Occupy This!

The "Occupy" movement that began on Wall Street and that has spread around the world (I witnessed "Occupy Guelph" on the weekend) has already achieved at least one major victory. It has created a robust new meme – the 99% and the 1% – that distills the essence of what has gone wrong with our economic system over the last 35 years.

Since the late 1970's, through good times and bad, globalization and tax cutting, the incomes of the poor and middle classes have actually declined. The majority of the gains from several decades of economic growth have gone to the top 1%. The next 4% have done pretty well. And the next 5%? They managed to keep their heads above water. But the rest of us, the 90%? We've been slowly drowning.

That explains why our children graduate from university (if they can afford to go) with massive debt, can't find good jobs, and can't buy homes. It's why our pensions have vapourized and why seniors can't afford to retire. It's why we could build schools, hospitals, transit, roads, and bridges in the 60's, but despite 40 years of economic growth, "can't afford" to do so now. It's why all politicians seem to offer the same platform: tax cuts.

How did we get here? Some background:

Back in 1980, when Ronald Reagan proclaimed it was morning again in America, the con was called "trickle-down" economics. Governments would enact policies that would favour those who were already economically privileged. The rest of us, like the poor man in the parable, would be content with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table.

In the 90's it was free trade, deregulation, and resulting globalization. Removing the taxes from imported goods might cost you your job, but you'd be able (temporarily) to buy cheaper foreign products with your unemployment benefits. Eventually, you'd find another job in one of the new, lean and mean industries that would rise from the ashes of the old economy. And you could always get rich trading tech stocks, right? A rising tide would lift all boats.

It may have lifted the yachts, but it left most of us clinging to the wreckage. Free trade and deregulation really meant freedom for capital to range anywhere in the world looking for a fast buck. People, however, couldn't and so began a race to the bottom for wages.

But wait, there was a solution: tax cuts. Your wages might not be rising, but we'll lower your taxes so you'll have more money in your pocket. Only most of the tax cuts ended up going to the rich, while the middle class got hit with user fees and tuition increases, and cuts to social services hammered society's most vulnerable.

For the past several decades the rich and powerful and their right-wing talking heads in the media have been masters of the meme, and they have defined the terms of the economic, social, and political discussion. Just think of a meme like "Tax Freedom Day" and all it represents.

But a meme like "the 99% and the 1%" changes the channel. It has the power to alter the way we view the world. If we're lucky, it's merely crystallizing what we're already thinking but haven't been able to express 'til now. That's why the push back from the mainstream media and their masters in the economic and political elites has been so hysterical: the Occupiers may be only a ragtag band of a few hundred, but they're saying the emperor has no clothes. And people are listening.

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