Occupy Wall St. has been an on-going movement of the frustrated American public since September. By and large, Democrats support the movement calling out in support of the frustrated occupiers, particularly those who are upset about the top 1% possessing 40% of the wealth (according to Joseph Stiglitz, although different economists suggest different numbers) and how powerful big business has become. Republicans by and large, refute the movement, citing the instances of occupiers who are promoting socialism, a complete bailout of students with college-loan debt, and calling for tax hikes on the wealthy.
Although I certainly understand the viewpoints of those who support the movement, and the growing frustration for the inability to solve anything in Washington, most occupiers are taking their frustrations out on the wrong people. The 1% receive special benefits from government, including bailouts, tax-breaks, and in some instances, subsidies. How is that fair?! Blame Wall Street! Blame big business! Greedy bastards! But let's think about this in terms of something many of us know and love--sports.
Your favorite basketball team is playing their rival, and everyone is excited. Throughout the game the ref makes some questionable calls--but they're in the other team's favor. In the end, your team loses. Frustrated after the loss, like any die-hard fan, you start to take your frustrations out on the referee with your buddies. After all, you wouldn't blame the opposing the head coach for accepting the bad calls, would you?
Of course not, that would be silly. As the size of government continues to metastasize, it seems everybody wants their piece of entitlement pie. Big businesses have become welfare queens, but is it fair to blame the businesses? Businesses are competing amongst one another for a larger share of the market, so any leg-up they can get, they can (and certainly should) try to get. My proposal?
1) Simpler taxes. Business is the great economic engine of a capitalistic society, and burdening businesses with lots of taxes, does not benefit anybody other than the bureaucrats in Washington that like to piss away your tax dollars on ridiculous social programs and departments (but that's a conversation for another post). Business creates wealth, it generates jobs without using your tax dollars (like public sector jobs), and most everybody supports small business because of it. How can you not love the middle-class individual who risks his or her own capital in pursuit of supplying the public with a good or service that the market determines as useful? With that said our current complex tax code requires interpretation by tax lawyers or other tax professionals. What does that mean for the small businessman? It means putting another person on payroll solely to interpret the tax code, otherwise the businessman puts his own business at risk for tax fraud. Who does a complex tax code favor? Big Business. It's easy to put more people on payroll in a fortune 500 rather than a start-up, so this makes it easier for the big business, while inhibiting the little guy. This is just one example of a barrier to entry, that would not occur under a truly free market. Occupiers, don't like big business? Support a simpler tax code, free of breaks and subsidies. Make it apply to all, big or small.
2) Shrink the size of government. As long as corporations have money, some of it will go to campaign contributions of their favorite bureaucrat. Outlawing these campaign contributions or lobbying efforts is un-Constitutional and is surely a step in the wrong direction. The only reasonable, Constitutional way to go about this is to shrink the size and role of government drastically. For sake of making this a blog post rather than a 20 page paper, I'll save the specifics, for now. But how does this solve anything? If government had it's powers limited to only what the Constitution authorized, government's reduced power would result in less ability for government to interfere with what should be a free-market. In turn, corporations would be incapable of receiving benefits (what many politicians have been calling "government picking winners and losers") from their government. This would also reduce the problem of politicians having a "leg-up" because of excessive campaign contributions from millionaires on Wall Street, and then, in turn, reduce corruption in Washington.
Occupiers should not be occupying Wall Street, rather occupying the Capitol. Businessmen/women are not the problem. They, like many other groups of our nation that have been receiving benefits from big brother government, are just a growing group of beneficiaries. It's hard to turn down free stuff, especially when you can't see out of whose pocket the stuff is being paid for.
