Power and its Price Tag:
The Story of Two Conflicting Ideas in New York City
This essay is about this argument between Capitalism, and those who wish for Socialism, as well as the fighting and arguments that go along with it, the chaos and the uncertainty that this causes, and the political repercussions of these protests.
New York, a bustling city that is in many ways the capital of the world, is also unarguably the capital of finance itself. Wall Street in New York holds offices for many large business and investment firms and sees the money of countless people from around the world go by its desks on a daily basis. However, since 2011, there have been over eight-thousand arrests of people protesting Wall Street and all that it stands for. Members of this movement, Occupy Wall Street, were arrested for damaging private property, resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, the charges go on. This band of rioters has yet to do a thing to change how the system works, but Occupy Wall Street is still dreaming big. This movement seeks to uproot and destroy the corruption that they believe to be the cause of the Great Recession, and the loss of so many homes and jobs. At the same time, Wall Street itself is based on the simple idea that through honest work, you are paid honest money as proof of this work. They think that through giving out loans, they can insure that the poor do not stay poor, and that anybody in this country with a good idea can make their dream become a reality. The firms of Wall Street believe that the Occupy Wall Street rioters do not understand the problem, and do not have the means to solve it. To this, Occupy Wall Street says that Wall Street does not understand the issue, that money has been distorted so much that it is now a symbol of greed and intolerance, loans being a sign of false hope. Debts that many will never be able o be payed. This essay is about this argument between Capitalism, and those who wish for Socialism, as well as the fighting and arguments that go along with it, the chaos and the uncertainty that this causes, and the political repercussions of these protests.
Wall Street is a location in central Manhattan, that is, arguably, the most influential economic hub on the entire planet. This collection of firms exists for one simple reason: to earn money through helping people start up and fund their own business or idea, and allow them to achieve their dreams. It is a collection of rich people helping those who are less fortunate than themselves while making money in the process. This system, for hundreds of years, has been adopted by almost every country around the world. It helps business to thrive, and to lessen the gaps between the rich and the poor, creating a thriving middle class that would not be possible without Wall Street. This process capitalizes on the earning of work credits, known as money, that are given to people in different amounts depending on the difficulty of the work they do, and the period in which they take to get that job done. The only thing money represents is proof of the work one has accomplished. Wall Street, at its core, is the manipulation of money to help two parties, the investor, and the investment, to gain more money. This simple process is a way to get rich people to invest in and care about the poor, backing up emotion with material earnings. This time-tempered process is what Occupy Wall Street protests, fights, and stands against in their crusade to “take back” what is rightfully theirs.
Occupy Wall Street is spoken about by its members as if it was a Crusade organized by, and working for, all low and middle-class people in the world. They claim to be “The 99%”, a reference to their notion that though only one percent of America is wealthy, everybody else is under the control of that smaller population. They think that Wall Street is a prime example of this divide, a large group of banks and firms that carelessly takes people's money and does what they want with it. They think that Wall Street must be punished for their hand in creating the great recession and that during these economic downturns, the rich should suffer more, and the working class should suffer less. It is their belief that the “ninety-nine percent” - not the rich, stuck-up, “one percent” - should be in charge of where the money goes. They think that the banks scam people, burn accounting books (acc. to Capital of Capital), and simply wreak havoc on the simple financial lives of simple working-class people. This is a protest that doesn’t fight the system through the system; it is a fight that plans to change the way everything works, they plan to redefine and rethink hundreds of years of banking knowledge and tradition, looking to prevent there ever being economic recessions such as the housing crisis in 2008. They honestly think that only with these riots and protests can the financial system be fixed, believing that politicians cannot fix it for them. It requires the people of the world to rise up and change the way things are. This belief also provides insight into the solutions they have for the problem of large firms in the United States.
