I have been trying to get my mind around the Occupy movement. I have no problem with understanding how it started. Indeed, there is a gnawing anger in my own gut about the way that the American (primarily) financial system took advantage of a well meaning U.S. federal policy of trying to find a way to help lower income families own a home. It was a well-meaning initiative, started by Bill Clinton who came from economically stressed Arkansas. Unfortunately he was followed by George W. Bush, who reckoned that if he opened up the whole of the Wall Street gang to unregulated and freewheeling marketing of securities, mortgages and loans, that eventually everyone would to have an opportunity to buy their own major league baseball team. It blew up when he bombed Iraq.
That was all supposed to change when newly installed President Obama called the major financial magnates to his office to sort things out. They quite clearly told him to stuff it. And he did. The CEOs and their boards of directors have carried right on with insider trading and increasing their salaries and bonuses. They argued that if they didn’t continue to pay their senior executives big bucks that they couldn’t retain qualified and experienced staff. Instead they would have found jobs in Paris, Athens or Rome. Obama reckoned they were too big to fail and too big to jail. It marked the beginning of his failed presidency and Washington’s governmental collapse.
I share the concern of the Occupiers in what happens to societies when there are widening gulfs between the richest and the poorest. We know that violent crimes increase proportionately and we end up building more jails and sacrificing education funding to do so. It is astounding that the folks at the top of the money food chain have seen an increase of income in the range of 240 times their base over the last 50 years while the folks in the middle class have seen a 25-fold increase – not all that bad for the middle class until recently – but it is getting worse as unemployment rates continue to be dangerously high. Still, the Wall Street gang go merrily on their way with bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars while their companies continue to lose money – such as Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. It makes one want to Occupy the streets and howl in frustration.
The problem with this type of reaction is that the Occupy movement, which went viral for a while, hasn’t been able to get anyone’s serious attention except the TV news entertainment shows. But what do folks accomplish when all they do is squat on public property and chant packaged slogans? If they had built houses for the homeless, cleaned snow for the handicapped, collected winter clothing for needy, done something – anything – that added value to our society they would have to be taken seriously. As it stands, Occupiers have become annoyingly irrelevant.
Besides, I wonder why they didn’t come to St. Albert. I felt left out.
Alan Murdock is a local pediatrician.
