I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Occupy movements in the United States. Much of my focus has been on the Wall Street and Austin Texas editions. While neither movement has coalesced behind a cohesive strategy and set of messages, a few key themes for the anger has become evident. They include:
- the subprime mortgage crisis and the resulting bank bailout
- a rigged Wall Street system
- corporate America’s power in Washington politics
- the growing disparity in executive and employee compensation
- an inequitable federal tax system
- the escalating cost of higher education
- high unemployment
What all this boils down to is the ever-widening gulf or chasm between the “haves”, dubbed the 1% by the Occupy movement, and the “have nots”, which is the rest of us. We’re known as the 99%.
Could we have foreseen this day? It seems those involved in forming our Republic had the foresight. James Madison said:
We are free today substantially but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.
Prescient.
So here we are; the time has come. The 99% are rising up to shake the establishment demanding reform. Within the ranks, will voices emerge that espouse the wisdom that will ultimately lead to a readjustment of the laws toward a more equitable distribution of wealth, as Madison anticipated?
This is my hope.
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