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It’s Mon­day morn­ing.  I am work­ing from home, and I just have to get this off my chest before I actu­al­ly start work­ing.  This has been burn­ing all week­end long in my brain…  I was going to wait to post this until lat­er in the week, but just could­n’t  Had to get pub­lished now…

I have the inter­est­ing priv­i­lege of being close to the Occu­py Wall Street Protests.  Not in the way you would think, how­ev­er.  I did not go down to see them, I did not protest, how­ev­er, I spoke to peo­ple who had to get through them to get to work, to Brook­lyn, etc.  It is just a mess.  How­ev­er, this morn­ing, on an undis­closed news sta­tion, I watched inter­view clips of the pro­test­ers…  It makes me sad to watch these peo­ple protest pri­vate indus­try.  I know I am gen­er­al­iz­ing, but some of the com­ments were sad­den­ing.   One young man said he was protest­ing Cap­i­tal­ism.  More specif­i­cal­ly, he was hop­ing for the fall of Cap­i­tal­ism.  My heart imme­di­ate­ly sank.  When asked what sys­tem he would want to see replace cap­i­tal­ism, he just looked into the cam­era like a dumb ass, with­out any­thing to say.  Seri­ous­ly.  He just stood there look­ing like the cat had his tongue.  All talk and no back­up plan.  That is how I view these protests.  No one has a real plan.  Anoth­er woman was asked if the CEO of one of the banks came down to Wall Street and offered her a job today, would she take it?  She said “no.”  What?  I sup­pose if you are get­ting free mon­ey from the gov­ern­ment for your 99 weeks, wel­fare, hand outs, etc, and you are con­tent with it, you would say, no.  I don’t know any­one that is con­tent with it, but I fear our weak­ened econ­o­my, cou­pled with a grow­ing sen­ti­ment of dis­trib­uted wealth, with­out hav­ing to work for it is start­ing to take it’s toll on peo­ple.  They are being qui­et­ly recruit­ed into the social­is­tic / com­mu­nist men­tal­i­ty of equal dis­tri­b­u­tion with­out care for where the com­pen­sa­tion comes from whether new mint­ed bills just because or some­one else’s hard labor, blue or white col­lar.

I start­ed to get angry…  I start­ed to get angry because I just saw a mob of peo­ple denounce the very sys­tem that my grand­fa­thers fought for dur­ing World War II, friends fathers fought for dur­ing the Kore­an war, Viet­nam, and friends fight for in our exist­ing wars.  Some of them, (one a very close friend of mine) who were deployed dur­ing the Gulf War are today pay­ing with finan­cial issues, not of his own mak­ing.  My grand­fa­thers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew.  One was a coal min­er and the oth­er a busi­ness own­er pri­or to and after the war.  I can­not fath­om what they might think today.  What I heard was per­son­al.  It was per­son­al because I grew up with the threat of com­mu­nist anni­hi­la­tion, watch­ing movies about climb­ing under your desk to avoid the result of a nuclear det­o­na­tion.  Today, I know that, had that hap­pened, noth­ing would have mat­tered.  How­ev­er, today my com­pa­ny also does busi­ness in Rus­sia, Chi­na, etc.  We sell soft­ware to busi­ness­es in those coun­tries.  We also have two offices in Rus­sia, employ­ing peo­ple.  My views of a flat­ter world are evi­dent today, but one thing stands tall; and that is my belief in our Repub­lic, and Cap­i­tal­is­tic views of a “free mar­ket soci­ety.”

I won­der (and I real­ly do pon­der this) what goes through the heads of these peo­ple protest­ing prof­its of pri­vate enter­prise.  These are the peo­ple that actu­al­ly cre­ate jobs.  Do they not real­ize that?  Did some­one nev­er tell them that “busi­ness­es are in busi­ness to make mon­ey.”  Thank you to my 6th Grade social stud­ies teacher Mr. Jim Rod­da for beat­ing that into my brain.  No one starts a busi­ness to lose mon­ey or give away all the prof­its.  Do they?  I mean if that is the case, I need to start think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly (sar­casm implied).

Is this how today’s youth thinks?  Is this the future of our coun­try?  Is there going to be a rev­o­lu­tion or revolt by a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple who pre­fer dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth over actu­al­ly work­ing hard for a liv­ing?  Please do tell me because, I don’t want to get caught in the mid­dle.  I may already be.  I know that this may sound extreme, but it is to also illus­trate the point that this may be a real loom­ing threat.  Is threat the right word?  I think it is.  The protests now being called: Occu­py Wall Street, are grow­ing beyond Wall Street.  Protests are being encour­aged all over the coun­try by those that are con­cerned with, well, what­ev­er it is they want to protest about.  I still am not sure, but I know very quick­ly, it is turn­ing into a ‘move­ment.’  What that means I do not know.  But here are a cou­ple of resources for you to review… Down with cap­i­tal­ism, they say…

• http://goo.gl/g4sbJ
• http://occupywallst.org/

Sigh.  What will be next?  Why do they think the gov­ern­ment can cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs?  It is not sus­tain­able.  As soon as the pri­vate sec­tor can­not afford to pay the tax the rev­enue is gone.  Busi­ness­es fail.  It is a fact of life, just like death.  Most busi­ness­es fail in their first five years.  Failed busi­ness = no tax.  Do they not get if they “take down the rich” there is few­er tax­es to be col­lect­ed?  I know what you are going to say.  But if you have the mon­ey you can find the tax loop holes.  Let me give those skep­tics a lit­tle hint.  There are always going to be tax loop holes, and there are always going to be very fat wal­lets on BOTH sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum that will be able to find those loop holes.  Stop being so naive you “mid­dle class social­ist brats.” (Thank you Oin­go Boin­go), see below video).  No tax = few­er gov­ern­ment jobs.  Why com­plain you have gov­ern­ment guar­an­teed stu­dent loans?  You chose to go that route and cre­ate that debt.  Did you not?  Choice equals con­se­quence.  I am sure the argu­ment will be, “but no one knew this would hap­pen.”  Let me shed some light on this for you.  Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush knew this was going to hap­pen.  Bill Clin­ton dereg­u­lat­ed every­thing, and George W. Bush had to start bail­ing out the banks because of Clin­ton’s deci­sion to let every­one who could not afford a home buy a home.  Dereg­u­la­tion and loose purse strings made it eas­i­er for the mon­ey to flow in the pri­vate sec­tor.  Please don’t argue this point with me, just look at the idiots that bought homes that were dou­ble or triple the mort­gage pay­ment they could afford… Just look at the facts please.  And don’t blame the mort­gage com­pa­nies…   The dereg­u­la­tion just made it eas­i­er to approve loans.  Oh, and the banks that are being protest­ed bought those shit­ty loans that were made to ensure that you could con­tin­ue to own it… Again, sigh… It is a very cycli­cal issue, and the protests should be protest­ing those that caused the issue… Hmmm…  I guess I am rant­i­ng now, but the point is the same, the Occu­py Wall Street protests are hap­pen­ing with no real goal or under­stand­ing of the issue at hand.  They are just protest­ing for mon­ey.  Makes no sense to me.  Start a busi­ness, do some thing, just don’t be part of the prob­lem, be part of the solu­tion.