Yesterday, on NPR Diane Rehm had several Occupy movement guests and others to talk about the future of the movement. George Mason University’s Tyler Cowen makes many really good points during this interview. Here are a few:
COWEN: Well, the main question is inequality. But I think there are two fundamental contradictions in the Occupy Wall Street as a movement. The first is it points out correctly, politics is corrupt. But it then ought to conclude the solution is to limit the size of government. In fact, most of them want to increase the size of government, and that’s a contradiction. It’s not going to work. The second point is this distinction between 1 percent and the 99 percent.
Within the top 1 percent, there are people who are in wealth by producing it, like Steve Jobs, and then people who take it by predation or fraud. And that’s the important distinction. It’s about values. It’s about how you got your wealth and not how much you have.
REHM: But you really say there’s been so much talk about riches. You’re talking about values. Do you think that that ends up being a divisive message?
COWEN: I think it is. It gets people suspicious of wealth. I think that most wealth is earned. Most rich people are great. They are our benefactors of humanity and America. And the idea that you lump together with some number of financiers who have done bad things and call them the top 1 percent and pit them against everyone else, I think that’s exactly the wrong the message. The real message should be a lot of people get their wealth through politics. We should limit this. The way to do this is to limit the overall influence of politics over the American economy.
And later:
COWEN: Well, American companies have raised wages around the world, not lower them. But I would make a more basic point. The fundamental rule of current American politics is old people get their way. And that’s a lot of the future problem. I’d like to see more of a focus on that, on how old people are taking money from young people through especially Medicare. And rather than Occupy Wall Street, I’d say start with occupy the voting booth and idealistic young people. As long as they’re simply unwilling to ever vote for the other party, they don’t have any say. Old people get their way.
That’s the core problem. I don’t see it being addressed. Ask the Occupy Wall Street people. How many of you would consider voting for a Republican? I think you’ll get a very weak or even hostile response.
REHM: But help me to understand how occupying the public park, perhaps annoying the neighbors, perhaps getting in the way of traffic, is going to bring people to your side. Wouldn’t it be more helpful, for example, if you were to try to help people stop foreclosures?
PREMO: Mm hmm. Yeah. That’s exactly the direction of the movement. The Occupy movement, both nationally and in New York City, is organizing for a national day of action, which will happen in early December around housing and foreclosures, where we will begin to organize coordinated eviction defenses as well as liberating foreclosed homes that have been taken through predatory and illegitimate lending practices.
REHM: Excuse me. How will you liberate those foreclosed homes?
PREMO: By putting families back in these homes. There are hundreds of thousands of homes throughout the country. There are, in fact, more homes than there are homeless people. And we will be putting families who have been evicted as well as people who are in need of homes back into these homes from which families have been evicted from and defending those — and defending the right of those people to have a home.
I am thinking that this will be interesting to watch.
awe...some. There really couldn't possibly be anything better for the right than if Obama's friends from Obamaville engage in coordinated large-scale property crime.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA big part of the problem with these protests is that if you strip out the anti-Semitism, the violence, the sexual assaults, the drugs, the socialism, the class warfare, all that good stuff, when you strip it down, you're basically left with...the Tea Party. And as is pointed out, voting Republican is so intrinsically filthy to these people that they've effectively neutered themselves in our two-party system.
If they vote third party or sit out elections, they might as well be helping elect Republicans. If they vote Democrat, they're going to help increase the size and scope of government, which will inevitably worsen the problems they claim to be fighting against, the corruption and corporate cronyism.
An option that does remain is violent revolution, which is apparently what many of them are striving for, but which will end only in failure for them. So basically they're screwed!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJake,
So, how do we reach them? For the ones who are there for "the anti-Semitism, the violence, the sexual assaults, the drugs, the socialism, and the class warfare", they are unreachable.