Occupy Wall Street as a whole is of course extremely socialist. Occupy Wall Street is a movement that thinks that the figurehead of capitalism, Wall Street, is an entity fueled by greed and deceit, the worst of human emotions. As a whole, Occupy Wall Street thinks that business, especially large corporations, must be strictly regulated by a much stronger central government and that Free Trade of the markets must be closely monitored - as to make sure that a large-scale stock market crash would be easily detectable and easily preventable. They think that to solve the great amounts of corruption circling in non-governmental Wall Street, they must take power and hand it to the people, who, fortunately for them, have a large body of elected representatives known commonly as the United States Government. All power formerly belonging to the large corporations would be given to the government where it will be regulated, watched, limited, and in all ways, shapes, and forms weakened to a point where the government, not the people in these businesses, rules the corporations of the United States. This path, though not the one apparently desired by your average OWS participant, would be inevitable given the parameters and requirements of what they think to be the future. If all power were to be given to the people, all power would be given to the government, the representatives of the people. This power would finally end the age-old battle between government and corporate control in America, and the government would finally have come out on top. With the power and the support to indefinitely restrict and regulate something, one could have complete and total control over how it operates. This is the power that Occupy Wall Street wants to give to our government to make our businesses pay for the damages they caused. This is the goal of the self-proclaimed crusade against the evil that is Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street does not see money as it is meant to be seen. They think that money is a symbol of greed, classism, and a representation of all of the worst traits humanity possesses. It is something that calls to people, telling them to hoard it and keep it. Telling them to keep it all for themselves, telling them to take it from others, money being the source for all thievery and stealing perpetrated by humans. Money, to them, is a force truly evil. Without it people would have no reason to take, no need to hoard and be greedy, the world would be perfect. Ridding the world of money, or lessening our dependency on our money, will be the first step of many to reaching a real utopia. This is not only the basis of their reasoning but also the basis for Karl Marx’s book on Communism, “The Communist Manifesto.” This belief, in essence, is Communism. They think that even though every other country that has attempted to implement Communism has failed badly, we can be different, becoming the first utopian society in the entire world.
So now it is known what these two organizations, Wall Street and Occupy Wall Street, strive for, what they want to achieve and what they claim to be based off of. But what have these two organizations actually done? For example, while Occupy Wall Street claims that they protest peacefully, there have been many riots consisting of looting, arrests, and anarchy in the name of Occupy Wall Street. Is this the way things will be if their plans succeed, or will it all turn out as they have foretold? Occupy Wall Street, despite their hopeful view of the future, and progressive rhetoric, turn out to have little solid plan for the fixing of Wall Street. They seem to be taking things one step at a time. They first wish to bring our financial system to its knees, then they wish to find out a real, effective plan on how to solve this “problem,” and then they will go about implementing it. This alone would not only be disastrous for our economy, but during the time in between the collapse of capitalism and the institution of a new financial plan, we would have fallen apart. The dollar would be worthless, The United States would lose a great amount of economic power in the world in an extremely short amount of time. OWS must have a plan in mind, with exact numbers and rules written down before they can go on to destroy what we have now. According to the Occupiers, however, this movement cannot be something that happens from the top-down. It cannot happen with the politicians we have now, and that in order for the movement to prosper, a new wave of political reformation must also come to pass. This would mean the institution of a far-left political party that stands exactly where the occupiers do, a party that wishes for nothing more than the elimination of our current economic system. This would mean that the Republican Party would have to either lose a great amount of power (the Republicans currently holding the vast majority in the Congress and Senate, as well as the presidency), and that the Democratic Party would either have to reform itself, moving even further left, or that it too must break down to give way to this new party. And then, as if this all isn’t enough: All loans, mortgages, and financial aid would suddenly no longer be available. This means two thing: to the optimist, it means that everybody who is in great debt would be free of it, and to the pessimist, it means that nobody would be able to get a loan or mortgage. This means that many people will not be able to afford a house, having to immediately pay a down payment, and that starting a business would be a nightmare, with raised taxes and no available loans or investments, all but the strongest small businesses would collapse. The plans of Occupy Wall Street, though they may seem fine at a glance, hold great flaws that must be fixed immediately for the success of the movement. However, Wall Street doesn’t quite live up to its potential either.
