I thought it would be a good idea to break down what we’re hearing out of these nuts at Occupy Wall Street. After all, since they apparently don’t have anything to contribute to the workplace (if they did, they’d go to these things called jobs), it might be interesting to see what they have to say.
The Good
While I’ve heard that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, it’s really hard to do that with this crowd. However, I wanted to stay true to this. I figured that even a broken clock is right twice a day. So it shouldn’t be too surprising to find something that the NYC campers have gotten right.
One common theme at OWS is in regards to the bank bailouts and how those were a mistake. That’s very true. The banks should have just failed. Americans were insured thanks to FDIC and it wouldn’t have been as disastrous as some painted it to be. Those who could run quality banks that didn’t take stupid risks could have stepped up and filled in the gap. If there was any concern about lost revenue, the government could have selected to allow dollars that have left the US for tax reasons to return to the country tax free and we could have new investments to make up for any loss that may have happened.
As far as those who had more in a bank than what they were insured by the FDIC, well that’s their problem. I’ve heard from a number of people who bring up cases like Enron. Well if there’s anything to be learned from Enron, it’s that we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket. We constantly hear about building up a nest egg and we take that a bit too literally as a single egg can only be in one place. Here’s a novel concept: Have nest eggs and put them in different places. That way, when one goes bust, it’s not the end of the world.
The Occupy Wall Street Crowd also seems to be opposed to crony capitalism. Well they can join the Tea Party and a number of conservatives. I hear Michelle Malkin and Sarah Palin complain about this more than Keith Olbermann. While most comparisons between the OWS crowd and the Tea Party are completely misguided, this is the one and only place where they are similar. I just find it interesting that I haven’t seen too many signs about Solyndra at the protests. Perhaps they aren’t against all crony capitalism. They’re just against the cases they don’t agree with. So much like the broken clock, OWS is right on two occasions.
The only thing about their these two complaints would be that it shows how misguided OWS really is. The bank bailouts and crony capitalism are things done by Washington and not Wall St. The government didn’t have to give hand outs to these organizations. Why are they camped out in New York?
The Bad
The Occupy Wall St Crowd constantly says that they are the 99%. Actually, that’s far from the case. They’re more like the 1%
- Around 7% of the people in the world have a college degree
- Only about 45% of the countries in the world are free
- Less than 9% of people in the world own a car
- About 20% of people in the world own a TV
- 40% of people in the world don’t have indoor plumbing
- They’re asking for iPads and iPhones which would put them in a global minority
- Then there’s water
- A 5 minute shower uses more water than some people in developing countries use in an entire day
- 884 million people lack access to safe water. That’s about one in eight
- Half of the world’s hospitalizations are attributed to water-related illnesses
In the case of OWS, a number of them have college degrees, own a car, have a TV, have indoor plumbing (or have been using a cop car as a replacement), and can get clean water. Given all of this, OWS is closer to representing the 1% of the world than the 99%.
The Ugly
I could go into the sanitary issues currently at play in the hippie camps, but that’s all too easy. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll just use a couple of those.
I like the sign that says “Capitalism Doesn’t Work” in the background. In this camp of socialists, garbage collectors apparently don’t work. If nothing else, that’s enough for me to side with the greedy capitalist fat cats.
I like how the hippies are using cardboard for signs and then just abandon them. I wonder how many of them are tree huggers.
OK. Now that we’ve poked fun at that, let’s focus on the complete ignorance in one statement I’ve heard all too often from the OWS movement. They say corporations aren’t people.
When I was in high school, I had some money set aside for my college education. Well, I wanted to increase the amount of money in that pot. So what did I do? I bought stock.
I didn’t buy a lot, but at one time, I was part owner of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a corporation that makes computer processors. I was a part of that company. If the company went belly-up, I would have lost something. I was invested in the corporation.
Corporations are people who have come together for various reasons. Some are looking to make some money so they can live out their dream. Others are trying to create a product or service that people will like. When a corporation fails, people are the ones who are hurt because they were a part of that corporation. If corporations weren’t people, then when Enron went south, nobody would have cared. Nobody would have argued to bail out GM or Chrysler if corporations weren’t people.
But then OWS doesn’t understand this. They just see “corporation” and think of it like it’s a machine. They don’t think of the car salesman who’s working to support his family by selling cars with a corporate logo on it. They don’t think of the bank teller when they see a giant “Bank of America.” They don’t consider the engineer who earned his/her position by being the best at what they do when they look at a computer. They look at a corporation and think it’s a robot. That’s far from the truth. Corporations provide jobs, products, and services for all of us. The same can’t be said of these bums who are trashing a park and not producing anything for the rest of us. Corporations came together and put together my computer, phone, and meals. These socialists came together and put together a giant pile of garbage and the biggest indictment of the American education system to date. That’s just ugly.
So as OWS goes into another week of camping in a park and no clear voice, keep in mind that while there’s some good, it’s outweighed by a lot of bad and a whole lot of ugly.
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