Occupy Wall St.: Not a head scratcher
Last night I heard a story on NPR about the Wall St. protest that is now spreading to other cities. The gist of the story was: 鈥渨hat are these protests really about? What do they want?鈥�
I鈥檓 sorry, but that鈥檚 just not a head scratcher. Do these news analysts think it鈥檚 a coincidence that they鈥檙e occupying Wall St. as opposed to Columbus Ave north of 79th ?
As Andrew Sorkin put it today (after writing that the message was 鈥渁t times鈥ard to discern鈥�):
鈥溾�he demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.鈥�
I鈥檓 not saying everyone down there is ready to give a clear exposition of the facts of the case, but commentators can stop scratching their heads now.
I鈥檝e been writing about these problems for decades. Sometimes they鈥檝e gotten a little better, but mostly they鈥檝e gotten worse. Before the downturn, the share of income held by the top 1% was 23.5%, the highest since 1928 and more than twice the 10% level of the late 1970s.
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These are growth shares, as in they have to sum to 100%鈥搘hen one group鈥檚 share goes up like that, everybody else鈥檚 has to shrink.
That doesn鈥檛 mean real income values can鈥檛 rise for other groups, of course (though it does imply slower relative growth, compared to the high end). But in fact, the middle class and the poor haven鈥檛 seen that either鈥he decade of the 2000s saw middle-incomes decline in real terms for working-age households. The recession just made those incomes fall faster.
Protest movements are often born of two interacting injustices: the lack of opportunity and the lack of accountability by the persons perceived to be blocking that opportunity.
Given the facts of the income distribution, the trends in real middle-class incomes and poverty, the failure of policy to do much to change these trends, the government bailouts of the only class that鈥檚 benefited from the recovery so far, the absence of clear punishment/accountability for the financial and political institutions that helped inflate the debt bubble that continues to squeeze economies across the globe, and the dysfunctionality of the current political system (they鈥檙e arguing more about whether they can keep the lights on than whether they can help solve the economic problems), the more interesting question is what took so long for such protests to show up?
