Occupy Wall Street

Since we are talking Anything NYC in this blog, I have to make a brief comment on the status of Occupy Wall Street.  To be quite frank, I have absolutely no idea what these people are up to, nor what they want.  In some ways, it feels like an early Communist movement in Russia, or perhaps some type of socialist movement, but at the end of the day, I really have no idea what these people want.

Now, don't get me wrong, I certainly want more out of life than i have now, and I certainly want more for my family, but for some reason I do not think that hanging out in a park complaining about how other people have more than me is the answer.  I think that there are all kinds of things that can be done, but I think chilling in the park is actually adding to the same kind of problems (waste) that these people allude to the most.

The problem with opportunity in general is that you have to believe that you deserve it.  If you are not educated enough to understand what you might be capable of, then it is hard to conceive a plan to actually achieve what you want.  Complaining for a hand-out doesn't accomplish this, because that is actually not the root of the problem.  There have always been people with better ideas, which led them to utilize resources more, and while some of them seem to have read Adam Smith and understand his "invisible hand", most seem to have failed to do so, and are just concerned with accomplishing more.  And you know what?  That is okay.

I like to think of the wealthy like Netflix.  You can do well and amass a lot for a long period of time, but eventually if you piss enough people off, someone will come after you, and in a way that matters.   The people at Wall Street can't see beyond their own noses and individual lives, so all they do is end up hurting each other or their fellow "99%".   That just won't work.

For example, people seem to think that corporate taxes should be higher and personal taxes on the "lower class" should be dropped, but if you think about it, this will never work.  Corporations are adept at avoiding taxes, so the answer is actually to create a flat corporate tax in an updated tax code that both allows the corporations to thrive, yet keeps the money in the U.S.  Personal tax breaks aren't the answer, because then you affect communities and education systems, which just promulgates the problem.

Anyways, I digress.  At the end of the day, I just don't know what the Occupy Wall Street movement wants, and I'm not sure that any of the factions there do either.