After weeks of being on the fence on the “Occupy Wall Street” phenomenon, I have officially decided that I CANNOT, in good conscience, support this movement. I make this decision rather unwillingly, and with various reservations. There are demands held by the protestors that make perfect sense. Of course, it is troubling that the top 1% has had their income grow at a much faster rate than the rest of the country, and we need innovative, courageous solutions on decreasing our social inequalities in a fair, viable manner. Yes, there is no doubt that there should be reforms in closing tax loopholes and inefficient uses of bailout money. Of course, health care and education should be more affordable to all. Lobbyists should not have such an impact on buying politicians as they do today…bribery, unfortunately, is alive and well in the United States, just in more clandestine forms. People who want to learn new career skills should have ever opportunity to have the necessary resources available to them to make their lives better and to contribute to their societies. Of course, children born to poor parents should have as much access to educational schools, including practice for tests such as the SATS, as the kids of rich parents. I can even support an increase of taxes on the richest percentage of Americans, given that it is used appropriately to help those less fortunate by providing them access to better career tools and job services, since many rich people have benefitted from the access to a good education. There should be some way to decrease poverty and a path for the affected people to work their way out of it, if they choose to do so. However, all of the above issues are complex, and require viable solutions and long, painful negotiations (in my next blog, sometime next, week, I shall offer some of my solutions…stay tuned).
It is one thing to demand reform by creating ideas, stumping for them, and convincing others to implement them, yet a completely different approach to just make a list of demands and clamor for someone to magically make them happen. We should all be doing the former; however, the protestors are content with just doing the latter. Unfortunately, their lack of ideas to solve their demands makes me lose much respect for the protestors. These people claim to want reform and desire changes, yet they have no clue on how to achieve results. There is a long list of demands, but as far as I can tell, not a single solution to achieve the objectives. Purely protesting with no clue on how to get anything done is a complete waste of time. When Martin Luther King Jr. and the rest of the Civil Rights movement organized their sit-ins, they had a plan…they wanted legislation to provide African Americans and other minorities not only equal rights but equal access to jobs, education, and entertainment. Even the French and Russian Revolutionaries had plans on how to run the governments, as flawed as some of these were. Personally, I hate everything that he Tea Partiers stand for, but I can at least appreciate their resolve to get what they want and their ability to at least formulate ideas, even though these are dumb, ignorant, and extreme. Unfortunately, I can not say the same about the “Occupiers”; it’s as if they are waiting for someone else to solve their problems for them. This sort of attitude will never get anything accomplished, and as a result, these Occupiers are only wasting their own time.
Perhaps the key reason why these protestors cannot seem to formulate a game plan to bring about reforms is because so many of their demands are unfeasible or outright ignorant. On top of some legitimate changes that the protestors want to see, which I have listed above, many of the other demands that the reformers clamor for appear to stem from their ignorance of basic knowledge of economics and business. Now, before you criticize me for this verdict, please hear me out. I am about to go over some of their demands that do not make sense piece by piece and explain the fallacy in these wants.
The protestors are against the bailouts of banks and of “Wall Street”. Yeah, on the surface it does not seem right to be doling out taxpayer money to bail out large corporations. But consider the consequences if these bailouts do not happen. If all of these banks collapse, over a million jobs would be lost. Just look at General Motors. The Obama Administration bailed them out too, and now they have recovered from the brink of bankruptcy, and over a million potential job losses have been avoided. With banks, the consequences would be so much direr if many banks do collapse than just losing jobs, however. If the banks go under, the majority of Americans would potentially lose all of their money in them. Now, after the Great Depression, legislation was passed that guaranteed that the government would pay off up to $250,000 per bank account. In other words, if the big banks collapse, the government has to pay you all that you have lost. Where would they get this money? They would need to pay back much more than what you give back in taxes, and in case you haven’t noticed, we are already in over a 14 trillion dollar debt, as it is. They would simply not have this money available. Most of us would lose our entire incomes, and chaos would erupt. Look, I’m not saying that every bank would have absolutely failed if there was no bailout; some may have eventually recovered. But it is a scarily legit possibility. It happened during the Great Depression, and it happened with the Lehman Brothers. There is just no chance that any sane government, whether under the Bush or Obama Administration, would be willing to take this chance. This is why protesting the bailouts is not just pointless, it’s incredibly dumb. We NEED to “bail out Wall Street” because Wall Street runs our economy and stores all of our money. We simply have no choice but to provide them. If we go under, we will get chaos, and probably a larger, and more devastating depression, not to mention losing all of our incomes, if not an outright economic collapse. It’s a necessary evil. All we can do is enact legislation to insure that the banks do not take advantage of this and make dumb irresponsible decisions…like charging them interest on government loans and capping their bonuses until they pay them off (as the Obama Administration has been successfully done).
