great works, and more than a few have maintained some kind of social conscience. Bill Gates has given away unimaginable sums of money and created charitable foundations whose contribution to the world might eventually rival the personal computer's.
Others, however, have managed banks and hedge funds, devising ever-more ingenious methods to play chess with ordinary people as pieces. It got to the point in the United States where vast numbers of people had no idea who ultimately owned their mortgage...those debt obligations had been sliced, diced, and tranched so many times as to render them hopelessly toxic. Those Wall Street banksters bent countless securities regulations until they broke, and then simply re-arranged the pieces until they had an environment more to their liking. When found out--the 2008 financial crisis could have been dubbed The Great Finding-Out--they simply shrugged their shoulders as if to say what choice did we have? ...and then demanded that the U.S. government bail them out. And this was accepted. Not one person has served so much as a day in jail for the countless lives that have been ruined.
THIS is what Occupy Wall Street is about. The primary focus of anger is not at corporations or even, necessarily, their overly-compensated CEOs. It's rather directed at the people who have gained for themselves huge amounts of money while doing nothing of value. You can call these people Takers or you can call them Fakers, but they are not Makers, except in their own minds.
Only a few people are truly against corporations; most people realize those corporations are where all the jobs come from. Most of the protesters recognize that the system is out of balance: that the government is hopelessly in thrall to corporations that no longer have the interests of ordinary Americans in mind. Not anti-corporation: anti-corporatist. There's a big difference.
For example, many of those folks in that poster own some sort of iDevice, developed in large part by the late Steve Jobs. Jobs was a one-percenter: his net worth at his death was something on the order of $8.7 billion. Do the protesters hate Jobs and Apple? Likely not. They gleefully use their Apple product without a thought as to the effort and money that went into it. They don't hate Apple: supposedly, they hate "corporations". Well, Apple is a corporation. Not just that, it's the richest corporation on the planet.
The people behind this poster do not get it. The people in this poster do: contrary to popular misconception, they're not protesting against "corporations". The movement is called "Occupy Wall Street", not "Occupy Cupertino and Redmond".
Corporations contribute something tangible to the world. Some of them do so by nefarious means--Monsanto immediately springs to mind--but even Monsanto has invented the occasional useful product in its relentless pursuit of profit at all costs.
The American economy used to be based entirely on this sort of thing. It was run by makers: people who harvested or manufactured or otherwise produced items of worth, which were then sold to their neighbours; gradually, the definition of 'neighbour' expanded until it included first countrymen, then other citizens of the planet. Some of these makers got a ways beyond themselves and were often characterized as 'takers': the great 'robber barons', some of whose names are still around today.
Of course, today, America's economy is somewhat...different. It's the most consumerist, arguably the most materialistic, society on earth, but it mostly consumes material they had no hand in making. Many corporations have abandoned the U.S. in whole or in part, choosing instead to do business somewhere without all those pesky environmental regulations and even peskier unions demanding "exorbitant" wages for workers--in other words, the kinds of wages that workers used to have in the 1950s and 60s: a time when one factory income was sufficient to feed, clothe and house a family of four or five.
"Every time history repeats itself," says Ronald Wright, "the price goes up." Last year, the richest one percent of households took a larger percentage of total income than at any time since 1928.
And what have they done to earn such largesse?
Well, some of them have done great works, and more than a few have maintained some kind of social conscience. Bill Gates has given away unimaginable sums of money and created charitable foundations whose contribution to the world might eventually rival the personal computer's.
Others, however, have managed banks and hedge funds, devising ever-more ingenious methods to play chess with ordinary people as pieces. It got to the point in the United States where vast numbers of people had no idea who ultimately owned their mortgage...those debt obligations had been sliced, diced, and tranched so many times as to render them hopelessly toxic. Those Wall Street banksters bent countless securities regulations until they broke, and then simply re-arranged the pieces until they had an environment more to their liking. When found out--the 2008 financial crisis could have been dubbed The Great Finding-Out--they simply shrugged their shoulders as if to say what choice did we have? ...and then demanded that the U.S. government bail them out. And this was accepted. Not one person has served so much as a day in jail for the countless lives that have been ruined.
THIS is what Occupy Wall Street is about. The primary focus of anger is not at corporations or even, necessarily, their overly-compensated CEOs. It's rather directed at the people who have gained for themselves huge amounts of money while doing nothing of value. You can call these people Takers or you can call them Fakers, but they are not Makers, except in their own minds.
Only a few people are truly against corporations; most people realize those corporations are where all the jobs come from. Most of the protesters recognize that the system is out of balance: that the government is hopelessly in thrall to corporations that no longer have the interests of ordinary Americans in mind. Not anti-corporation: anti-corporatist. There's a big difference.
1 comment:
Amen brotha! Now let's get them to focus on a, or several tangible goals.
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