I’m tired of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Although my family is more well off than most families in America, I still understand what they are trying to do. They want to help spread money and have everyone else change to what they want. The only problem? WHAT DO THEY WANT? The whole movement is full of people that are just saying “change this”, “why do we do this?” But none of what they are doing is a plan. How do you expect the nation or even the government to change things if you are giving them no ideas or options? Also people need to realize that they need to change too to help the problem, you can’t expect other people to change to conform to your problems. Going out and loitering in the streets is not a protest, a protest has a unified group of people that have a specific goal. No one has come out as a leader of the Occupy movement. What people of the Occupy movement don’t realize is that all people are not equal, not in race/sex/orientation but in skills and working skills. I agree that people like athletes make too much money while teachers, and workers that keep our communities going are barely getting by. BUT this does not mean that people who are not trained in a specific skill have the right to more money. The reason why most of the people are richer than you is because they worked hard in school and climbed up the ranks. So go get educated and keep working hard.
Actually, take a look at this. The times are changing.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odFygPMwbIM
They are organizing, they are starting to target real issues. Even better they are working on a micro-scale in many different locations to eventually affect larger change. It's not just a loose mob anymore.
You know, the one thing I really hate about Anti-Occupy people is this: They assume Occupy people want something they're not actually asking for. Basically, what you're implying in this post is that protesters just want more money and/or a free ride, which is not necessarily the case. The main concern the Occupiers have is that some people just have TOO MUCH MONEY, money that wasn't necessarily obtained through real hard work or profound accomplishments. I don't think Occupy people are really doing what they're doing because they are jealous of rich people or something (which seems to be a common misconception of the movement, as exemplified in your post). Occupiers realize there is an obscene amount of money going to people simply because they are wealthy to begin with, but for people who had no wealth to begin with, they can't actually "climb the ranks" as you say they should. It's easy for you, coming from a wealthy family in which you were given a lot of opportunities, to say that people should do this or that, but put yourself in a position in which you really didn't get the opportunity to receive a great K-12 education, or maybe in which you didn't have parents who pushed you to do things you were pushed to do. What we have in America is supposedly "equal opportunity", but in reality, it's a giant caste system in disguise, in which initial wealth is like a chair lift to greater wealth, and those without initial wealth actually have to do a lot more work than you think to get anywhere near the position of others' who actually GOT the free ride.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Anon 12:13.
ReplyDeleteOP, you assume that every wealthy person in the U.S. worked hard to get into their position when many of them (if not most) grew up in wealthy families to begin with and as such had more opportunities from the start. You can say 'work hard and get an education' all you want, but especially today, that isn't really how it works, and for me, at least, it's hard to understand how people still manage to attempt to blame the victim.
Lower class Americans (especially the urban lower class) are disadvantaged from the start. Schools don't get funded well, and obviously parents can't afford private school tuition without paying heavily. Many are stuck in entry-level positions with no way to rise through the ranks, as you describe, because employers aren't going to pay additional wages where they don't believe they are needed. The cycle continues, the income gap rises, etc. While possible, it isn't nearly as simple as you claim it to be, simply because capitalism (in conjunction with policy) creates winners and losers while perpetuating inequality.
While there are protestors that branched off of OWS, the media really seems to blow it out of proportion. What they're truly protesting is the influence of money over the government's actions (i.e. bailing out the big banks, protecting the wealthy when trickle-down economics clearly don't work, and corporate influence in politics)rather than the general public. In their eyes, America is slowly becoming a Plutocracy. And frankly, it isn't that difficult to see where they're coming from.
Additionally, did it occur to you that perhaps a reason why they're protesting is that they can't find work in the first place (or at least, enough to support themselves)? The job market isn't exactly improving.
ReplyDeleteHey dude, I like your post about these good for nothing lazy bums who want us to give them something. They need to get a job instead of sitting their lazy asses and blocking us good people from our jobs. Fuck these ass holes. If they don't like it here then they should get the fuck out. Don't you feel the same about these students who sit on their asses at Whitewater and don't do shit in class, that they should get the fuck out too? Lazy good for nothing son of bitches. I agree with you, all people are not equal, women are not equal to us men, and blacks are not equal in intelligence and education to us whites, so they belong on the bottom. You are so right, these ass holes need to get an education, get a job, and climb up the ranks like us good white folks but they will never be equal to us. So keep it real dude.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you dude that inequality is based on skin color and gender. Blacks remain on the bottom because of their skin color and women remain because of their gender. This is based on nature, as you suggest in your post. The best students at Whitewater are white not black. More white students graduate than black, so you are right, inequality is based on race and gender. Thanks for a great post.
DeleteI sincerely hope that both of you are playing the sarcastic card full tilt! If not, do the world a favor by stapling your mouths shut, lopping off your hands, and confining yourselves in seclusion.
DeleteI think the OP is ignorant of all the factors that go into why some people flourish in our country and some do not. Race, gender, and class are, unfortunately, part of that equation. So one cannot merely say that one needs to work harder to get ahead in this country. For a well known case in point, women still make only about 80 cents to the dollar compared to men, and they work just as hard. There are many more complex examples involving race, which involves such realizations that not everyone has the same "equality of opportunity and equality of access." In some abstract, out of touch sense, one might say that we all have the same opportunities, and that all we have to do is work harder to attain them. But that neglects reality. The person who is sitting in poverty, and has to fight discrimination based on her race and gender, will have a MUCH harder time getting a job, whereas the white, middle class male would land that same job in no time flat. Chances are that that white, middle class male would have had easy access to higher education and many other perks that wouldn't have as easily accessed by the black, poverty level woman.
This is such a complicated issue that saying that it is all about working harder is the dumbest thing to say.