It appears that a huge point of this “Occupy” movement is to force corporations to treat clients, employees, and other stakeholders better. “People over profits.” Look, on the surface this sounds lovely. In an ideal utopia, this would be perfect. The thing is, we DO NOT LIVE in an ideal utopia. Anyone who has majored in Business or Economics (this would include me, so I have the full authority to talk about this) would understand that the only responsibility by corporations is to its SHAREHOLDERS. The profitability line is one of the major factors that these shareholders look at, so corporations naturally would like to make it as large as possible. Yes, sometimes messed up things happen, such as when Lowe’s closed down a bunch of stores and laid off a bunch of employees…and its shares went up by 2%. Look, I’m not saying that we should just let corporations do whatever they want, OK? We have laws against lying to clients and cheating them. Without a question, there should be a set of minimum standards…say something like a minimum of 2 week paid vacations, medical insurance, and no termination for no reason or without investigations, as long as there are no layoffs. But now here is the catch. The United States is one of the greatest places to live in. It truly cares about the rights of its citizens. Even with all of this partisanship, it still works hard to sustain a minimum standard of living for all Americans. We are a country of laws, with a minimum wage, rules on working conditions, etc . Unfortunately, not allof the world works this way. Labor in China, India, and Mexico, to name a few examples, is dirt cheap. The employees there can be treated like crap. Remember how I said that a corporation must satisfy its shareholders? To do so, they need to cut costs and increase profits. Naturally, they shall produce in the countries where labor and supplies are cheaper to achieve this goal. With every piece pro-labor legislation, the corporations have a higher incentive to outsource to someplace where conditions are more favorable. You think that there are no jobs here in the United States? Look at Europe, especially Greece or Spain. They have strong pro-labor laws. Their unemployment rate also tends to be much higher than in the United States, in the teens and 20s. This is because of a strong pro-labor presence. The European corporations hire less people because they do not want to have people sitting around doing nothing, since it is so difficult to just lay them off. Because it is so difficult to get rid of employees, the companies in Europe are ridiculously careful in making the right choice of whom to hire. As a result, they pass up on a lot of people, including those that could potentially become successful with the company, and as a consequence, millions become unemployed. Yes, the occupiers are correct that the employees are assets. When they are no longer needed and can be let go, just like equipment can be resold or recycled. It sucks. But can this be avoided without leaving the consumer and the shareholder better off? And if it is, what is the alternative? How far do we wish to go down the slippery slope of rights for consumers and shareholders, at the expense of even more outsourcing?
You know what? The relationship between client and stakeholder actually isn’t even that bad here. Competition takes care of this. Yes, we all hear about the layoffs, random terminations, the raising of prices by Netflix, and $5 ATM fees, like Bank of America, etc . However, contrary to the claims of the protestors, most corporations actually treat their companies quite well, especially the big banks. It’s all about completion and motivating the employee. Companies naturally want to hire the best available candidates…the smartest, hard-working, most attentive, innovative, and friendly employees. The better the employee, the more choices he or she has, and benefits such as pay, insurance policies, vacation, room for learning, and a work-life balance are all definitely factors in choosing the right job. Because employers want the better employees, they usually provide the best benefits and the best work environment (how would you like to work for Google, with their free meals, bike rentals, gyms, soccer and basketball fields, and game rooms?); if they do not, they will lose out on talent. Same deal with the clients. Every corporation wants to create goodwill. It’s why most of them give donations to charities and sponsor sporting events and claim to be environmentally friendly. And trust me, a company who behaves immorally will pay big-time. Just look at Enron. They tried to cheat the system and ended up collapsing. Or take that restaurant in New Hampshire, which refused to cancel and return the money for a couple’s dinner reservation even after the groom’s bride died just the day before their wedding day. The establishment garnered so much negative press and publicity that most people stopped going there. Its profit-first, people-second approach literally put it out of business. There is a saying in business that “the customer is always right.” This is because a customer always has choices…on what to pay, what to buy, preferential treatment, etc. Businesses who cannot figure out how to treat a potential client will lose big-time in profits. Corporations may be naturally greedy, true. But they are not stupid. And because of this, we are all winners, thanks to competition. “Profits over people” does not exist because profits occur BECAUSE of people…and at the end of the day, the people hold the key on what, where, and when to buy.
