Further, civil rights-era sit-ins worked because they actively took money from the people who engaged in prejudice. Sit-ins cost restaurant owners and bus companies money. The occupy people are not costing the 1 percent anything.
Andrew and I have been chatting about this and disagreeing about the extent to which a subway protest would cost the 1 percent money. I think it will cost working joes far more. I think continuing sit-ins at banks without letting up pressure is the way to go.
There is certainly far less social and economic mobility available now than, say, 50 years ago. But there is an infinitely greater opportunity to get a job than there is to stop being black.
There is certainly far less social and economic mobility available now than, say, 50 years ago. But there is an infinitely greater opportunity to get a job than there is to stop being black.
Dammit, you posted something a while back that I can't find now. The discussion revolved around high incomes, and the myth of "bootstrapping" and upward mobility.
I believe it was a challenge to the effect of: find one of the 20 wealthiest people in America who did not inherit their wealth.
This would carry a lot more weight if I could find that post, but the point is still the same. We now have an income disparity so large that it is actually impossible to enter the 1% without inheriting it.
In other words, wealth has been turned into what is effectively a heritable trait, much as certain heritable traits create racial differences.
Sure, there's greater opportunity to get a job than there is to stop being black. But we're talking about a situation where there is an exclusive club - effectively a different species - that controls most of the resources, which you cannot enter through any means of your own. And your ability to succeed is limited because of that intense income disparity - there's only so much you can make before you need to become one of the new aristocrats.
I'm not even sure it's fixable other than by forcible redistribution.
Wait... is the goal to have everybody make income comparable to that of the top 1 percent? That's a fool's errand.
I thought the goal was to have equal opportunity and better availability of healthcare, jobs, and education? There is an awful lot of room for a comfortable -- nay, luxurious -- lifestyle without being in the 1 percent.
I still think there's something inherently wrong with any system where one stay in the hospital can financially ruin you for life. If we didn't have ludicrously expensive necessities, the income disparity wouldn't be such an issue.
The problem is not that people can't make enough money to be in the 1%. The problem is that it's almost impossible to actually achieve financial security.
I was talking with some friends the other and one thing did come up is that 59 years ago only the 1% people could afford real luxuries while now almost everyone can.
As for bootstrapping : Bill Gates. I don't think Jobs was in the top 20 and i don't recall how much seed money Buffet got from his family. What about Zuckerburg?
Wait... is the goal to have everybody make income comparable to that of the top 1 percent? That's a fool's errand.
I thought the goal was to have equal opportunity and better availability of healthcare, jobs, and education? There is an awful lot of room for a comfortable -- nay, luxurious -- lifestyle without being in the 1 percent.
Well, I'm still not clear on the goal of the Occupy movement, which is still my largest - and most important - criticism of the whole thing. And no, I don't think everyone should be as wealthy as the 1% - that's simply not feasible.
However, the situation is one where the wealthiest of the wealthy have such a large proportion of the resources that they can effectively change large swaths of the economic (and thus social and political) landscape at their will. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if anyone could get there, but the income gap makes it impossible to do so if you're not already there.
It's not about making income equality - it's about equality in opportunity.
As for bootstrapping : Bill Gates...What about Zuckerburg?
2 examples, both of whom arguably were rather lucky. Not looking good. The vast majority inherit the wealth, plain and simple.
Note that I don't mean they inherit their entire fortune - rather, they inherit the opportunity, and usually some portion of their wealth. But there is a perception that you can come from nothing and make your opportunities to get ahead, and this is fallacious.
I bet that Bill Gates family was at least in the top 25%. Just reading their background. I'm sure there is a lot more mobility in that bracket then in any other.
I was talking with some friends the other and one thing did come up is that 59 years ago only the 1% people could afford real luxuries while now almost everyone can.
Yeah, and only Roman emperors had internal plumbing.
