My Five or Six Problems With the 'Occupy Wall Street' Crowd

It's a free country so of course people are welcome to protest anything they want. Do I think the 1% is a bunch of con artists and scammers, well yes but that is another post.  But for the 99%, the issues I have with the latest group of protesters to make the front page of the newspaper are thus:

• The masses want high paying jobs yet they want to pay the very least possible for consumer goods (clothes manufactured in third world countries, cheap imported consumer goods at Walmart, etc).  That doesn't even make mathematical sense.
• Ditto for services (they always seek the lowest bidder and look the other way at cheap, undocumented labor).
• The masses want more and more social services yet they don't want to pay any more in taxes than they absolutely have to (of course the wealthy SHOULD pay their fair share of taxes too, but that is part of that other post).
• They don't let their money do their talking.  Today's news about the protest was that their next target is mammoth banks.  IMHO, if you don't like their policies DON'T BANK THERE.  That should make mammoth banks smaller in no time.
• The masses also have a short term memory when it comes to politicians.  They believe the politicians are corrupt and don't do anything even though they keep getting re elected.  Well here's an idea--put all of this effort into electing people who will actually do what you want them to do.
• They want to compete in the marketplace but don't realize the market place is now an INTERNATIONAL marketplace and there are a whole bunch of Indian and Chinese guys with a lot more (and probably better) education than they have (and they will work at much lower rates too).  Yet another mathematical conundrum huh?
• Finally, there are a whole bunch of factors at work here, not just the obvious.  Consider the baby boomers, the largest demographic in history.  Thirty years ago they were having kids, buying big houses, shopping like crazy (mostly on credit they couldn't afford), had big incomes, etc.  These days they are down sizing, don't have kids to buy for, have lost their jobs or retired so are paying less in taxes, etc. That makes a significant impact on the economy.  The housing bubble is often blamed on banks but a large majority of Americans were buying huge houses with payments that made no mathematical sense so no surprise that when a crisis came up, they couldn't make their payments.  If they had been responsible borrowers and only took out loans for houses that came in at 25% of their income on a 15 year note, we would all be in much better shape but they didn't.  They took out balloon loans, interest only loans, and all kinds of other stupid mortgage financing loans for houses they couldn't afford.

The bottom line is that there is enough blame to go around and nearly everyone in this country has some share of responsibility for what happened.  To blame only one large target--banks and big companies for this mess (even though IMHO they should have been allowed to fail) doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  People need to quit complaining and start doing.  Start saving money so the next financial disaster doesn't take them out, start a small business to generate financial flow in their own communities, play an active part in the political process and vote people out who don't do anything, pay their fair share of taxes, volunteer in their community in order to help people who need a little extra help (instead of relying on burgeoning entitlement programs to which everyone feels entitled to yet no one wants to pay for).

Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about economics.  But I do know the common sense that my granddad taught me: pay cash for everything, then you are never in debt and no one ever will repossess your stuff; if you need a loan (for a house only) make sure you can still make the payments on half of your income (and make the loan on the shortest term possible, you don't want to owe anyone any longer than necessary); don't take charity unless you will literally die without it; give to people in need when you can; always have a means to procure food (gardening, hunting, fishing, foraging).  If everyone did this, we wouldn't be in the financial quagmire that we now find ourselves in.