Reference:
“Occupy Wall Street Times Topic” (The New York Times)
Key Ideas:
- As everyone who does not live under rock is aware of, this marks the third month of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that has spelled mass protests in America and many other corners of the world at this point, with the end not yet in sight
- The cause of the movement is fundamentally an outrage about unequal economic conditions and a collective demand for more fairness. The original claim in the U.S. is that “The 99%” of the population was contributed their tax money, which was then used by the government to bail out “The 1%”, i.e., banks, insurance firms, lobbying corporations, and the general financial establishment under the notion of “too big to fail”. The insult, protesters explain, is that during all this time bankers and other “one percenters” keep receiving fat salaries and big bonuses. Implicitly, they are able to do this because their companies were saved by bailout money in the first place. Meanwhile unemployment and foreclosures continue to frustrate the “ninetynine percenters” – everyone else.