What do you mean by "real luxuries"? Technology gets cheaper, things get mass produced, but income disparity remains. Could you afford a serious medical issue out of pocket? Can this country afford to upkeep its infrastructure?
"Rags-to-riches" stories are mostly about luck. There are a lot of people who work hard, and try to situate themselves in positions where their hard work will pay off, but get nowhere. The vast majority of startups fail.
None of those entrepreneurs started out dirt poor. They were all relatively wealthy suburbanites. They could afford college and such. Gates and Zuckerburg both went to Harvard and dropped out.
So yeah, it's possible for someone who starts out with enough money to go to Harvard to get even richer. If Bill Gates lived in the Bronx eating the yellow food group from the bodega and going to community college, Microsoft would not be.
Equal opportunity means that even the poorest poorest possible person who is born a homeless orphan has the same chance of getting in the 1% of everyone else, and that chance should be a %1 chance. That means that, among other things, their chance shouldn't be reduced to %0 just because they happen to get sick and are unable to afford the medical care.
Of course, I recognize that many aspects of life are inherently unfair. You can be born a blind deaf quadriplegic with a lukewarm IQ. You probably won't get into the 1% ever. At all. Those extremes exist and are just that - extremes.
However, there are things we can't change - like a person's race or some crippling birth defect - and things we can change - the opportunities we as a society give to people.
There exists an inequality in opportunity here that we can alleviate with the right changes. I don't think we'll ever make a perfectly equal opportunity for everyone, but getting people closer, or at least putting it in the realm of possibility, is a good and noble goal. Make the American dream at least achievable, rather than a perpetually-dangled carrot.
What those changes are? Fucked if I know. That needs to be discussed. I do not believe that protesting in a park will fix fucking anything - the issue at hand is so massive, so complex, and so pervasive that it'll take a monumental effort to fix.
In many ways, the inequities targeted by the civil rights movement were a much simpler beast than the myriad inequities that have led to the extant income gap. Income disparity is as old a problem as...well, anything. Inequitable distribution of resources is the single largest driving factor in biological systems of any sort.
If this is ever the case, if top-notch medical care is some glorious standard of wealth in the US that people equate with Maybach automobiles and posh countryside manor houses with pedantic names for their grounds like "Quiescent Springs," it's over. Everyone in that country has lost, even the 1%.
I thought the 1% break point is income over $350K?
It's not that quality medical care is a luxury but life extension care is. 50 years ago you got cancer and you died. Now you get cancer and either die or spend shit tons of money not too.
The # 1 cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical bills.
"Rags-to-riches" stories are mostly about luck. There are a lot of people who work hard, and try to situate themselves in positions where their hard work will pay off, but get nowhere. The vast majority of startups fail.
"I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.
The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. ... Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
"With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.' " -Harry Hopkins
I thought the 1% break point is income over $350K?
It's not that quality medical care is a luxury but life extension care is. 50 years ago you got cancer and you died. Now you get cancer and either die or spend shit tons of money not too.
When basic physical therapy sessions cost $130 for an hour, yes, medical care is pretty much a luxury. I don't have the money to pay for my PT, so I have to deal with being in pain all the time. That's not life extension care unless you count preventing suicide as life extension. There are plenty of non-fatal conditions that make it hard to work of live a normal life that are easily treatable, but require lots of money to pay for. Many people don't get these conditions treated because they can't afford it.
50 years ago medicine was in the fucking dark ages compared to what we know now. 50 years ago people put their babies to sleep on their stomachs on the advice of their doctor.
It's not a luxury to live. We codified that shit in the Declaration of Independence. If the government protects its citizens' right to life, and illness is making your life utter shit or actively killing you, we owe it to the Founders to intervene.
That is my view now, it will be my view when I'm a physician, and it will be my view when I am too old to work.
