Occupied

The 99% are trying to send a message to the 1%.  I get it.  I truly do.  My sympathies are with them.  Naturally, I always surprise myself with how conservative I am on some issues and how liberal I am on others.  I have also been reading Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.  Why?  In reality, I’m kind of a history nut and a World War II nut.  Some most interesting reading with a lot of parallels to some of our current conditions.  Hitler offered that the 1% were too arrogant and disregarded the lower classes when it wouldn’t have been much skin off their backs to give them a better wage, better living conditions and thus a better life.  He had a real insight into the lives of the lower classes and how there was no opportunity to raise yourself up.  His main warning was that by ignoring the lower classes you gave the communists a free reign on spreading their ideas throughout the populace, mainly the unions.  The fear wasn’t just communism as we know, but also something Hitler himself seemed to get off the ground called fascism.

I agree that these economic conditions have gone on for long enough.  What’s the solution?  I don’t know, I’m just a simple blogger.  My sense of the situation is that the civil unrest seen in other countries for whatever reasons has been held at bay here in the U.S. partially due to the government constantly extending unemployment benefits, but that doesn’t seem to be working anymore and I’m glad because it looks like it’s going to take the masses to get it through to our politicians that we need some real reform to get capital to flow again.  I really don’t lie within any ideology of the protesters.  I want government out of my life.  I want real leadership.

The only wisdom, if you call it that, that I could impart to the protesters is the following from the Declaration of Independence, “All Men are Created Equal.”  This doesn’t mean we end up equal.  This is still the one place in the world where you can get up, quit your job and move to Idaho if you wanted.  You have an incredible freedom of  movement.  You have the ability to create a business, an idea, a product, a service or just about anything else.  You can do it by yourself, with a partner or with a bunch of people.  It’s called competition.  Instead of sitting on the sidewalk doing what you see as productive, get in the game.  Start something, do something, be something.  You don’t have to be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.  Those guys are one of kind, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get your slice of the pie and that’s what this American game called capitalism is about.  It rewards the smart, shrewd, hard workers.  If you want an eight hour a day job, where you punch in and punch out and have no responsibility beyond that, then you’ve just limited yourself and put your future in the hands of others.  This world is full of people who limit themselves and then stick their hands out.  Don’t be one of them.  Don’t be a victim.  Be free, be responsible.

They don’t call it Yankee Ingenuity for nothing!

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