Monday, October 17, 2011

Will this never end?

Protesters occupying Wall Street in New York City, Times Square
What started off as a simple protest has now progressed to what may be, the movement of the century. Beginning from Wall street in New York City, this fight against the 1% of corporate America has caused paradigm shifts in both Canada and around the world. The main message in the protest being that 99% percent of the common people (the masses) are being misrepresented by its respective government. The government is allowing the rich (corporate bankers) to continue making millions while the rest of the population is jobless due to recession and economic collapse (debt). The catalyst to all this fire started from the large investment banks in America - Lehman Brothers, Marilyn and Lynch (to name a few) and the insurance company AIG becoming bankrupt due to bad mortgage ratings and packaged deals going sour. This spawned a global recession resulting in financial "shit storm" in Europe and most likely irrecoverable debt in Japan. Now that we have the background information out of the way, I can get into my thoughts on this protest. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for protesting against a just and noble cause, however, I don't believe in people just getting what they ask for. If life has taught me anything, it's that you never get anything for just talking. I remember a past mentor telling me that there are two types of people in the world, the "the thinkers" and the "doers", the doers are all rich while the thinkers just keep on thinking. That same analogy can be applied to this protest, the government will not just start heavily taxing the rich, nor are they going to spawn more jobs just so everyone can make ends meat. The solution to this problem does not lie within our government or the rich stealing our money, the solution lies in the common or the masses of people currently occupying both Wall Street and Bay street here in Toronto. If all the people complaining decided to commit to an area of study, I'm sure they will find a career suitable for themselves. This leads me to my second problem, the study of business. The majority of people out of jobs in the United States are the white collar workers with a business management degree or something along those lines. The trouble I see from having this kind of degree is that the skills or information you learn from this kind of education is intangible, how do you expect to manage a business without a professional skill? Or how will you succeed in business if all you ever learned was business and the art of management? In my opinion, if less people took the gamble to pursue business and went down another path; health care, medicine, engineering, or teaching (just a few other options) less people would be without jobs.

Here are some influential photos capturing the moments of the masses occupying Wall Street: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-spreads-worldwide/100171/

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