Revisiting Occupy Wall Street
This piece presents the opinion of the author. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the Northwestern Business Review.
It first started off something of a fringe protest. Something that had good intentions but would doubtlessly lead nowhere. It started like a typical AdBusters campaign, something symbolic with little substance behind it.
The Occupy Wall Street movement did do something besides that though. Like a fever of democratic empowerment, it spread across the country, infecting every city from major metropolises like Chicago to smaller cities like Long Beach. While Occupy Wall Street protesters have credence behind their demands to end economic and political inequality, it can be argued that Occupy protesters claiming to be the “99%” are actually the “1%” on a world scale.
It is funny how Americans can debate over 9.1 percent unemployment when 1.7 billion people in the world lives in poverty. Because compared to the world, the average working American is the “1%”. Occupy protesters complain how they are being exploited by corporate power over politics and the state of the economy, however their complaints hold little sway over third-world countries imbued with poverty.
According to the United States Social Security Administration, “The national average wage index for 2010 is 41,673.83 dollars.” This comes out to a median annual household income of 50,233.00 dollars. The average worldwide annual income is 5,000 dollars. The average household is in the “1%”. The average wage is in the top 3 percent of the world. Half the people in the world combined own less than 1 percent of the world’s global assets. If you live in a developing country there is a 17 percent chance you are starving.
Americans are doing the same thing the “1%” does to the “99%”. They are making money and enjoying a relatively high standard of living off of cheap labor that works in poor conditions. They are willfully participating in the exploitation of millions of people. No one is complaining about the sweatshops that have children make Ipods and Nikes. Or about IMF policies that benefit already developed countries. There are no protests in those countries where exploitation is occurring because those people simply can’t. The people in those countries do not have the political and legal standing to make such a move, nor do they have the technology.
In tough times there are usually some protests, usually a change in the political make-up of the country, and always a scapegoat. And the rich make a great scapegoat. It is certainly fair to say that they are so rich because of the same deregulations that made the economy fall on its face. That led to the stock market losing trillions of dollars and people losing their homes and savings. I am not saying the Occupy Wall Street protests are wrong. Just a bit hypocritical. It is easy to think just about yourself. The rich know that better than anyone else. Occupy protesters demand Wall Street executives change yet they don’t know how to make them.
Maybe the best way to start is to first change ourselves.
This article reads like it was written by a fifth grader. The use of percentages is practically arbitrary. The thrust of the the article is that Americans shouldn’t complain about money because if they do so they are by definition hypocrites given their standing compared to other persons of the world. Idiotic. It makes no effort whatsoever to actually grapple with the issues raised by OWS.