Speaking of complaints about layoffs, to avoid layoffs and create jobs, the protestors also want the companies to hire in the United States only…”Buy American!” they naively chant. If only it was that easy. Of course it is preferable to create jobs here, but unfortunately there will always be outsourcing, unless we are willing to spend substantially more money on consumer goods. And don’t expect that competition will keep them down, either. Due to increased labor costs (definitely if pro-labor legislation is not enacted, as the protestors want, but even without it, as the minimum wage is much higher in the US than in other parts of the world), prices will skyrocket because And don’t expect competition to force the corporations to keep the prices down, too. All of the companies will be forced to raise their prices; otherwise they will make no profits. Everything will become more expensive. Some expensive goods will be so undersold that the companies will be forced to leave the business, creating an even higher unemployment rate and basically eliminating luxury goods. Additionally, because virtually all goods will now be worth more, the dollar will be worth less, which will in turn lead to inflation. I’m all for providing incentives for corporations to keep jobs here and to improve working conditions…but legislating them is a slippery slope, one in which we shall all lose from if we go down on the wrong path. By the way, maybe in 200 years or so, outsourcing would have lost its advantage; if the Economic Theory of contraction proves to be correct…then outsourcing would probably be pointless and stop immediately. But that is a pretty long time to sit around and protest, don’t you think?
When I told some of my friends about the issues with the demands of the protestors, one of them asked, “what’s wrong with Socialism? Just abolish capitalism and the banks, and problem solved.” No way. First let’s start with the banks. Besides keeping all of our money under mattresses, we will not be able to get loans. We will have no money to buy a house, a car, or an education. No loans to start a new business. No credit cards or debit cards. Nor would a Socialist government help our case. Capitalism, whether in the United States, in Europe, in Australia, in Japan, or elsewhere, has time and time again proven to succeed. On the other hand, Socialist governments have always failed big-time. Under Socialist conditions, nobody had the motivation to work hard, to invent, to create ideas. Basic necessities were difficult to get and luxurious items are almost impossible to come by, due to government bureaucracy, since nobody competes with the government, they can take their sweet old time and be inefficient and not innovative. My parents and grandparents have lived in Socialism. They told me the horror stories of 5 people living in a one bedroom apartment, of standing in line for an hour to buy bread or a toothbrush, of having no car and crappy black-and white TVs, if they were lucky. Even worse than the shitty economic outlook with Socialism, practically all Socialist regimes create brutal dictators, who censor like crazy. Joseph Stalin and Mao each killed more people than Adolph Hitler. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are moronic leaders who secretly believe that they are actually kings or gods and hold all of the answers. North Korea literally has secret concentration camps, similar to the old Soviet “gulags”. China is a fake Socialist country now; although their government censors everything, it allows businesses to compete, virually making it a democracy. Is it any surprising that millions of Cubans risked their lives by swimming to Miami to get into the United States? A classless society is only a utopia, it does not motivate anyone to lead a better life, and as good and pious and moral and well-intentioned as it sounds, it is unrealistic, unfair, and can easily be abused. Whenever the government gets involved in business decisions, this is a disaster of the well-being of its citizens…the government’s job is to enact legislation to prevent abuses in a Capitalistic system, all while allowing businesses to fairly compete for customers and shareholders, and that is the way it should be.
It would be one thing if the protestors were merely uninformed that many of their demands are actually unfeasible and if applied in practice, would lead us down the wrong path. However, this is not even my biggest issue with the “Occupy” Movement. I have always been troubled by the protests taking place in financial districts, rather than political arenas. Most, if not all of their demands would be better served if lawmakers establish rules against corporate abuses. The corporations WILL NOT do this by themselves any less than a person tempted to steal from a bank will do so without a police system, but think twice of the customers when the cops have laws to enforce. If they want actual, legitimate change, the protestors should be protesting in DC, on Beacon Hill, and other places where political and legal decisions are made. This obsession with “Wall Street” makes me uncomfortable.
