We don't really need income equality. Some people are lazy and some are hard working. They deserve to be treated differently.
Actually all we need is social mobility - everyone has a fair chance to get wealth through competition. All kinds of economic regulation, taxes, etc are plainly adding friction to the society. Economic growth is pretty much an excuse for degrading society today.
I mostly disagree on the protesters. The real people we should care about are the ones without the opportunity to protest. College graduates who are in the debt trap deserve empathy, but how about the other people who couldn't even go to college? With proper management skills, there should be no problems about the educated groups of people.
I don't feel sad for poor people who blame the rich for making too much money. The real problem is how fast can wealth be redistributed.
I am a college graduate and am getting out of the debt trap. Many of the OWS are too. I still have yet to pay off my student loan but the rest of my debt will be gone soon. The corporations refuse to hire anyone without experience and look for ridiculous requirements that just do not exist in the real world then claim of a skills shortage. I think corporations need to be more realistic with their expectations and reward those who are edcuated better. The OWS are not necessarily protesting for income equality but equal chance in todays world which we are quite a ways off of.
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My grandpa who is hardcore conservative used to say that you could either be a bum or a millionaire if you wanted when I was younger but now too agrees that this is not the case in the world we live in. You basically have the choice of being a bum or poor unless you know the right people. Even then if you go to school for many years you still may end up a bum because the opportunities just arent out there and the wealthy elite are hogging all that they can. As I saw on the CBC here the other night, North American corporations have never been more profitable nor hold more relative cash reservese but they are reluctant to spend it. This means no raises, cutting benefits and worsening working conditions. If you do not see it then you are one of the few lucky ones not affected.
I disagree that NA corporations are more profitable than ever; some are doing great, and many are not. Most of the corporations doing well are only doing well by outsourcing to China and India, and that's another can of worms that will come back to bite us in the ass. But I digress....
Here's the problem with college these days: first, kids take out huge loans they cannot hope to repay when they graduate, and then they expect to be hired and paid a reasonable salary. Hey, I graduated in CS, took a job as an entry-level programmer earning $45K, got laid off (quite a while back), and ten years later I'm *still* trying to pay off my student loans -- and I only had about $20K in loans. I know
idiots people that took out $100K for a liberal arts education, and it's ludicrous for them to expect to pay it off. Whose fault is it that they decided to go to a school that charges $20K in tuition? Hint: it's not the "system" but rather the entitlement generation.
I'd argue that the problem with the US right now (and much of the first world countries) is that there are too many college graduates that only learned to jump through the hoops necessary for graduation. I've read some studies that show the quality and productivity of an employee has essentially no correlation whatsoever with whether or not they graduated from college, and my experience in the work force backs that up. I've met people that never attended a university at all that are amazing at what they do (in the computer field), and I've met people with masters and doctorate degrees that don't know squat.
Funny thing is I hear people talk about Atlas Shrugged as though it has something to do with OWS. I'd say the fundamentals of Atlas Shrugged (or Ayn Rand's Objectivism) is the exact opposite of what OWS is asking for. Yet another example of how OWS people seem to be clueless about what they're doing. Couple that with the vandalism, trash, etc. they generate with no regard for those around them, and if they were in the world of Atlas Shrugged John Galt would be saying, "Let them rot and die with the system they expect to help them."
