What Do You Think Of Occupy Wall Street?
November 7, 2011
I was in Minneapolis last weekend and as I walked back to my hotel I ran across a group of people who were carrying on the cause of Occupy Wall Street and had setup Occupy Minneapolis.
It was already pretty cold and windy and it’s just the beginning of November so my first thought was that they had a long winter ahead of them. Yet, despite the cold they were out there handing out fliers and talking to anyone that would listen.
Of course I’m curious about anything that has to do with money or the economy so I spent some time talking with a variety of people who were hanging around the square. It was certainly a mix of demographics and backgrounds and everyone had their own unique beef with big business and Wall Street.
Not all of their arguements made sense to me, it seemed like some people were trying to make connections where there didn’t seem to be any. They would explain their plight and describe how big business had put them there and it didn’t always seems to make sense. On the other hand, there were people with perfectly legitimate concerns who had specific examples of how they’d been impacted.
One thing everyone had in common was that they were upset with the direction our economy and society are heading and they were very excited to have “a voice” where they could express their concerns.
Something I found interesting was that everyone was very willing to tell me their story and their thoughts, but when I asked if I could video them with my Flip cam they all declined. Many of them had jobs or other interests that could potentially be harmed if their interview suddenly appeared on YouTube and was seen by the wrong people.
Overall it was a very interesting experience and I’m curious to hear what you think of Occupy Wall Street and all the related movements.
I was also able to catch up on some reading while I was traveling, here are some recent articles I read that you might want to check out:
- Obama’s New Student Loan Relief Plan @ Generation X Finance
- Determining Your Retirement Expenses @ Lazy Man & Money
- Save on Monthly Bills @ Suns Financial Diary
- Using A Personal Cash Flow Statement To Track Finances @ The Digerati Life
- 7 Financial Consequences When You Say “I Do” @ My Dollar Plan
- The Thorny Issue of Combining Finances @ Frugal Dad
- Kids asking you questions about money @ Mighty Bargain Hunter
- Why Your Bank Loves Auto-Pay @ Free Money Finance
- How to Keep a Steady Paycheck while Starting a Business @ Out of Your Rut
- The Cost of Commuting @ Brip Blap
- How Leveraged ETFs Work @ Million Dollar Journey
- Dogs of The Dow Performance Worse Than Index Fund @ My Money Blog
Let me know in the comments below what you think of Occupy Wall Street.
All posts by Ben Edwards
I believe most of the protesters are there for attention. Like you said though, some are there for legitimate reasons, and rightly so expressing their views.
I don’t like the direction where our economy is heading either, but what are these so called protesters going to do about it? Maybe I don’t enough about their opinions, but it seems to me that their voice is not being heard.
What do I think of the Occupy Wall Street (ows) movement? I think their venom is misplaced. While I will never say that corporations have not done things wrong and they have lost their way as a whole, I do not think that the vitriol that this movement has been spitting their direction is justified. The whole OWS movement is mad at wall street for trying to make money. Hmmm Business 101 told me that is what the default purpose of a corporation is for, to make a profit.
I think the people are misguided or at least the movement is unorganized. The only “list of demands” that have been given are a hodgepodge of different political ideals, which mean that nothing can be focused on to be solved. You have people who are tired of being screwed and so they are occupying wall street to show they want national news for these issues. Great, but no one is telling people what these issues are. There are 20 demands for the OWS movement and some are things like “forgive all loans”, and “fix the environment”, “make China play nice with world currency” and “bring all foreign troops home”. Okay – that is a wide range of things to work on. Each taking years at a time if they were tackled individually, much less in a hodgepodge of emotion as this movement is.
I am not saying this movement is not needed, nor am I not saying that some of the issues they have listed are not things that need to be addressed. But telling banks and companies to to “forgive all trillions of dollars in student loans” would turn banks from solvent to doors shut overnight, and then we would have hundreds of thousands out of work overnight, with one decision. They just have ideas about what is wrong and they want forgive bad decisions by people and make it so people are all on equal footing again, regardless of their decisions. I don’t know about you, but I pay my taxes, I work hard, I make a good living, I have a smallish house for what I can afford and my cars are paid for. Funny .. I did things well, and I went to school and got a degree (actually more than one) and had no debt, in a major I can make good money in. I am not a financial burden on society, however those that are, we should help them out because they don’t want to live with their mistakes.
Again, there a lot of things being said about the OWS movement, and some of the 20 points are good. However at the end of the day, I think that there is no clear list of alternatives being addressed, just reallocation of wealth and finances, which we all as taxpayers will eventually pay, which after 3 levels of government gets their cuts, we will be getting $0.20 on the dollar. Thanks but no thanks.