The protestors’ obsession with the “99%” does not allay my fears; as a matter of fact, it leaves me even more concerned. Their “99%” are NOT people who want to end corruption. NOT lobbyists. NOT people who drive partisanship in Congress. No. These protestors are literally against the 1% of the RICHEST Americans. I never even got the “99%” part, really. Someone who makes over $400 K a year is considered in this elite group. Is someone, say in the 1.1% really that worse off than someone in the 1%? Does someone who makes $450 K per year necessarily do it any more dishonestly or greedily than someone who makes $350 K annually? While there is no doubt some of the richest people have earned their money dishonestly or greedily, scapegoating them all in one category is extremely dangerous. For example, do Bill Gates or Steve Jobs really not deserve their billions? I’m all for taxing the rich a little more. But outright blaming them for everyone’s problems, no exceptions, crosses the line in that it creates distrust, if not outright hatred. Anyone basically making over $700 K is automatically labeled as a cheat or a fraud. Someone different. Someone out of touch. Vilifying these people as a single group is not only wrong; it can lead to them being unsafe.
Why is it so dangerous to blame the rich, you may ask? Because I believe that few, if any of these protestors know how the majority of these people actually earn their money. There appears to be this common misconception against bankers, stock brokers, and corporate executives, that all of them are out-of-touch, greedy, corrupt fat cats. And unfortunately, there are cases where this is true…but there are many more where such an accusation is inaccurate and unfair, cruel, even. Few people bother to understand or appreciate how hard these individuals have worked to get where they are today. In high school and college, these are the guys who almost never go out, who study their asses off, while taking insanely challenging courses. These are the risk-takers, individuals who take chances in launching a new product, or start their own business. They are the ones thinking up new idea, or creating more efficient way to run a system. Many of these people work 60-80 hour weeks in high-stress, high risk-reward jobs. Sometimes they reap huge rewards of these risks, and yes, sometimes they fail. But if we discourage them from taking risks, how will we ever invent anything? If we deride failure, who will want to find the next big idea? Before finding the right filament, Thomas Edison failed dozens of times. Steve Jobs, before inventing the ipod and the ipad and the iphone was FIRED from Apple, a company that lagged far behind Microsoft well until the 21st century. After all, In all professions, there are bad apples. Britney Spears, Chris Brown, Michael Vick, and Plaxico Buress, and Lindsey Lohan have all made poor decisions. Michael Jackson’s doctor made the wrong decisions. Along with winning two World Series, Theo Epstein won 2 World Series, he signed Carl Crawford, Edgar Renteria, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and John Lackey. His reward? More money and a higher position with the Chicago Cubs. Yet none of these protestors are protesting Sports managers or athletes, despite NBA players, almost all within this “1%” going on strike. Few of the protestors criticize actors, singers, doctors or athletes. Why? These guys a millionaires too. Some of them are arrogant and greedy, just as some corporate executives or bankers always want more. So why single out only the corporate executive and bakers? Yes, some successful corporate professionals, once they reach a certain level, do indeed lose touch of reality. Yes, some corporations are greedy pricks who leech off the government by lobbying it and suiting their own interests. True, there are corporations who don’t give a damn about their employees and true, some successful people, like Bernie Madoff, even create a Ponzi Schemes. However, what we need to understand that there will ALWAYS be some bad apples in a group. Whether in a race or in a religion, a nation or an ethnithity, or yes, income group, there will ALWAYS be some truly despicable people. Just as scapegoating races, religions, or cultures is xenophobic and wrong, so is stereotyping entire income levels. By ostracizing and outright ridiculing the “1%”, these protestors are…just approaching their frustrations the wrong way. Instead of figuring out solutions to solve their problems, they seem to want someone to blame….and this can never be good or acceptable, and needs to be stopped immediately.
