This "we are the 99%" mantra has always struck me as... well, stupid.
A mantra for idiots.
North America and Western Europe, as a whole, have traditionally been the "1%". Western society has historically been to the rest of the world, what these hippies claim CEOs are to the rest of our society. In other words, the West has had it pretty darn cushy, while everyone else labours to give us the crappy luxury that we think we deserve.
Largely as a product of globalization, the barriers that have historically kept Western society on their "1% throne" are starting to break down. Other countries like China, Brazil, India, and even Russia are starting to rise as economic super powers. In this closed world ecosystem, a rise in one area (like Asia) implies an adjustment downwards in another (like the West). It's a "re-balancing" of sorts.
Arguably, this re-balancing is morally positive. It's the right thing to see happen. The West may have to decline, to allow other nations to rise, and ultimately strike a more equitable planetary distribution of wealth/power/food/happiness/health/etc.
Here's the kicker - While the West declines, some segments of our population will be able to hold on to wealth and power for a bit longer than others. Specifically, those who already have wealth, may be able to use it to reinforce their position in an overall fading economy. Conversely, the first segment of the population to feel the hit, will be the labour class. Why? Because those are (no offense intended) the most easily duplicated skillsets. It's easy for China to duplicate the functionality of a worker making Stereos on an assembly line in Fargo North Dakota. It's harder for them to duplicate the functionality of Ford's CEO, who is responsible for the the company that makes the car those stereos are going into.
In other words, these idiot hippy tent-dwelling "1-percenters" are complaining about CEOs, when CEOs are not the real problem. The real problem stems from the fact that the West isn't developing new industries to replace the old labour class that is disappearing. We're not loosing our middle class because of "CEOs" or a "conspiracy among the top 1% of our society". We're loosing our middle class because we aren't replacing obsolete labour industries, with new ones. Our education sucks, our youth are largely un-motivated, we don't fund science, and we're not creating "new" middle class jobs.
I don't blame the CEOs for outsourcing labour to China. I blame every single lazy Westerner who wants a useless plastic pink flamingo lawn doiley from Wal-Mart, and isn't willing to pay more than $1.97 for it. I blame the lazy parents who feed their children 5 hours of television per day. I blame the blind consumerism that our masses engage in to hide their own lack of any mental creativity.
CEOs are a great scapegoat, but they're a lazy man's target. If we actually care about Western societies, we need to get comfortable with giving up a lot of our "useless crap", scale back our personal spending on garbage, and start busting ass to develop the industries that we want our kids to be working in 20 years from now.
) - just playing devil's advocate.
