There is long tradition of revolt when the mass of the people feel oppressed by a small minority. This is essentially what Occupy Wall Street is about. It's inspiring because it has killed despair and apathy for a lot of people who may have thought they were powerless.
In a sense much of the world is held in a kind of economic serfdom and the current protests can be seen as a 'collective scream' about selfishness, greed and power by elite groups. Hence the Occupy slogan "the 99% against the 1%". In the US the top 1 per cent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation's income over the last three decades (Congressional Budget Office). It is no coincidence that this one percent largely controls the government and is able to influence laws and regulations in its favour.
Income inequality is endemic in most countries and there is resentment that the banks and the financial sector were very quickly bailed out by the taxpayers in the crash of 2008, yet nothing was done to change disparities of wealth among private citizens. There is also a feeling that no one was punished. "Too big too fail", but also too big to jail. Impunity of elites is a powerful driver of Occupy.
Lest it be thought that greed is confined to Wall Street, it has just been announced that the directors of Britain's largest companies received a 49 per cent pay rise in the past year, while average workers failed even to keep up with inflation. The chief executives of the FTSE 100 largest companies earned an average of £3,855,172 last year.
The Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread across US cities and now in thousands of cities around the world, including Auckland, is also collectively echoing an earlier time in Europe when peasants attempted to fight back against their oppressors.
