While reading this opinion piece published on Monday, Oct. 10, it didn’t take long for me to realize that it is based on a strawman argument. Namely, that the top 1% in this country “work hard”, while the protesters are all “whiners” that can’t find a job.
The problem a lot of these protesters have with the current economic situation is partially that the job market is in bad shape, but their main concern is that many of these bankers depended upon unethical practices in order to receive short-term monetary gain. When these practices ended up crashing the economy, these same “hard-working” bankers used their connections with the government to get bail outs, which they then used to pay themselves record bonuses.
Has the columnist ever met anyone working two or three minimum wage jobs just to survive? Does she think that someone like that can have the time and energy to “attend business school, law school or graduate school” when they have kids to feed? How do you think they felt when they read or saw in the news that the CEO of Bank of America, US Bank or Chevy gave himself another record bonus after getting bailed out by the government? Do they not have a legitimate concern that, just perhaps, things in this country are not what they should be?
To put this another way, I can also argue that Italian/Russian/Chinese mobsters work very hard for their money, but the question that should be asked is whether what they are doing is ethical and not morally wrong.
Xiaosen Xie
Graduate student