The attitude by many of the protestors against the cops concerns me as well. Here in Boston, the BPD police headquarters were hacked by some of the Occupiers, and private information of several officers, including credit card and social security numbers, were publically disclosed. Yet the OWS protestors never condemned this. They refuse to leave adjacent private areas for safety reasons, and complain about “police brutality” when forcefully removed. They walk on the roads, causing them to close and delaying traffic. It is one thing to protest. It is their right, and our duty as Americans to let them do so. But when this crosses the line to disrupting businesses and poses safety hazards, the occupiers need to follow the directions. It is further alarming that they chant that the cops “serve the 99%”. No. They serve the government, which is supposed to serve all of us. Sometimes the government gets it wrong, sometimes the cops get it wrong. The protestors should not, under nay circumstances vilify the police for doing their jobs, and some of their lack of civility toward the officers is troubling.
Finally, I would like to share one last thought. Here’s what I don’t understand…these occupiers (I am referring specifically to the ones who are camping out EVERY day) are claiming that they are having a difficult time finding jobs; yet they have no issue spending whole weekdays in tents. If they honestly want a job, why don’t they spend their time looking for one? I know, I know, they claim that there are no jobs available, that no one will hire them, that the corporations and big banks are laying everyone off like crazy, bla bla bla. But you know what? It does not appear that they are even trying. When my mother was laid off from her computer programming job due to outsourcing, she learned a whole new computer language in only two months. She spent days in computer labs and nights hitting the books. Even when she got hired again, she still spent time catching up. She is getting laid off again in December…and is already studying a new computer languages, rewriting her resumes, and prepping for scheduled interviews. If a 50 year old immigrant, for whom English is a second language and who did not grow up in American culture can learn a whole new skill in only 2 months, surely a 20 something guy with a college degree who grew up and went to school here could do so as well, as long as he tried? People keep on saying that there are no jobs, but I just don’t buy it. In my company, for example, there are dozens of openings, yet I know friends who applied here who did not hear anything back. The jobs are there; what’s not there are the required skills, the tough skills, the ones that you really need to study and that are complicated. Business majors are wanted at my company; history and English majors, on the other hand, are not, even with their 3.8 GPAs. These protestors, instead of spending their days in tents outside, need to revise their resume, learn new skills, read how-to books, volunteer for internships and non-profits, maybe even go to school again and take a new major, and do whatever it takes to increase their chances of landing that job. Neither the corporations nor the government will just hand it to them. It is possible. If you work hard enough, if you are willing to learn new skills, if you desire to stay competitive, you will land that job. I know this from personal experienced, from my own failures and successes, and so does my family. Yet the occupiers seem to have just quit searching. Even if some of them are students, instead of protesting, they should be studying. Vince Lombardi famously once said that “winners never quit, and quitters never win”. All of the protestors who are here each weekday clearly have no jobs (when would they be working if they did?) and are making absolutely no effort to land one, choosing to protest instead of ?
So please, protestors, (the ones who actually sleep out every day, not just come chant for a while for the weekends) quit complaining and either come up with viable solutions for reform or deal with what we have right now until you come up with a game plan that will actually not tank our economy. (once again, readers, check out my ideas by sometime next week). For the single 23 year old mother with 3 children living on $1,000 monthly handouts: while my heart breaks for your kids, I feel absolutely no sympathy for you. Your irresponsible behavior in having those 3 kids in the first place before obtaining an education or/and job fucked over your children, as well as you, congratulations, now beg your mom to look after your kids while you look for a job or go to school (my grandparents looked after me; my family never hired a nanny), instead of yelling at the banks near the financial district. For the college student crashing outside on a Tuesday night: don’t you have an exam or major project due tomorrow, dude? Go study! Perhaps it may even be not be late to switch majors or double-major, if you have some Liberal Arts major like English or Psysiology or history, which severely limit your choices for work. Try to learn some Excel, some business concepts, or a computer language, or a new software package…these will help you out in that elusive job search. For the unemployed 23+ year old: get out of the park, buy a suit, buy some books, and start looking…if you try hard enough; if you learn valuable skills, and if you actually want to work, you will find a job! A job will also give you more power and more opportunities to change the system than simply standing around in the park! For all of the protestors together: ,you know how you want tax money to go for better use? Can you guess who is paying for the cops to be present at your events right now? Me and other taxpayers…the ones who actually work for a living and understand that our demands and our actions have consequences, and that we must make sacrifices and work hard to get the things that we want. We too want change, but in order to achieve it, we must first understand the issues, brainstorm viable solutions, and reach that point where we can actually contribute to discussing and implementing changes. Come join us, or forever spend your time outside, homeless and in a tent!