In bootstrapping news I glanced at the 10 richest people according to Forbes
Such a view is not really that informative but perhaps food for thought. It's 5 self made, 5 inherited. Of the self made, it's 2 tech giants (Bill Gates, Larry Ellison) 2 are masters of finance (Warren Buffet and George Soros) and one best known for owning casino businesses but started off as a morgtage broker and developed COMDEX (Sheldon Adelson)
The other 5 who inherited their wealth are all named either Koch or Walton
It's also interesting Ellison, Adelson, and Gates all were college dropouts. It seems to support the idea the 10 richest people are made up inheritors and outliers. Not to say the outliers are just absolutely lucky but that certainly plays a role even in exceptionally smart people.
Regarding Koch and Walton. What generation are they?
What about Bloomberg?
The top 1% is not the Forbes list. They are the top what, .000000001%???
Kochs inherited directly from their father I believe, so second generation. Same with current set of Waltons
Bloomberg is ranked #12 with roughly 19.5 billion dollars
Forbes list isn't 1% true, which is why I said it wasn't truly informative. Just it seems to be easier for people to work with anecdotes. When you try to sum up the 1% then you are forced to resort to dorky charts.
None of those entrepreneurs started out dirt poor. They were all relatively wealthy suburbanites. They could afford college and such. Gates and Zuckerburg both went to Harvard and dropped out.
So yeah, it's possible for someone who starts out with enough money to go to Harvard to get even richer. If Bill Gates lived in the Bronx eating the yellow food group from the bodega and going to community college, Microsoft would not be.
Equal opportunity means that even the poorest poorest possible person who is born a homeless orphan has the same chance of getting in the 1% of everyone else, and that chance should be a %1 chance. That means that, among other things, their chance shouldn't be reduced to %0 just because they happen to get sick and are unable to afford the medical care.
Shouldn't the movement be about bettering the education system? Poorer people generally go to poorer schools that have worse materials, facilities and sometimes even staff. It isn't that Gates or Zuckerberg had the money to go to Harvard, they had the money to get the early start on an education that helped them reach the level they did. Stand outside Wall street and demand better texts books for every school and better conditions for teachers. People can dissagree with equality of wealth but it's hard to say any student doesn't deserve the best education possible
*points at above chart of shares of income change from 89 to 2007* Krugman: It’s a tiny minority, not a broad class of well-educated Americans, who have been winning here.
not being $70,000 in debt at the end of college is probably a better battlefield for the movement. Changing primary school education is a can of worms. The tip of the iceberg therein is most people who are publically talking about 'improving' schools think the silver bullet is to make it easier to fire teachers.
While I agree that equal opportunity to achieve merit based success is a great goal, it seems a bit tangential to the movement (IMO). The primary issue doesn't seem to be that other people are more entitled to take the place of those in the top one percent, but that the nation's wealth is less evenly distributed than it once was and the inequities in this realm are on the increase. People doing the same job today as they effectively make less than they did in the 70's (taking into account inflation/cost of living). Earnings/holdings/wages for the upper echelon have increased, yet the lower classes have become poorer. When you take into account the lower classes' lack of jobs, decreasing/non-existent public services, and ever increasing tax burdens (while their richer counterparts are able to couch earnings in investments that have incredibly low tax rates) it is obvious that the 99% (no matter how meritorious they may be) are going to struggle in order to attain/maintain what has come to be known as the American middle class existence. Add to all of this the onset of "Corporate Personhood" and lax regulations regarding campaign financing and not only is the purchasing power of the average citizen greatly diminished, but so is the power of their vote and their speech. The middle class is on life support and we essentially have an aristocracy - we might as well start calling the wealthy by their proper titles: Earl Charles de Ganahl Koch, Dutchess Christy Walton, etc.
My views on OWS are very conflicted. I agree there is a problem, and I do believe you can get something done by exposing that problem for long enough. No, I do not believe they need a set goal, and I actually wish they would be more moderate and less prone to comparing themselves to the Arab Spring and Tienanmen Square. I also wish they would dress better. During the Civil Rights Movement, protesters used to wear their Sunday best. It makes a huge difference.
