Occupy... This!

A lot has been made of the similarities between the Occupy Wall Street (and Occupy… etc.) movement and last year’s Tea Party movement. The most obvious similarity being that both movements arose without a lot of organization or content but contained heapfuls of anger and disgust. The Tea Party’s focus was Big Government; the Occupy WS’s focus is financial institutions and big banks (and in a broader sense, their influence on government). Later on, establishment Republicans jumped on the band wagon and essentially co-opted the movement (e.g., “Mr. Tea Party” Sen. Jim DeMint). But what about their differences? There are three key differences between the two movements that seem apparent to me:

1. Occupy’s Signs Don’t Include Spelling Errors

Remember all those emails from last year with pictures that people had taken of the signs being used in at the Tea Party rallies? It was an illustration of borderline illiteracy. (As a refresher, check this out.) In contrast, the signs being displayed at the Occupy rallies do not contain misspellings or obvious contradictions like the infamous “Get your damn government hands off my Medicare!”

All right, so what’s your point Mr. Smartypants? That one group’s smart and the other’s not?

No. The distinction is that the persons rallying for Occupy are more educated than the persons who rallied for the Tea Party. This becomes apparent when you hear interviews of the participants, many of whom are graduate students, out of work teachers, etc. It’s interesting to see the difference between the groups. Now, obviously, this is not a scientifically proven difference—we’d have to do surveys and such, and the Tea Party rallies were last year, not this one. But it does seem to me, based on what I’ve seen reported and interviews and such, that this is a clear difference. And they are justifiably surprised that they are unemployed and, in many cases, have been for a long time. I say “justifiably,” because historically it has always been the case in this country that if you get a good education, you won’t have trouble finding a job. That appears to be true no longer.

2. Young

Another key difference appears to be that the Occupy protesters are younger generally than the Tea Partyers. This is, again, not scientifically provable, but viewing footage of the rallies and hearing interviews, it does seem to be the case that a lot of these folks are in the twenties (although you do hear the occasional report of a retiree joining the rallies like the one I heard a few days ago on NPR). Based on my own interactions with graduating college students, law students, and other graduate students, this does not surprise me. This is a group that, again, grew up with the concept that you’re practically guaranteed a job upon graduation from college or with an advanced degree. That is definitely not true today, and it’s baffling and frustrating for these folks.

And they’re not worthless hippies! Good grief, the smoke being blown up the collective ass of America from the right about these people is just ridiculous. Ultimately, I don’t think that sort of propaganda, which runs along the lines of the old “go get a job, hippie!”, will work, because there are no jobs to be had.

3. Angry at the Right People

And here’s where I get a little political. I agree with Paul Krugman that the final main difference between the Tea Party movement and this one is that the participants in the Occupy movement are angry at the right people. Last year’s Tea Party movement had the odd combination of rallies against the social construct—the government—that was the only thing keeping the economy from completely coming off its wheels. It also was, essentially, a rally against itself, since the “government” is run by the people.

But who caused this economic collapse? The causes are many, but the root cause appears to have been the speculative buildup of the sale and purchase of unregulated derivatives (which are, essentially, bets) that created massive liabilities, liabilities large enough to take down most of the big financial institutions in this country. The primary culprit was the credit default swap related to securitized mortgage bonds. If you really want to read a good account of how this developed, open up The Big Short by Michael Lewis. (Warning, however—after you read that book, you will be filled with great anger at Wall Street. But you should be anyway, so go ahead.) In my opinion, the blame primarily rests with a few managers in various large banks and financial institutions who made stupid decisions. Or, to put it more broadly, the problem was the big banks and financial institutions themselves being able to engage in unregulated, stupid investments.

And, now, following the massive bailout of Wall Street, Big Banks, and the wealthy individuals who massively benefited therefrom, here come the Republicans railing about deregulating the financial industry—turning back even the weak financial regulation bill that was passed in 2010—and complaining about “too many regulations” and “class warfare” (re: class warfare, this seems to mean to Republicans anyone who is against cutting taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals or raise taxes in any way on those groups). I suspect that many in the Occupy rallies have the same reaction when reading and hearing those sorts of things: WTF???

So, the guys who ruined our national economy and made millions while doing it should be told to strap it back on and get back out there? Be given tax cuts and allowed to run their own show again? Are you kidding?