Wall Street claims to help people reach their dreams, to be able to fund new products and ideas that can carry one to fame and fortune. They claim to be the rich and wealthy people of America, investing to help the working class citizen buy a home, build a business, and fund his ideas. To an extent, Wall Street does this. There are many stories about the common person working hard to achieve their life goals with the help of a bank. There are also several stories about how banks themselves reached out to do great things, such as fund the creation of a new country or city. At some times in our history, banks have had more money than the government itself. However, they do not always use this money to invest in the poor. Much of the time, it is other rich and wealthy citizens that receive large amounts of money from banks because it is believed that they are more responsible with their money, and so they are a better investment. When all of the money of a bank is lended to these people, the poor and working class citizens of the United States do not get invested in. They are, once more, forgotten and left behind in yet another field. This problem, realistically, can be solved only by higher regulation, by telling banks and firms who and what to invest in, and how they do so. In the words of Linnea Paton, an OWS press contact with whom I had the privilege to speak with in a short interview over email,“In general, people are aware that banks use money to invest in other businesses, the question is more about what kinds of businesses, trades, and risks they are allowed to take on.” (Paton, Linnea, Written Interview, 5 May 2017) This kind of regulation is what Occupy Wall Street is looking for. However, if we did impose regulations like these, business in America would be destabilized, and the micromanagement of the banks by the government would call for a greater level of governmental bureaucracy in the country, something that we all have enough of as it is. On top of all this, the loans, mortgages, and investments given to somebody by the bank can sometimes spiral out of control. Many people, even after receiving a substantial loan from the bank, simply cannot create their business, failing and falling into a great amount of debt that they cannot pay back. The same is true for student loans, another great issue where a student takes so much money from the bank to pay for college, that he or she cannot pay it back with any ease at all. All kinds of loans from Wall Street can drive people into great debt, causing them to have to spend the rest of their lives to pay it back. These are the horrors that are caused when Wall Street fails to do its job correctly, and instead of building successes, they can ruin a person's financial life permanently.
Though these two movements, these two ideas, both have their drawbacks, it is my opinion that the current system that we have today is the best choice moving forward. I think this because both of these systems that are being put forward by either side have indeed been tested before, and our current system has easily come out on top. The Cold War, a diplomatic conflict of ideas fought between the Capitalist United States and the Communist Soviet Union, demonstrated this point through not only ending in the collapse of the United Soviet Socialist Republics (or USSR), but also leading to the starvation of millions of people because of the fact that they simply never were able to receive their fair share of money. Every penny of it having been lost while traveling down through the great Soviet bureaucracy, being spent on bribes and plots orchestrated by one of the countless officials who have burrowed into the governmental system. If we, the United States of America, reverted to this inefficient system of a thousand promises, we would surely collapse into an endless pit of promises and lies, one of bureaucracy that we would never be able to claw ourselves out of, as in the worlds of Karl Marx, “To the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.” (Karl Marx) The current system, however, is the near perfect blend of capitalism and socialism, helping the poor get on their feet through issuing food stamps and providing low-cost housing, while at the same time making sure the rich do not become too powerful. We insure that everybody has a chance to succeed by not only giving them access to government subsidies and care, but also by allowing our people to get loans from the bank, to have the chance to get the tools they need to succeed at their fingertips, and better access to college no matter how poor one’s family is. It is this co-existence of two very different ideas that creates a perfect balance of capitalism and socialism that insures nobody is too poor to become rich, and that nobody is too rich to forget about the poor. Occupy Wall Street and its lackeys have seemingly forgotten all about this perfect balance, having seen this system their whole lives, they do not know that it is simply perfection. Though it can be tweaked and fixed in small places, it does not, as OWS suggests, need a complete and total overhaul. The government of the United States of America is balanced with its businesses, both of these sides knowing the different powers they have, and the powers that they do not possess. This balance creates a system where everyone can have access to money, health care, education, employment, innovation, and a chance to make it big. It is under these same rules that people like Warren Buffet made billions of dollars doing what they loved, and it is under these rules that future generations will create an America that will once again become the most powerful nation in the entire world.
