The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread worldwide across Asia, Europe and the Americas. In Rome, there were riots with protestors and police officers reportedly injured. Greece has also experienced riots. The demonstrations and violence are not confined to the economically weaker, socialist European countries but are also taking place in Berlin and London.
In the U.S., we may face the risk of similar riots if authorities choose to confront the demonstrators. After 92 people had been arrested in New York (including 24 in a Ctitbank branch and 45 in Times Square), dozens of police officers with batons and helmets warned they would enforce a midnight curfew. Fourteen were arrested for remaining in the park after curfew and three police officers were injured and treated at Bellevue Hospital. The demonstrators in New York and elsewhere know what is going on in Rome and elsewhere instantly. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution headlined this Sunday, they are saying: “we’re all alike.”
While they may not have articulated their message in a way the establishment demands, and the messages may sound scattered “at street level,” the message seems clearer when viewed on a broader level. “Despite the difference in language, landscape and scale, the protests were united in frustration with the widening gap between the rich and the poor,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In the U.S., the population sees Wall Street banks, bailed out with their money, essentially paying huge sums of money to politicians to continue doing business as usual, paying traders lavish bonuses for reckless speculation, and recreating the same mess as before, dragging the 99% along with them.
Franklin Roosevelt pointed out in 1933 that the 1% had owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson. The 1% vilified and accused Roosevelt of betraying his class by doing something about it ? the New Deal.
The New Deal worked. Robert B. Reich, in his book “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future,” explained how our biggest growth cycle between 1947 and 1977 found the middle class growing, producing more jobs and pumping up demand. The three pillars of middle class prosperity in the three decades following World War II, according to Reich, were: (1) strong unions, (2) government spending on education and infrastructure, and (3) a progressive tax system. Those pillars did a pretty good job of spreading the wealth around.
All three pillars have been eroded in the last thirty years, along with the middle class, and the American economy. Today we have return to “the gilded age,” the age of financial robber barons.
Today, even Republicans agree there is “too much income disparity,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor repeatedly said last Sunday, toning down his criticism of the Occupy Wall Street protests. There is simply no denying this fact.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, 90% of U.S. citizens have gotten shafted over the past 30 years. From 1917 to 1981, the richest 10% got 31% of the income growth and the other 90% got 59%. But over the last 30 years, the richest 10% got 96% of the income growth and the other 90% got only 4%. Even worse, from 1997 to 2008, the richest 10% got 100% of the income growth, and the other 90% suffered income declines.
Based on estimates from surveys of CEOs, the average CEO in the U.S. makes approximately 185 (in 2009) to 325 (in 2010) times more than the average corporate employee, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution PolitiFact (citing the Economic Policy Institute for the 2009 number and the Institute for Policy Studies for the 2010 number).
The people who run the system and own the government feel free to take reckless risks, acting only in what they believe is their own short-term interest. If they win, they win big; if they lose, they get bailed out by Washington. They do not believe they have a responsibility to moderate their selfish interests in favor of the long-term greater good.
Unless this mindset changes, we may be in for larger and more violent demonstrations. We have seen dictators toppled in the Middle East. Looking back at our own history, we see that “the shot fired round the world” was fired by a small band of “embattled farmers.” It did not matter then that most folks were not revolutionaries. If today’s redcoats spark a confrontation, no one can predict what might happen.
Page Perry is an Atlanta-based law firm with over 150 years collective experience protecting investor rights and fighting Wall Street greed.
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