Occupy Wall Street Movement - Assignment Example

OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT The foundation of today’s America stands on the foundation pillars of urge for freedom of religion and self reliance. Many of the Americans and their ancestors died in the two world wars. After the wars, they cheered and started rebuilding the devastated city. The fact that history repeats itself is evident when the teacher who taught the youth the government spins and thus encouraged them to fight for their rights. Many of the American youth have now started protesting and fight for their rights. Occupy Wall Street Movement is one of such fights for the right. Occupy Wall Street Movement A Canadian-based anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters Media Foudation, on July 31st, 2011, proposed the movement named Occupy Wall Street. It demonstrated protest against “income inequality, high unemployment, greed, as well as corruption and the influence of corporations on government” (Roybal, 2012, p. xii). The main motto behind this movement was to invoke change in today’s crony capitalism by raising worldwide awareness and calling themselves as 99%. They claimed to use the tactics of Arab Spring that was to peacefully protest against the unjust. An admirer of the OWS released a video calling the youth to join the protest by gathering at lower Manhattan and occupying the Wall Street for some moths. From there other groups including the governing body, General Assembly of NYC also started joining the protest. The word of protest soon got out through the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. The movement soon started gaining momentum and pick up steam within a month (Roybal, 2012, pp. xii – xiii). Moral and Economic Implications The protest that started on the Wall Street did not put forward any demand or grievances instead it brought some agendas to be viewed. The common agenda was the gap of 1% and 99% where 1% was considered to be the “wealthy traders and bankers at the top of the financial services sector” and the 99% was regarded to be everyone else leaving the 1% including the demonstrators or the protesters. The 1% was regarded to have a lump sum amount of money, power and wealth and was interested in conflicting with “the economic well-being of the rest of the country”. The 1% and 99% agenda proposed by the movement was taken differently by different critics. It proposed that the financial industry was a consumer of human and financial capital, which could have been employed more effectively in the production of goods and services. The excessive compensation paid to the Wall Street traders aggravated income inequality and promoted excessive risk-taking. On the other hand this penalized the taxpayers whose money has gone into bailing out the failed banks. But these taxpayers in return got unemployment and slow economic growth during the recession. It caused the financial crisis to worsen. Though the new complex financial instrument and speculative trading has made few individual wealthy but has made the financial system less stable. The present financial condition has channelized the household savings into the business investments. This protest on one hand has presented a strain on the political thought and on the other hand has provided comprehensive attack on the financial sector. This has been portrayed as morally corrupt but injurious to democracy, enterprise and labor. A part of this protest did a moral distinction between the finance and enterprise (Jickling & Hoskins, 2011, p.1). The protestors of Occupy Wall Street Movement opposed capitalism and supported radical wealth redistribution and intense regulation of the private sector, which is a threat for the freedom of the citizens. The protest was meant to improve the economic and financial condition of the poor and middle class people. But the demand if fulfilled will only lead to an expansion of their hardship (Roybal, 2012, p. xv). Theories of Ethics Utilitarianism Bykvist presented the theory of Mill on classic utilitarianism as “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Bykvist, 2010, p. 21) . According to the Utilitarian opinion the end of human action is standard morality and is defined by the rule and percept of human nature (Mill, 1871, p. 17). Kantian Ethics Kantian ethics says that an action is morally right if it is done as a duty since it is the right thing to do. It is not based upon consequences but on a kind of ethics. It implies that aphorism can be motivated as a universal law. It says “this action is right if it’s rational to say that anyone in my shoes should do the same thing, should follow the same rule.” (Sterling, 2012, p. 2). It treats people with respect and considers them to be a part of themselves (Sterling, 2012, p. 2). Virtue Ethics Virtue Ethics arises from the natural inclination embedded in human nature. It is rooted in the natural desire of human being for what the result may be pleasurable and good. It is about the desire and not duty. It is about what one wants to do and not about what one ought to do. It is more about the personal happiness rather than about greatest happiness (Devettere, 2002, p. 20). Occupy Wall Street movement might have brought happiness to the protestors or the lower middle class of people but it brought unhappiness for the upper class. This movement does not hold true from Utilitarianism perspective, since this movement brought a mixed affect amongst the citizens. This movement was right to those who were supposed to get benefits from it and