Wall Street is a location in central Manhattan, that is, arguably, the most influential economic hub on the entire planet. This collection of firms exists for one simple reason: to earn money through helping people start up and fund their own business or idea, and allow them to achieve their dreams. It is a collection of rich people helping those who are less fortunate than themselves while making money in the process. This system, for hundreds of years, has been adopted by almost every country around the world. It helps business to thrive, and to lessen the gaps between the rich and the poor, creating a thriving middle class that would not be possible without Wall Street. This process capitalizes on the earning of work credits, known as money, that are given to people in different amounts depending on the difficulty of the work they do, and the period in which they take to get that job done. The only thing money represents is proof of the work one has accomplished. Wall Street, at its core, is the manipulation of money to help two parties, the investor, and the investment, to gain more money. This simple process is a way to get rich people to invest in and care about the poor, backing up emotion with material earnings. This time-tempered process is what Occupy Wall Street protests, fights, and stands against in their crusade to “take back” what is rightfully theirs.
Occupy Wall Street is spoken about by its members as if it was a Crusade organized by, and working for, all low and middle-class people in the world. They claim to be “The 99%”, a reference to their notion that though only one percent of America is wealthy, everybody else is under the control of that smaller population. They think that Wall Street is a prime example of this divide, a large group of banks and firms that carelessly takes people's money and does what they want with it. They think that Wall Street must be punished for their hand in creating the great recession and that during these economic downturns, the rich should suffer more, and the working class should suffer less. It is their belief that the “ninety-nine percent” - not the rich, stuck-up, “one percent” - should be in charge of where the money goes. They think that the banks scam people, burn accounting books (acc. to Capital of Capital), and simply wreak havoc on the simple financial lives of simple working-class people. This is a protest that doesn’t fight the system through the system; it is a fight that plans to change the way everything works, they plan to redefine and rethink hundreds of years of banking knowledge and tradition, looking to prevent there ever being economic recessions such as the housing crisis in 2008. They honestly think that only with these riots and protests can the financial system be fixed, believing that politicians cannot fix it for them. It requires the people of the world to rise up and change the way things are. This belief also provides insight into the solutions they have for the problem of large firms in the United States.
Occupy Wall Street as a whole is of course extremely socialist. Occupy Wall Street is a movement that thinks that the figurehead of capitalism, Wall Street, is an entity fueled by greed and deceit, the worst of human emotions. As a whole, Occupy Wall Street thinks that business, especially large corporations, must be strictly regulated by a much stronger central government and that Free Trade of the markets must be closely monitored - as to make sure that a large-scale stock market crash would be easily detectable and easily preventable. They think that to solve the great amounts of corruption circling in non-governmental Wall Street, they must take power and hand it to the people, who, fortunately for them, have a large body of elected representatives known commonly as the United States Government. All power formerly belonging to the large corporations would be given to the government where it will be regulated, watched, limited, and in all ways, shapes, and forms weakened to a point where the government, not the people in these businesses, rules the corporations of the United States. This path, though not the one apparently desired by your average OWS participant, would be inevitable given the parameters and requirements of what they think to be the future. If all power were to be given to the people, all power would be given to the government, the representatives of the people. This power would finally end the age-old battle between government and corporate control in America, and the government would finally have come out on top. With the power and the support to indefinitely restrict and regulate something, one could have complete and total control over how it operates. This is the power that Occupy Wall Street wants to give to our government to make our businesses pay for the damages they caused. This is the goal of the self-proclaimed crusade against the evil that is Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street does not see money as it is meant to be seen. They think that money is a symbol of greed, classism, and a representation of all of the worst traits humanity possesses. It is something that calls to people, telling them to hoard it and keep it. Telling them to keep it all for themselves, telling them to take it from others, money being the source for all thievery and stealing perpetrated by humans. Money, to them, is a force truly evil. Without it people would have no reason to take, no need to hoard and be greedy, the world would be perfect. Ridding the world of money, or lessening our dependency on our money, will be the first step of many to reaching a real utopia. This is not only the basis of their reasoning but also the basis for Karl Marx’s book on Communism, “The Communist Manifesto.” This belief, in essence, is Communism. They think that even though every other country that has attempted to implement Communism has failed badly, we can be different, becoming the first utopian society in the entire world.
