My sister in law sometimes sends me conservative emails. I diaried about that here before.
The other day, I decide to send her the video that begins with Elizabeth Warren
http://www.youtube.com/...
She replied back asking me what I thought about #occupywallstreet. For what it's worth, I share my reply with you...
Thanks for asking!
My take on #occupywallstreet is that it's about time. Our politics are broken. Maybe between the Tea Party and the #occupy movements we can begin the necessary restructuring to make this a country that works for everyone.
Our economics have been transformed from a regulated capitalist system into one where corporate interest exercise such great control over the government that the system now is "privatized gains/socialized losses"--a "heads I win; tails you lose" perversion of the greatest economic system in the history of the world. Look at the bank bail out. As the video points out, common sense regulation that prevented bank failures and supported a 50 year period of economic growth were repealed and lead to the greatest economic panic since the great depression (and it ain't over yet). To fix it, one option would have been to bail out the homeowners. Doing that would have also fixed the banks, which would have lead to them resuming business as usual and making loans. Instead, we hung the citizens out to dry, used taxes to pay off the banks' reckless gambles, and now the banks are sitting on our money. They can't/won't lend the money, the citizens face an uncertain future and aren't spending, and therefore the economy lurches toward the next panic. To make it worse, we gave them all that money that we earned, and didn't get any agreements to change the policies that lead to the disaster. We are rewarding bad behavior and it will therefore be repeated.
Look at the changes in wealth and income growth--talk about redistribution! Do your own Googling. Despite increasing worker productivity, the top 1% have seen skyrocketing wealth and income while all the rest have seen relatively flat earnings and wealth. Historically under capitalism, increasing worker productivity is returned to the both the worker and the capitalist--with most of the increase going to the workers in the form of higher wages and shorter working hours. Our economy is grinding to a halt because economies depend on populations spending to drive demand and folks don't have much money and what they have they try to save because they are scared about the future. Henry Ford understood. He wanted his factory workers to be part of the market for his product. The genius of Ford wasn't the assembly line--it was growing the target market by increasing the wealth of the overall population.
Look at DC--common sense policies that were once Republican ideas, like healthcare mandates and a carbon trading system, are now evil plots against the "American Way of Life" because they are supported by a Democratic party lead by a black man.
Look at our infrastructure. A bridge on a major highway in Minneapolis collapsed. A bridge on a major highway in the USA collapsed! Google "unsafe bridges in America". The top two results are "Report: One in Nine Bridges in America “Structurally Deficient ..." and "69K Unsafe Bridges Detailed, Mapped". Despite this, every Republican and 2 Democrats just voted against a jobs bill that would begin to address this problem. Didn't all those folks run for office saying they'd bring jobs? 80% of our population thought it was a good idea to tax the second million someone earns an additional 5% to fund that work. Tell me who our politicians work for.
Look at every family around you and compare them to our grand parents. My grand father didn't finish high school. He sold classified ads for a medium sized town's newspaper. His wife didn't work. They had a housekeeper. They owned a house and sent their daughter to college. They retired at 65 and spent the next several years traveling the globe. Are we in this generation all slackers who are too dumb and too lazy to do the same, or has the game changed? Why are most American families one lost paycheck away from financial disaster even though both parents work?
Is the best we can do as Americans to create a wealthy 1% and live vicariously through them as we watch them on huge flat screen TVs made in China? Or are we as a country good enough and smart enough to create a society that works for all of us?
That's the question the #occupy movement is asking us all.
An important thing to note is that it's not just Wall Street. See the partial list below. There are now over 1100 communities who are staging events. We went as a family to the first day of the event here in Houston because while we are doing well, we want to live in a country where everyone does well. It is possible and our family will work to make it happen. God created all of us. We all deserve better than most of us are getting.
(list of #occupy cities removed for brevity)