Luke wrote:This wouldn't happen if people were trying to occupy Sesame Street.
Someone please enlighten me, what are these protesters trying to accomplish other than protest? I'm not being flippant, most of my news comes from NPR and the Daily Show, and all I hear and see are people sitting around with signs. Is there a goal, or is it just about making statement?
One more question: Are the people who are protesting democrats, republicans, or a mix of both?
The occupy protests are kind of a mixed bag. When you have a slogan as broad as "we are the 99%", you attract all types. The people protesting include both republicans and democrats. The overarching message is that there is severe economic inequality and the divide between the 1% wealthiest individuals and the rest of the 99% has been growing steadily for the last several decades. That class divide is reaching a breaking point where the 99% are finally starting to collectively become upset as they now see the top 1% of the US population in possesseion of almost half of the nation's combined wealth. Related to this are the issues of how this wealth was acquired. One of the biggest comlaints is about the banks that made a bunch of high risk stock market maneuvers and when those investments failed, they asked the American taxpayer to bail them out. The bailout started at $600 billion (TARP), but has ballooned into the trillions as it has extended beyond the banks. Meanwhile, we're all told we can't have healthcare and a wide range of social services need to be cut. Education takes a hit, healthcare takes a hit, and many other programs that all depend on government funding to survive all take a hit. Meanwhile, the bankers that started all of this and broke a number of laws in the process are sitting pretty and making more money than ever. Some have paid back the money from the bailout, but the country is in serious debt. Also, the promise to the people was that the economic bail out money would help to create new jobs. Yet, many are still struggling to find work and we continue to see jobs lost to automation and employing low cost labor over seas.
The occupy protestors are calling for a solution to shrink the gap between the highest earners and everyone else. Various solutions have been proposed, but the problem is complex so there isn't one simple sound-bite answer that sums everything up. Some propose closing tax loop holes that are being exploited by big business. Some propose we put more teeth behind the government regulators in the financial district to avoid more scams like the subprime mortgage loan crisis. Some propose we actually enforce the laws that were broken and bring these financial scammers to justice. Some propose higher taxes for the very wealthy. Some propose that we stop allowing the wealthy to funnel money into congress to get the tax laws to bend in their favor. Some propose we change incentives by passing a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than three percent of the GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election (plus we should require them to have the same health care and benefits packages as everyone else and see what they think about government healthcare then). Some have suggested we bailout the middle class by relieving student loan debt. There are other ideas as well, I'm sure, but that's as much as I can think of off the top of my head.
