The notion that the Occupy Wall Street Movement is somehow bad because it incites poor people against rich people is ludicrous. Rich people have always waged war on the poor. I think there are famous cave paintings in France that depict some big cave man beating up a little cave man and taking his leg of mammoth.
You can easily write history as the story of the rich warring against the poor. Those amazing Egyptian pyramids you may recall were built by slaves. The whole medieval serf system is based on the rich guys in the castles tieing the rest of the people to the land around the castle. In the good old US of A the founding fathers wrote a Constitution in which only the rich white guys could vote. And can we forget slavery where the rich guy owns the plantation where all the poor guys work for free.
Moving a long , we come to The Gilded Age– the time that causes today’s bank presidents and hedge fund managers to wet their pants. No income tax. No laws against monopolies. No prohibitions on hours, working conditions or age of the workers. True capitalism. The labor pool lives in company towns and wages are determined by the whim of the factory owner. If the workers try to organize the Pinkerton’s crack some skulls. It is no accident that the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, et al built homes the size of pyramids during the good old Gilded Age.
Oh ,I almost forgot. Lots of our wars have been fought by poor draftees or minimum wage “volunteers” who are at war to preserve and expand US markets. Don’t forget who makes the big profits on war contracts.
Whenever the poor fight back, they are almost always crushed. The Hay Market bombers,IWW and slave rebellions never amount to anything, yet history demonizes them because history is written by the rich.
The rich are lucky that the poor have been content with their tiny little slice of the pie. But as that tiny piece shrinks, I wonder how long it will be before contentment is replaced by rage. My response to the occupy Wall Street Movement: It’s about time.