So now it is known what these two organizations, Wall Street and Occupy Wall Street, strive for, what they want to achieve and what they claim to be based off of. But what have these two organizations actually done? For example, while Occupy Wall Street claims that they protest peacefully, there have been many riots consisting of looting, arrests, and anarchy in the name of Occupy Wall Street. Is this the way things will be if their plans succeed, or will it all turn out as they have foretold? Occupy Wall Street, despite their hopeful view of the future, and progressive rhetoric, turn out to have little solid plan for the fixing of Wall Street. They seem to be taking things one step at a time. They first wish to bring our financial system to its knees, then they wish to find out a real, effective plan on how to solve this “problem,” and then they will go about implementing it. This alone would not only be disastrous for our economy, but during the time in between the collapse of capitalism and the institution of a new financial plan, we would have fallen apart. The dollar would be worthless, The United States would lose a great amount of economic power in the world in an extremely short amount of time. OWS must have a plan in mind, with exact numbers and rules written down before they can go on to destroy what we have now. According to the Occupiers, however, this movement cannot be something that happens from the top-down. It cannot happen with the politicians we have now, and that in order for the movement to prosper, a new wave of political reformation must also come to pass. This would mean the institution of a far-left political party that stands exactly where the occupiers do, a party that wishes for nothing more than the elimination of our current economic system. This would mean that the Republican Party would have to either lose a great amount of power (the Republicans currently holding the vast majority in the Congress and Senate, as well as the presidency), and that the Democratic Party would either have to reform itself, moving even further left, or that it too must break down to give way to this new party. And then, as if this all isn’t enough: All loans, mortgages, and financial aid would suddenly no longer be available. This means two thing: to the optimist, it means that everybody who is in great debt would be free of it, and to the pessimist, it means that nobody would be able to get a loan or mortgage. This means that many people will not be able to afford a house, having to immediately pay a down payment, and that starting a business would be a nightmare, with raised taxes and no available loans or investments, all but the strongest small businesses would collapse. The plans of Occupy Wall Street, though they may seem fine at a glance, hold great flaws that must be fixed immediately for the success of the movement. However, Wall Street doesn’t quite live up to its potential either.
Wall Street claims to help people reach their dreams, to be able to fund new products and ideas that can carry one to fame and fortune. They claim to be the rich and wealthy people of America, investing to help the working class citizen buy a home, build a business, and fund his ideas. To an extent, Wall Street does this. There are many stories about the common person working hard to achieve their life goals with the help of a bank. There are also several stories about how banks themselves reached out to do great things, such as fund the creation of a new country or city. At some times in our history, banks have had more money than the government itself. However, they do not always use this money to invest in the poor. Much of the time, it is other rich and wealthy citizens that receive large amounts of money from banks because it is believed that they are more responsible with their money, and so they are a better investment. When all of the money of a bank is lended to these people, the poor and working class citizens of the United States do not get invested in. They are, once more, forgotten and left behind in yet another field. This problem, realistically, can be solved only by higher regulation, by telling banks and firms who and what to invest in, and how they do so. In the words of Linnea Paton, an OWS press contact with whom I had the privilege to speak with in a short interview over email,“In general, people are aware that banks use money to invest in other businesses, the question is more about what kinds of businesses, trades, and risks they are allowed to take on.” (Paton, Linnea, Written Interview, 5 May 2017) This kind of regulation is what Occupy Wall Street is looking for. However, if we did impose regulations like these, business in America would be destabilized, and the micromanagement of the banks by the government would call for a greater level of governmental bureaucracy in the country, something that we all have enough of as it is. On top of all this, the loans, mortgages, and investments given to somebody by the bank can sometimes spiral out of control. Many people, even after receiving a substantial loan from the bank, simply cannot create their business, failing and falling into a great amount of debt that they cannot pay back. The same is true for student loans, another great issue where a student takes so much money from the bank to pay for college, that he or she cannot pay it back with any ease at all. All kinds of loans from Wall Street can drive people into great debt, causing them to have to spend the rest of their lives to pay it back. These are the horrors that are caused when Wall Street fails to do its job correctly, and instead of building successes, they can ruin a person's financial life permanently.
