The question could be rephrased: should Americans protest Washington, or New York.
Tom Palmer makes an interesting point:
What caused the crisis, the indebtedness, the unemployment, the stagnation? The culprits are state agencies and enterprises, including our Federal Reserve (our government’s bank), Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), which jointly flooded the country with cheap credit and encouraged and subsidized unsound banking and subprime mortgages, all to encourage wider home ownership, paper prosperity, and cozy relationships with their cronies. We got a housing bubble, mountains of unpayable debt, and a financial crisis. Thanks, Uncle Sam. The Occupiers have the wrong address. The subprime crisis was designed in Washington, not New York.
I'm sympathetic to this point. But I wouldn't consider myself a Tea Party Supporter. Rough analogy: I like the food network, but Iwouldn't buy Rogers cable to get it. Why? Because i'd have to buy some terrible channels as well. Rogers sells cable packages filled, mostly, with trash. Same thing with the Tea Party. I like smaller government, less cronyism, free markets etc... but to get these benefits they want me to hate gays, disavow science, and support really terrible and inept political leaders like Bachmann and Palin. Sorry. Can't do it.
OWS, you win by default.
A new paradigm is needed to judge the success of an economy and a society's overall health. We have to stop insisting on 'growth' as the indicator; we are going to grow ourselves extinct on this planet and kill countless species along the way as we destroy nature and cause unchangeable damage. Neither the Tea Party or the Occupiers of Wall Street are addressing the really pressing needs of the current times.
ReplyDeleteHow generous of you, AM. You neglect the fact that the Tea Party is linked heavily to the 'establishment' and that they have promoted the types of policies which have failed the United States.
ReplyDeleteHM
HM: Like I said, i'm no Tea Party fan; you do make a good point: they are linked to the establishment more than OWS.
ReplyDeleteBUT, they didn't promote the policies that hurt the U.S. I don't know how you can make that case given that these policies go back to the 1980s adn 1990s and the Tea Party is just a couple of years old. Besides, as I understand, the TP is against the sort of cronycapitalism that caused the financial crisis and the housing boom.
Anon1: tell that to the people without jobs. I think it's a separate issue, honestly. We can have growth and make better environmental policies. Besides, a strong economy is a pre req for everything else.
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