Who are the 99 percent? Posted by Ezra Klein

[Swede]

“I did everything I was supposed to and I have nothing to show for it.”

It’s not the arrests that convinced me that “Occupy Wall Street” was worth covering seriously. Nor was it their press strategy, which largely consisted of tweeting journalists to cover a small protest that couldn’t say what, exactly, it hoped to achieve. It was a Tumblr called, “We Are The 99 Percent,” and all it’s doing is posting grainy pictures of people holding handwritten signs telling their stories, one after the other.

“I am 20K in debt and am paying out of pocket for my current tuition while I start paying back loans with two part time jobs.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/who-are-the-99-percent/2011/08/25/gIQAt87jKL_blog.html

[kestrel91316]

1. I did and continue to do everything I am supposed to, and I too have little to

nothing to show for it. I will have to work until I drop dead.

[JDPriestly]

2. The people occupying Wall Street are young

and unafraid to spend a night in a sleeping bag in a park near Wall Street.

But people over 50 are also suffering. So many older people can't get jobs. And seniors who are really unemployable because the jobs a senior can do are pretty much taken and probably should be taken by younger people are terrified about losing Social Security and Medicare.

There is nothing wrong with making money, but greed is a mortal sin for a good reason. Greedy people not only harm others, ultimately the harm themselves. If a greedy few are allowed to just rampage in our society they ultimately destroy all of us.

Remember King Midas. Everything he touched turned to gold -- to a solid, inhman object including his own daughter.

Even gold, desired as it is for its scarcity and chemical characteristics, is just an inhuman thing.

But the greedy on Wall Street would turn the children of our country into inhuman, inanimate things if it would bring them more profit.

We need to at least get their influence out of government.

It is shocking that the NYPD accepted that bribe of over $400,000 from a Wall Street brokerage and then led the protestors into a trap and arrested them. That is a horrendous abuse of power.