As for what I believe the message and overall goal is intended to be, I think Cookie Monster actually said it best (the critical question is bolded):
Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worker make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.
Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.
Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system -- your friends on Wall Street -- and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).
It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy -- knowing full well that what could and would happen -- putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.
That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.
I feel like there wasn't enough investment into America's infrastructure and educational system, and that's why we're lagging so much more now. Does that mean we need to vilify those who have done well in the modern economy? No. Does that mean we need to squat in a park and act like victims? No. Does that mean we need to block the subway system, mucking up transportation for a bunch of people, the vast majority of whom are not weathy? Hell No. And no, you do not get people to join your side by getting them pissed off at you. Hell, you shouldn't even be trying to incite anger, which leads to hasty judgment and malleability.
As usual, I can't help but wonder at Steve's tone of apologia re the extremely rich. As has been pointed out, Gates, Zuckerberg, et al. are hardly Horatio Alger/Thomas Edison bootstrap fellows. Reading between the lines of Steve's defense of these people, one gets the distinct impression that he implicitly believes that core myth that causes red state types to vote against their own self interest - that one day, maybe he will be in the top 1%. He even speculated a couple of pages back that he thinks he's nearly there now.
I wish you well Steve, but you'll never get there. You'll never personally benefit from the bizarre republican tax schemes designed to enrich the already-too-rich. It's not a personal failing. None of us here are ever going to be there.
I think one of the problems is that the American people have internalized a Disneyfied dream of upward mobility more in tune with the fifties and sixties than the realities of today. As Socha's post makes clear, wealth back then was more directly related to the production of real value. Wealth today is related more to illusory value like the "value" a company seems to show after it fires half its employees, or the "value" that comes from selling, repackaging, reshuffling, and reselling more and more exotic bits of paper.
@Socha - the lack of investnent and even interest in the long term, exemplified by a lack of investment in infrastructure and education, is a symptom of the greed of people at the top who only care about short term gain. The last few years reminds me of nothing so much as a Civil War widow selling off parcels of land and the family silver to get by. Finally, the family is left with nothing. That's what the downsizers and the outsourcers have been doing for years and we're just now beginning to feel a little uncomfortable, mainly because we were so well off at the start of the decline, it's taken us a long time to get to this point where the cracks are beginning to show.
I'm actually impressed that the OWS movement has not died yet. There's a lot of confusion, counter-productivity, and mixed messages, but the passion and commitment are there. I think the only thing lacking is some consistent, charismatic leadership. Well, actually, the pain is probably not quite there yet either. I don't think we'll see the will needed for the action to really challenge things until more people have to miss a few meals and see their dreams of a stable life ruined.
The subway is kind of a bad idea. I would much rather they stage a sit-in at the NYSE, Bank of America, or the Chicago Board of Trade. Maybe even Congress or FOX News. That would hurt the bastards in their own house.
One last thought - I think one day that the Baby Boomers will be compared to a swarm of locusts. They came and consumed everything, leaving nothing of value in their wake.
Comments
Congress is the real problem, but there's almost no way for OWS to engage them without basically trying to take over the Democratic party.
Andrew and I have been chatting about this and disagreeing about the extent to which a subway protest would cost the 1 percent money. I think it will cost working joes far more. I think continuing sit-ins at banks without letting up pressure is the way to go.
There is certainly far less social and economic mobility available now than, say, 50 years ago. But there is an infinitely greater opportunity to get a job than there is to stop being black.
I believe it was a challenge to the effect of: find one of the 20 wealthiest people in America who did not inherit their wealth.
This would carry a lot more weight if I could find that post, but the point is still the same. We now have an income disparity so large that it is actually impossible to enter the 1% without inheriting it.
In other words, wealth has been turned into what is effectively a heritable trait, much as certain heritable traits create racial differences.
