Re: Full Report: The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America

From: larry.r.trout
Subject: OWS

'The protests consist mainly of people who believe that economic and social justice requires a form of economic organization other than capitalism. That may not lend itself to a five-point plan, but it's an agenda nonetheless.

It's a decidedly misguided agenda. The protesters are massively wrong about the incompatibility of capitalism and social justice.

Social justice shouldn't be measured on what the rich have, which is the fixation of the protesters. Instead, the focus should be on the lot of the poor. The spread of market capitalism has done more to improve living standards for more of the world's poor than anything else in human history.

There is, however, a serious social justice problem that has developed in American market capitalism. Two of the bridges to the middle class for those without a college education – manufacturing and construction – have been eroded. Manufacturing jobs haven't been lost mainly to free trade, as the brief against capitalism would have it, but to sharply improved productivity. And construction wages have been undermined by illegal immigrant labor.'

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/10/12/a_problem_with_wall_street_not_capitalism_111652.html