Though these two movements, these two ideas, both have their drawbacks, it is my opinion that the current system that we have today is the best choice moving forward. I think this because both of these systems that are being put forward by either side have indeed been tested before, and our current system has easily come out on top. The Cold War, a diplomatic conflict of ideas fought between the Capitalist United States and the Communist Soviet Union, demonstrated this point through not only ending in the collapse of the United Soviet Socialist Republics (or USSR), but also leading to the starvation of millions of people because of the fact that they simply never were able to receive their fair share of money. Every penny of it having been lost while traveling down through the great Soviet bureaucracy, being spent on bribes and plots orchestrated by one of the countless officials who have burrowed into the governmental system. If we, the United States of America, reverted to this inefficient system of a thousand promises, we would surely collapse into an endless pit of promises and lies, one of bureaucracy that we would never be able to claw ourselves out of, as in the worlds of Karl Marx, “To the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.” (Karl Marx) The current system, however, is the near perfect blend of capitalism and socialism, helping the poor get on their feet through issuing food stamps and providing low-cost housing, while at the same time making sure the rich do not become too powerful. We insure that everybody has a chance to succeed by not only giving them access to government subsidies and care, but also by allowing our people to get loans from the bank, to have the chance to get the tools they need to succeed at their fingertips, and better access to college no matter how poor one’s family is. It is this co-existence of two very different ideas that creates a perfect balance of capitalism and socialism that insures nobody is too poor to become rich, and that nobody is too rich to forget about the poor. Occupy Wall Street and its lackeys have seemingly forgotten all about this perfect balance, having seen this system their whole lives, they do not know that it is simply perfection. Though it can be tweaked and fixed in small places, it does not, as OWS suggests, need a complete and total overhaul. The government of the United States of America is balanced with its businesses, both of these sides knowing the different powers they have, and the powers that they do not possess. This balance creates a system where everyone can have access to money, health care, education, employment, innovation, and a chance to make it big. It is under these same rules that people like Warren Buffet made billions of dollars doing what they loved, and it is under these rules that future generations will create an America that will once again become the most powerful nation in the entire world.
Works Cited
Cassidy, John. "What Good Is Wall Street?" The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2015. Web. 6
Feb. 2017.
Davidson, Adam. "What Does Wall Street Do for You?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 14
Jan. 2012. Web. 6 Feb. 2017.
Fairchild, Caroline. "Occupy Arrests Near 8,000 As Wall Street Eludes Prosecution." The Huffington
Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 23 May 2013. Web. 9 Mar. 2017.
Gale, Thomson. "Wall Street." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Encyclopedia.com, 24
July 2008. Web. 6 Feb. 2017.
Gitlin, Todd. "Occupy Wall Street Is Chaotic, Romantic, and Utopian—and That’s a Good Thing." New
Republic. New Republic, 18 Oct. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.
"Karl Marx Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.
Moore, Michael. "The Purpose of Occupy Wall Street Is to Occupy Wall Street." The Nation. The
Nation, 29 June 2015. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Leon Trotsky. The Communist Manifesto. New York, NY:
Pathfinder, 2008. Print.
Cassidy, John. "What Good Is Wall Street?" The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2015. Web. 6
Feb. 2017.
Davidson, Adam. "What Does Wall Street Do for You?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 14
Jan. 2012. Web. 6 Feb. 2017.
Fairchild, Caroline. "Occupy Arrests Near 8,000 As Wall Street Eludes Prosecution." The Huffington
Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 23 May 2013. Web. 9 Mar. 2017.
Gale, Thomson. "Wall Street." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Encyclopedia.com, 24
July 2008. Web. 6 Feb. 2017.
Gitlin, Todd. "Occupy Wall Street Is Chaotic, Romantic, and Utopian—and That’s a Good Thing." New
Republic. New Republic, 18 Oct. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.
"Karl Marx Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.
Moore, Michael. "The Purpose of Occupy Wall Street Is to Occupy Wall Street." The Nation. The
Nation, 29 June 2015. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Leon Trotsky. The Communist Manifesto. New York, NY:
Pathfinder, 2008. Print.