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Occupy Wall St: It is All About Fairness, and that is the Strength of It
“The information that is coming out from the OWS movement and its repetition has made it clear that there is a major lack of fairness in economic terms. It is hard to know if we would have addressed this if it had not become so stark, and there were not so many people out of work or underemployed. However now that we are talking about it, the time has come to stand up for fairness.”
“If we take this essential meme and really push it, focus on the fact that most of us, Republican and Democrat, Liberal and Conservative, Hippy and Square alike are mostly being treated unfair, then there is a chance to actually move the nation in the direction we need to go.”
Dear Taxpayer is a short film by Corey Ogilvie about how the biggest taxpayer rip-off of human history happened right under our noses. His director’s statement:
Generations of American taxpayers have bailed out today’s big banks to the tune of $12 trillion (New York Times, July 2011). That is $83,000 per American taxpayer, plus interest. Still today, the big banks gamble with government (taxpayer) backing - a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ scenario. This absurd scenario obliterates any notion of a true free-market society, we are slowly being reduced to a feudal society: where a small group of individuals, behind closed doors, shape our common economic future, and there is nothing we can do about it. This film explores how this all came to be over the last 3 years.
Rawls on Wall Street
NYT opinion piece about how Occupy Wall Street could benefit from the wisdom of American political philosopher John Rawls.
…in a just society, citizens should be understood as free and equal participants in a system of social cooperation. Some individuals may be more motivated and harder working, and thus can legitimately expect greater rewards for their efforts. But everyone deserves the same bundle of individual rights and liberties, and everyone is entitled to “fair equality of opportunity,” including access to a decent education and a genuine chance of success in pursuing one’s life plans.
Inequality becomes injustice when the cooperative nature of society breaks down and a significant segment of the population finds itself unable to thrive, despite its best efforts.
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