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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2qqRFYv3ao&feature=player_embedded
Some good very relevant points are brought up here. Mostly however, he obviously doesn't even get what he himself says - these people must be unemployed if they have the time to be protesting so much. Exactly! If this large lack of jobs weren't the case, OWS would not be such a large movement.
Despite the diversity of economic issues being raised with OWS, if there were jobs - even minimum wage jobs - available to everyone seeking work, then people would not risk losing that work by going to rallies, and the numbers of people turning up to protest could never reach the levels that they do. Realize, OWS is not a one-day rally. It is an ongoing movement growing quite rapidly and it has spread across the nation (and further). It has been going on for over a month non-stop.
Nonetheless, the vlogger here later comes back to the point of large scale unemployment by saying that the 90% of us who have jobs are laughing at you. That mentality - the ignorant willful whitewashing in one's own mind of the plight of the jobless who need help - brings to mind that classic Bruce Hornsby song. The one where the people waiting in an unemployment line because they can't find work are being belittled by passersby who yell "Get a job!". The vlogger even repeats this very belittlement. Not just an insensitive remark, but one showing a complete lack of understanding of what is driving the OWS movement.
He also chooses to assume that OWS is about simply demonizing corporations for the sake of considering capitalism a bad thing. That's where most OWS detractors are making awfully big and wildly inaccurate assumptions. I am not the only who has been writing that capitalism is not the enemy - greed gone unchecked is the enemy. It is the prime directive of business to maximize profits. Greed is a given. That's why balance is designed within the regulations that keep capitalism in check rather than allow it to consume and destroy an entire economy.
When our regulations and trade agreements (or lack thereof) offer a big profit bump by eliminating 2.4 million US jobs, replacing them with 2.7 million foreign jobs at a fraction of the cost, then that is what US business is going to do. Even the most "American" of big business still has profit maximization as the prime directive rather than greater American economic good. But the point is, no one (well no one who is honestly thinking about why they protest) is protesting to try to end business or destroy capitalism. The overwhelming majority realize that capitalism itself is one crucial piece of the American Dream. No one is going to make their own footwear or clothes. No one can deny that so many things we all rely upon on a daily basis are made easily available through a combination of business, and the national infrastructure that we all pay for.
But there is something else that cannot be denied - something at the very core of the OWS movement - the fact that greed of big business has gone unchecked. In America, CEOs average 475 times the pay of the average worker they "oversee". Next is Venezuela where CEOs make 50 times the average pay of the workers they "oversee". Big banks get free loans from our government while they turn around and throw people out of their homes by the millions rather than restructure crazy underwater loans. Apple makes all its products overseas so that they can pay a few dollars per hour to the people who actually make their goods, rather than paying American workers living wages to do so. All in the name of following the prime directive - maximize profits. A prime directive that is limited ONLY by what system of regulatory checks is placed upon it.
The only thing that keeps capitalism functioning smoothly is well-designed checks. Checks that do not allow the greed to grow so rampant that it actually eats the system that feeds it - like is happening now. Checks that do not allow Wall Streeters to bundle sub-prime loans and do large scale credit default swaps, selling moderate to high risk goods they created as low risk high value goods, thus collapsing the economy. No one has been taken to task for this. Probably because our regulators in the name of right-leaning ideology dismantled the regulations that used to protect our economy from that very risk. But even if it was legal, it doesn't change the fact that no one has been held accountable for this. We simply live with millions of foreclosures, higher jobless rates and allow those who made hundreds of millions off of this destruction to continue hoarding that ill-gained and destructive wealth.
No. No one in their right mind is saying business in itself is bad or that capitalism doesn't work. Just like the guy here points out, we all rely on business for the goods and services of modern day life. The overwhelming majority of OWS protesters though are saying that we have allowed greed to go unchecked for too long amidst our great system of capitalism, and we want balance restored. Exactly how to restore that balance is the big question. It will undoubtedly be fought over with great passion. But balance must be, and will be, just as it always does, eventually be somehow regained.
In the meantime, creating moment by moment events of fictional protesters is just one more distraction. Especially when the fictionalized characters suffer no effects of joblessness or poverty. The one jobless recent college grad in his example is lucky enough to be alright because his father makes plenty of money to support a whole family. For millions of real jobless Americans, no such financial backup scenario exists. This is the biggest fallacy of OWS criticism. There ARE millions of Americans who are not only without a good paying salary large enough to support an entire family, but even without low-wage work. There ARE millions of examples of fellow American citizens who through no fault of their own are jobless simply because there are far fewer jobs in America than there are citizens. Simply yelling at them to "Get a job!" does nothing to address the issue and only further demonstrates YOUR lack of understanding of the issues at hand.
The vlogger here starts his day-in-the-life scenario by calling the OWS protesters "...self-righteous and morally indignant hypocrites" for speaking out against corporate greed. The irony is that such a label applies to all of us speaking our minds through only one view of any issue at the exclusion of others. No matter how much I may seek to understand and take into account different perspectives before getting on my own soapbox, I accept that the phrase would have to apply to me. It clearly applies to the vlogger himself in his reduction of OWS protesters to being "all a bunch of fucking litterbugs" who are "young, stoned and unemployed" who fail to help others who have less than themselves. This despite the outpouring of food, water and more that so many protesters bring in bulk to give away to others. This despite the diversity of politico-economic issues so cogently addressed by so many protesters. No. Between this vlogger, myself, and the majority of the OWS protesters, the least "self-righteous and morally indignant hypocrites" are the protesters.
We can either realize that there are multiple economic issues being addressed through OWS protests, the least of which is the fact that America has far fewer jobs than it does citizens. Or, if it makes us feel better, we can simply dismiss the whole OWS movement by claiming that they are all dirty stoners who are protesting for "causes [they] don't understand." If that's the choice you make, don't forget to tell them all to "Just go out and get a job!"
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