wrong to those who were not supposed to get any benefit. But whether it is right or wrong that cannot be quantified. It also does not holds good from the perspective of Kantian ethics because protest does not comes under duty. It is also not written in any universal law that protesting is a right thing to be done. But Kantian ethics says that an act is morally right if it is done as a duty, which contradicts the concept behind this movement. In this case the virtue ethics work. In this protest the people are against capitalism. This is not at all good for the citizens. They want government intervention which may create even more complication than it previously had. But again some people feels it is right while some feels it is wrong. They are going by natural desires and impulses. They are only doing what they want but not what they are supposed to do. Income Inequality The past few studies have shown that the income gain of US for the past few decades have gone to the wealthier class of the society. The recent report of the Congressional Budget Office shows that “the inflation-adjusted after-tax incomes of the top 1% grew by 275% between 1979 and 2007, versus just under 40% growth for the middle 60% of the income distribution” (Jickling & Hoskins, 2011, p.8). The traditional economic condition was such that the income inequality created incentives that stimulated economic growth. Over the earlier period of three decades there was a dramatic increase in the income inequality. After the post war era the income was more or less constant. But the income accrued by the wealthy people has jumped from 34.6% in 1980 to 48.2% in 2008. The evolution of income inequality was due to the fact that wealthy households were continuing to accumulate a greater quantity of the nation’s total income. The great recession in between 2007 and 2008 was responsible for this income inequality. The new data emphasizes on a continuous dip in the income inequality. The Great Recession has acted as an agent to push the Americans more into poverty, reducing their average income. However it was believed that the income inequality triggered by the recession was temporary. The last three decades have shown a persistent upward trend in equality which was for long-term. But the recovery period after the recession slightly reversed this downturn. In a nutshell, the recession can ease the inequality for a shorter period of time, but it could not reverse “the long‐term trend toward an increasingly skewed income distribution” (Maloney & Schumer, 2010, p.2). Equitable outcome in the Capitalist Society “Capitalism is the key to improving society” (Roybal, 2012, p. xv). In a capitalist system every individual is free to live his own life and use his/her private property without any interference from the outsider. This concept gives rise to free market. It gives the people living in this society the freedom to buy anything, the freedom to sell anything at their own desired price and the freedom to choose any goods and services of their choice. Capitalism has been taken for granted by the Americans. They are unaware how fragile this freedom can be. Under socialist system the jobs are assigned by the government. The prices of the goods are set by the government depending on the export and import. In a socialist country there is no concept of private property. Every property is owned by the government and is confiscated by them for the benefit of the people. Occupy Wall Street Movement was undoubtedly protesting for a wrong thing. It should have demanded for expansion of the government instead of asking for government intervention (Roybal, 2012, pp. xv-xiv). Conclusion The Occupy Wall Street movement was unorganized and underestimated. But it continued to become more and more powerful and started spreading at an unbelievable rate. Day by day the number and strength increased. This protest leads to both risk and opportunity. It protests against the growing gap between the rich and poor. The people of the country were expecting the government would intervene and would lead to some positive change. The poor were blaming the rich who were acting like Robin-hoods. This protest is not going to stop and the stage is just the infancy of the growing revolution. Through this protest America will awake and restore its core values. REFERENCES Bykvist, K. (2010). Utilitarianism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Continuum International Publishing Group  Devettere, R.J. (2002). Introduction to Virtue Ethics: Insights of the Ancient Greeks. Georgetown University Press Jickling, M. & Hoskins, S.M. (2011). Finance and the Economy: Occupy Wall Street in Historical Perspective. Congressional Research Service, retrieved on January 26, 2013 from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42081.pdf Maloney, C.B. & Schumer, C.E. (2010). Income Inequality and the Great Recession. U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, retrieved on January 26, 2013 from http://www.jec.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=91975589-257c-403b-8093-8f3b584a088c Mill, J.S. (1871). Utilitarianism. Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer Roybal, R.J. (2012). Pre-Occupy-Ed: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement Will Economically Destroy America. AuthorHouse Sterling, A. (2012). Philosophy 2 (2215): Contemporary Ethical Inquiry Special theme: Occupy Wall St. and the Ethics of Inequality, retrieved on January 26, 2013 from http://shrei.stanford.edu/sites/shrei.stanford.edu/files/sterling_handout_1.pdf Read More