Dr. Newquist and Mr. Wiken offer their perspectives on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Together they posit that the Occupiers are not dirty hippies (I certainly didn't see any Occupying Rapid City) but citizens responding to the dangers of undemocratically concentrated wealth and power.
But we shouldn't be so hard on the filthy rich who control so much of our cash and commerce and communication: after all, says Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, they're getting poorer, too:
According to the most recent IRS data, between 2007 and 2009, the 99th percentile income (AGI, not inflation-adjusted) fell from $410,096 to $343,927. The 99.9th percentile income fell from $2,155,365 to $1,432,890. During the same period, median income fell from $32,879 to $32,396.
These recent numbers illustrate the broader phenomenon, discussed in this paper, that high-income households have riskier-than-average incomes [Greg Mankiw, "The Rich Get Poorer," blog, 2011.10.26].
Will I make $410K this year, or will I only make $344K? Can I buy that new Mercedes, or do I have to settle for the five cars in my two garages? Oh, how I wish I faced risk like that.
"Although children in rich and poor households have very similar sets of genes, the scale of adversity at home dictates which combinations of those genes are switched on or silenced through a process called epigenesis – presumably to maximise the chance of survival."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20255-childhood-poverty-leaves-its-mark-on-adult-genetics.html