Friday, October 28, 2011

Fairness Requires...

I am not particularly excited about "Occupy Wall Street" since I think they should be targeting Washington and protesting far greater injustices than the accumulation of wealth which this nation, in better times, used to praise rather than condemn, but in reading the comments at a conservative site I repeatedly saw a comment which is comically wide of the mark, "They think that punishing the rich is going to create jobs."

It is clear to me that the intent of OWS is that the rich should pay higher taxes in order that government can "afford" to maintain necessary services to those who are not rich. That is neither stupid or unreasonable, and I do believe it is well intentioned.

I'm not particularly in sympathy with that aim, as I think the nation as a whole is unreasonably prone to demanding services from government that it is not willing to pay for in the form of taxes, and that this whole "tax the rich" thing is just another way of saying "let somebody else pay for it," but
I don't at all get the impression that the OWS movement is quite as silly as being about "punishing the rich."

They do seem to have some idea that they are going to create jobs, although that is not very clearly stated, and it certainly not clear to me how anybody thinks that Wall Street, the seat of our financial sector, and job creation are even remotely connected.

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