Lorne Gunter can, if he holds his mouth right, kind of agree with the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, but he says they do themselves no favours by mixing in fake “facts”:
The protesters’ main point also is obscured by all the lefty, social justice, union-financed trash they have heaped on it. The Occupy movement has proclaimed itself in favour of animal rights, a guaranteed living wage, free health care and education, and an end to the “poisoning” of the food supply.
Nor can the protesters help repeating a lot of class-warfare myths, such the “fact” that 1% of the population controls almost all of the wealth. According to Internal Revenue Service statistics in the United States, the “99 per centers” — as OWS types like to call themselves — earn about 80% of all income and control over two-thirds of the personal wealth (both percentages are slightly higher in Canada), while the “one per centers” earn about 20% of income and control about 32% of wealth.
It’s true that the top 1% of earners are taking a greater share of the pie than at any time since the 1950s, when reliable family income figures first became available. But it is also true that even the bottom 20% of earners are better off than they were then — not as much better off than the top 1%, but better off than they were in the mid-20th century.
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But the biggest problem with the OWS movement is what they want to do about the problems they see. Because they view most corporate activity as bad and most government programs as good, the Occupiers have convinced themselves the only way to a fairer society lies through bigger government, more public spending and much higher taxes, all of which would only make our economic problems worse, while alleviating none of the disparity protesters believe is so corrosive to democracy.