Sure, there's greater opportunity to get a job than there is to stop being black. But we're talking about a situation where there is an exclusive club - effectively a different species - that controls most of the resources, which you cannot enter through any means of your own. And your ability to succeed is limited because of that intense income disparity - there's only so much you can make before you need to become one of the new aristocrats.
I'm not even sure it's fixable other than by forcible redistribution.
I thought the goal was to have equal opportunity and better availability of healthcare, jobs, and education? There is an awful lot of room for a comfortable -- nay, luxurious -- lifestyle without being in the 1 percent.
The problem is not that people can't make enough money to be in the 1%. The problem is that it's almost impossible to actually achieve financial security.
As for bootstrapping : Bill Gates. I don't think Jobs was in the top 20 and i don't recall how much seed money Buffet got from his family. What about Zuckerburg?
However, the situation is one where the wealthiest of the wealthy have such a large proportion of the resources that they can effectively change large swaths of the economic (and thus social and political) landscape at their will. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if anyone could get there, but the income gap makes it impossible to do so if you're not already there.
It's not about making income equality - it's about equality in opportunity. 2 examples, both of whom arguably were rather lucky. Not looking good. The vast majority inherit the wealth, plain and simple.
Note that I don't mean they inherit their entire fortune - rather, they inherit the opportunity, and usually some portion of their wealth. But there is a perception that you can come from nothing and make your opportunities to get ahead, and this is fallacious.
What do you mean by "real luxuries"? Technology gets cheaper, things get mass produced, but income disparity remains. Could you afford a serious medical issue out of pocket? Can this country afford to upkeep its infrastructure?
"Rags-to-riches" stories are mostly about luck. There are a lot of people who work hard, and try to situate themselves in positions where their hard work will pay off, but get nowhere. The vast majority of startups fail.
So yeah, it's possible for someone who starts out with enough money to go to Harvard to get even richer. If Bill Gates lived in the Bronx eating the yellow food group from the bodega and going to community college, Microsoft would not be.
Equal opportunity means that even the poorest poorest possible person who is born a homeless orphan has the same chance of getting in the 1% of everyone else, and that chance should be a %1 chance. That means that, among other things, their chance shouldn't be reduced to %0 just because they happen to get sick and are unable to afford the medical care.
However, there are things we can't change - like a person's race or some crippling birth defect - and things we can change - the opportunities we as a society give to people.
There exists an inequality in opportunity here that we can alleviate with the right changes. I don't think we'll ever make a perfectly equal opportunity for everyone, but getting people closer, or at least putting it in the realm of possibility, is a good and noble goal. Make the American dream at least achievable, rather than a perpetually-dangled carrot.
What those changes are? Fucked if I know. That needs to be discussed. I do not believe that protesting in a park will fix fucking anything - the issue at hand is so massive, so complex, and so pervasive that it'll take a monumental effort to fix.
In many ways, the inequities targeted by the civil rights movement were a much simpler beast than the myriad inequities that have led to the extant income gap. Income disparity is as old a problem as...well, anything. Inequitable distribution of resources is the single largest driving factor in biological systems of any sort.
Is medicine the new standard of luxury?
EDIT: OK, that's maybe a little dramatic. But medical bills have the power to cripple middle-class Americans trivially.
It's not that quality medical care is a luxury but life extension care is. 50 years ago you got cancer and you died. Now you get cancer and either die or spend shit tons of money not too.
The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics.
...
Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
"With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.' "
-Harry Hopkins
It's not a luxury to live. We codified that shit in the Declaration of Independence. If the government protects its citizens' right to life, and illness is making your life utter shit or actively killing you, we owe it to the Founders to intervene.
That is my view now, it will be my view when I'm a physician, and it will be my view when I am too old to work.
