Everything Nac

Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer

     As with any other relationship, it’s the communication of emotional content that is driving the protests and the comments from the Wall Street crowd. We might ask a few questions and see what we can gleam from this struggle in the streets, Main and Wall.

     The message that seems to be going out to the protestors from Wall Street et al is: “Get a job! We have all worked for what we have, and we do not feel any compunction to share it with the likes of you. You are selfish and want something for nothing. You occupy spaces that do not belong to you. You take advantage of situations and whine and complain when you should be doing something constructive about your situation. Many people have gone through what you have gone through, and they have pulled themselves up by their boot straps and done well. You are jealous of what we have, but we are not just going to give it to you because you are crying like a baby.” Okay, that’s a position.

     The message that the protestors seem to be sending out is broad and comprehensive, but can generally be summed up as: “That may be true for some of you, and we are proud for you that you have worked your way up, but you are not in control and are merely the buffer between the powers that be and the common people who are trying to gain legitimate access. Every time Pell grant access is diminished and college fees go up, every time jobs are outsourced, every time stumbling blocks are created to keep people from being able to point out irregularities or injustices or go forward with legitimate complaints about procedures in the work place, every time promised benefits are diminished or deleted, every time loop holes are made that favor the powerful over the common person, every time the pay scale reflects a loss for the workers in relationship to the incredible amounts the bosses make which could have been more fairly distributed, every time the push is made to use the common man’s nest egg to hatch a new scheme to separate a worker from his being able to retire, every time that daily health care costs go above what a worker makes in a year, every time the local school loses money and the wealthy concentrate their tax money to build mega schools against which average schools are incapable of fairly competing, every time the people ask to be listened to and are told that they are hippies and just vagrants, we are reminded that if the hippies had not protested, we might still be in Viet Nam.”

     The job providers, who have been lax on their part for 24 months, are holding all the cards, that is the capital; we can hardly blame them since they can make no money by simply hiring people to give them jobs when in fact they are often running to capacity in the market as it stands, even with a diminished work force. Between outsourcing, automation, and the market climate, they can hardly afford to hire anyone really. If we were to set them loose, they could afford to hire folks, but that would not change the conditions that brought us to this point. It is doubtful that they would use ex-patriated profit capital returned, re-patriated, to hire anyone! It might get the jobs created, but if they pay less, and the CEO takes more, and the benefits go down, then why work? The same question is asked by the free marketeers: If the government taxed you at 95%, would you work? Well, no. But, if the market will only pay 5%, what is the difference? The problem is that the capitalists can afford to wait, indefinitely, and they know it, and so do the protestors. To make this an issue of socialism when in fact their idea is to pay no more than a socialist country would, only without the social welfare benefits, makes it a laughable naughtiness on their behalf.

     In an effort to push the negotiations of opening the markets and lowering the expectations of Wall Street in terms of profits, the workers are in the streets. (Profits projections are so high now that if a company does not make 30% +, the company is not even seen as having enough steam to make a capitalist go of it anymore.) Yes, the young have more time to go and make noise, and so many young people are in the streets. Historically, this is always the case. This point is wasted in the complaints of the capitalists. Some of their own children may be found there, and certainly the children of the middle class, which has struggled, are in the thick of it. They are smart enough to know what is at stake. It is a passion of opportunity: People who would be in college and joining the ranks of the employed find themselves unemployable and without a way to fund college, which has gone up considerably in cost of late. With all of this protesting then, what is it that they hope to accomplish? This is the real question.

     Listen. It costs you nothing. Turning a deaf ear may cost you everything. Whenever people gather to be heard, we can listen to them. Mocking them will make them get stronger. The killing at Kent State ratified the country into action, so violence cannot be the way to terminate this national mediation. People become radicals after a series of previous attempts to be heard and then they take measures to force the conversation. If the capitalists are going to continue to be deaf, the voices will become louder. To complain that the kids are being noisy but to ignore them is to invite more not less noise. They want to know, if the trajectory that has been used so successfully against their parents is going to continue, isn’t this just a drive towards Feudalism? Already the average CEO makes more in his golden parachute alone than the average worker will make in 50 life times. If the free market system is so great, then we will need 200,000,000 corporations, but here is not room for them. The free market system then is reduced to a lottery system, where the few have greater opportunity to hand the long straw over to their family and friends. The entire process seems tainted by now, and the thought may have crossed the minds of a few million people, “Anything would be better than this.” History says two things about that thought. “That is probably not so,” and, “That has not stopped people in the past from trying to change it anyway.”

     In a conflict mediation, some compromises need to be made on both sides. The recent political process has taught us that this is not really a mediation as far as the conservatives as represented by the capitalists are concerned. Stage 2: Take to the Streets. Stage 3: Halt the process altogether and wait it out; collapse of the entire system is not off of the table if need be.

Reporting from the sidelines,
runningturtle87