Occupy George

Can someone brief me on what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do? I can't quite figure it out.

If they're mad about being unemployed, marching sure isn't going to fix their situation. If they're mad about government corruption, what exactly would they like done? If they're mad about the economy in general, isn't Wall Street the worst place to be protesting? I feel like the traders on Wall Street would be the first people to want an economic bounce back. Do they just hate rich people? Hmm.

I've held back on criticizing this movement, but after all this time, I still can't figure out exactly what they want. It's seeming more and more to me, as just a way to waste peoples' times, and our tax dollars.

They are sick about low taxes for the rich and the inequitable distribution of wealth...

But being honest there is nothing they can do about those two.

The design of the site is awesome...but seriously, this anti-capitalism/populist nonsense is getting ridiculous.

I agree that the movement lacks a coherent message.

That being said, one of the large issues in play is that people feel slighted by rising income inequality, which they perceive to have arisen out of a sort of government-industry feedback loop. Certainly this is what the printed dollar bills seem to be about.

With regard to your comments about the utility of the protest: I don't think it's a waste in any regard. If you feel something about government (in this country), you have several options: wait for an election and vote, write to your congresspeople, protest, etc. I agree that it's frustratingly difficult to figure out what the movement wants, but (even unaligned) protest is a perfectly legitimate way to express (even general) displeasure with your (perhaps even falsely perceived) current government.

OWS appears to be a concentration of several basic grievances held against the financial industry's control of the government. It attempts to raise awareness to the fact that income inequality is increasing, and that the accumulation of capital does not seem to be benefiting the large majority of society.

It complains about the fact that the mistakes of the financial industry are being paid by the whole of society.

It raises more questions than it attempts to solve, but has some basic tenets in favor of restoring the regulations of financial markets that have been lost in the last 20 years.

Here's a random link I pulled that attempts to explain some issues: http://blog.pfaw.org/content/the-media-way-occupy-wall-stree...

It seems interesting to note that, from what I've heard from people working in the media industry, there's a directive to paint the OWS as having no purpose, however many of the critiques that are being leveled towards it are just as valid, if not more, again the Tea Party movement, yet such comments were never made in mainstream media. It's also worth noting that there were some very powerful interests funding the Tea Party. Finally, many people within OWS have concrete propostitions, such as restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, changing the capital gains tax, introducing the Tobin Tax, etc. Of course, that would actually imply knowing a thing or two about political science, so most people can't be bothered to research that.