Such a view is not really that informative but perhaps food for thought. It's 5 self made, 5 inherited. Of the self made, it's 2 tech giants (Bill Gates, Larry Ellison) 2 are masters of finance (Warren Buffet and George Soros) and one best known for owning casino businesses but started off as a morgtage broker and developed COMDEX (Sheldon Adelson)
The other 5 who inherited their wealth are all named either Koch or Walton
(Never heard of Larry Ellison or Sheldon Adelson)
What about Bloomberg?
The top 1% is not the Forbes list. They are the top what, .000000001%???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson
It's also interesting Ellison, Adelson, and Gates all were college dropouts. It seems to support the idea the 10 richest people are made up inheritors and outliers. Not to say the outliers are just absolutely lucky but that certainly plays a role even in exceptionally smart people.
Bloomberg is ranked #12 with roughly 19.5 billion dollars
Forbes list isn't 1% true, which is why I said it wasn't truly informative. Just it seems to be easier for people to work with anecdotes. When you try to sum up the 1% then you are forced to resort to dorky charts.
Krugman: It’s a tiny minority, not a broad class of well-educated Americans, who have been winning here.
not being $70,000 in debt at the end of college is probably a better battlefield for the movement. Changing primary school education is a can of worms. The tip of the iceberg therein is most people who are publically talking about 'improving' schools think the silver bullet is to make it easier to fire teachers.
Add to all of this the onset of "Corporate Personhood" and lax regulations regarding campaign financing and not only is the purchasing power of the average citizen greatly diminished, but so is the power of their vote and their speech.
The middle class is on life support and we essentially have an aristocracy - we might as well start calling the wealthy by their proper titles: Earl Charles de Ganahl Koch, Dutchess Christy Walton, etc.
As for what I believe the message and overall goal is intended to be, I think Cookie Monster actually said it best (the critical question is bolded): I feel like there wasn't enough investment into America's infrastructure and educational system, and that's why we're lagging so much more now. Does that mean we need to vilify those who have done well in the modern economy? No. Does that mean we need to squat in a park and act like victims? No. Does that mean we need to block the subway system, mucking up transportation for a bunch of people, the vast majority of whom are not weathy? Hell No. And no, you do not get people to join your side by getting them pissed off at you. Hell, you shouldn't even be trying to incite anger, which leads to hasty judgment and malleability.
I wish you well Steve, but you'll never get there. You'll never personally benefit from the bizarre republican tax schemes designed to enrich the already-too-rich. It's not a personal failing. None of us here are ever going to be there.
I think one of the problems is that the American people have internalized a Disneyfied dream of upward mobility more in tune with the fifties and sixties than the realities of today. As Socha's post makes clear, wealth back then was more directly related to the production of real value. Wealth today is related more to illusory value like the "value" a company seems to show after it fires half its employees, or the "value" that comes from selling, repackaging, reshuffling, and reselling more and more exotic bits of paper.
@Socha - the lack of investnent and even interest in the long term, exemplified by a lack of investment in infrastructure and education, is a symptom of the greed of people at the top who only care about short term gain. The last few years reminds me of nothing so much as a Civil War widow selling off parcels of land and the family silver to get by. Finally, the family is left with nothing. That's what the downsizers and the outsourcers have been doing for years and we're just now beginning to feel a little uncomfortable, mainly because we were so well off at the start of the decline, it's taken us a long time to get to this point where the cracks are beginning to show.
I'm actually impressed that the OWS movement has not died yet. There's a lot of confusion, counter-productivity, and mixed messages, but the passion and commitment are there. I think the only thing lacking is some consistent, charismatic leadership. Well, actually, the pain is probably not quite there yet either. I don't think we'll see the will needed for the action to really challenge things until more people have to miss a few meals and see their dreams of a stable life ruined.
The subway is kind of a bad idea. I would much rather they stage a sit-in at the NYSE, Bank of America, or the Chicago Board of Trade. Maybe even Congress or FOX News. That would hurt the bastards in their own house.
One last thought - I think one day that the Baby Boomers will be compared to a swarm of locusts. They came and consumed everything, leaving nothing of value in their wake.