But for some of the Occupiers, they see the same symptoms we do, but have no clue about the cause. Even Alec Baldwin was 25% right about Crony Capitalism. The problem is big government being involved in business. Every "scandal" involving corporations would not exist if the federal government had not been a player. So how can we win those people over to our side; knowing that the Democrat Party, the lamestream media, and the country club Republicans are going to continue lying to them and running interference to keep the status quo?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf I knew that, Doug, I'd be Karl Rove instead of some idiot on an internet message board. But the Tea Party is as good a start as I can think of. Taking back power via local and statewide elections with people who aren't beholden to the establishment GOP and who aren't afraid to fight for our principles. And then holding them accountable if they start to sell out.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRight on the money, JakeTaylor. They are, indeed, antithetical to their own cause.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePlease, PLEASE, OWS - keep it up through next November! Of course, they were calling for "tens of thousands" to protest today in NY, and only managed hundreds, so we'll have to see whether this "movement" completely peters out.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHey Premo - howabout worrying about those people still in their homes who bought what they could afford, read and understood all the documents and are making their mortgage payments - you know, the other 99% who work for a living.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePREMO: (paraphrasing) Some people were evicted from their homes, so we will have random homeless people live in them illegally. You know, for justice.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse+20
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's a war on private property.
You have too much stuff, we will take it and use it the way we prefer.
The characteristic method is lawless mob power, and the result is disorder and destruction.
Zucotti Park provides a good example. The occupiers violated use regulations, want free stuff and get upset if it isn't forthcoming, and produce only -- as described by Mayor Bloomberg -- a threat to public health and safety which taxpayers pay to clean up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExternal Link
"RealtyTrac, the Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure listing site, reports that the average number of days a New York-based foreclosure takes from default to eviction is 986 days, followed by 974 days in New Jersey, versus 336 days nationwide."
Families are staying in these homes already, some for almost three years after they stop paying. The issue is that the banks are unwilling to pursue foreclosure because they don't want to have the value of the homes marked down on their books.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExactly. One of the big reasons the housing market hasn't hit a bottom from which it can start to recover is that -- in 180 degree contrast to the OWS narrative of big mean banks foreclosing at the drop of a hat -- banks are *too slow* to foreclose. They are encouraged in this by a kind of bailout -- as I understand it (correct me if wrong) by lenient accounting rules that allow them to hold a nonperforming mortgage at a higher value until it's actuallly foreclosed upon.
If the banks weren't being bailout out, even more people would have been foreclosed upon and evicted, rather than living one to three years rent free. This represents yet one more massive government-enabled subsidy of the 47% that's impoverishing the rest of us.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"on how old people are taking money from young people"
And what was I back when I was young and giving some of my money to old people? Chopped liver? Back then it was simply the way things were. Now, after I've contributed my share, I'm in the way and the source of the problem!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBack when you were young there were more young people supporting the old folks. Back when you were young, your peers chose not to have enough kids to replace themselves. Back when you were young , your generation and the "greatest generation" allowed congress to divert SS funds and make promises that any actuary could tell were unaffordable. Now those of us under forty are expected to pay for those shortsighted decisions while the me generation says "I got mine."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou've been paying the 12% FICA all of your life the way today's young are? Not to mention the huge increases that will soon be necessary because of the growing cost of these programs?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you spent your entire voting life denouncing the unfairness of the program and urging repeal of an obvious Ponzi scheme, well, then you have my sympathy. Otherwise, as between you, who had a chance to vote on the matter before things got out of hand, and I, who spent my entire working life paying 15% of everything I earned into a program I knew would bust before I ever saw a penny, which of us deserves the sympathy?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you spent your entire voting life denouncing the unfairness of the program and urging repeal of an obvious Ponzi scheme, well, then you have my sympathy. Otherwise, as between you, who had a chance to vote on the matter before things got out of hand, and I, who spent my entire working life paying 15% of everything I earned into a program I knew would bust before I ever saw a penny, which of us deserves the sympathy?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"we will be putting families who have been evicted as well as people who are in need of homes back into these homes"
Yes, encouraging these people to trespass will certainly improve their lots in life.
Oy vey.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow do they plan to determine which foreclosures are illegitimate? Or do they just plan on declaring all foreclosures illegitimate and siezing all empty houses?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark, Mark, Mark - Legitimacy, legality - these are such pre-Revolution concepts. People need a place to live; therefore, houses will be seized by the people to fill the people's needs. I don't know why this is such a problem. The only people it will hurt are the greedy banksters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse