Don't be misled by the presence of graying, leftwing professional protesters among "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators, whether they are in New York, Pittsburgh, or San Francisco.
There is sufficient discontent today with "The System" amongst enough disparate sectors and age groups in American society to encourage active participation in anti-establishment demonstrations, whether organized by Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street (OWS) types. How many common "drivers" are there behind the energy of both movements?
I count four:
1. Evil Bankers. The first, widely-shared driver is antipathy towards big banks. They are considered to have precipitated the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and the taxpayer-funded bailouts that followed. And they are reviled because their senior managers continue to enjoy hefty compensation - even when they are fired, as was the case with two high-level Bank of America executives last week, who are taking home over $5 million apiece on the way out.
In addition to this indictment, clearly shared by most Tea Party and OWS types, is a much older (but seldom articulated) criticism of bankers: charging interest is immoral and usurious. All major religions have enacted at some point strictures against charging interest (still not permitted in Islam). The concept that interest payments are "unearned income" to the lender is at the root of such thinking. Making money from money does not, in this mode of thinking, add value. Assembling automobiles or building houses does. (In Dante's "Divine Comedy" the usurers consigned to a very unpleasant inner circle in Hell.)
In short, if you haven't taken (and passed) "Money and Banking 101," the big banks and their senior officers are an obvious target on which to take out your frustrations.
2. CEO Compensation. Both Tea Party and OWS types tend to attack large corporations. Here, again, hefty pay is the prime target, although entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, are usually exempt. The chief targets tend to be members of The Business Roundtable - for the most part, bureaucratic leaders of long-lived, well-established firms whose board compensation committees almost always find their CEOs are "above average". Just like the children in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.
In 2010, according to a Hay Group study for The Wall Street Journal, CEOs at the largest corporations enjoyed compensation increases averaging 11%, bringing average pay to $9.3 million. Perhaps more important politically is CEO pay relative to their workers. By some measures, this ratio has soared from 42 times the average worker's pay in 1980 to 343 times in 2010.
It is hard to see a disparity of this magnitude - or even half that - as politically sustainable indefinitely. "History," as one sage has observed, "is a series of reactions against the law of compound interest." Perhaps the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements are part of an emerging series.
3. Education, Debt and Shattered Expectations. The ever-increasing cost of higher education and the debt burden that accompanies it, along with difficulties in finding that first job, are clearly sending a lot of younger people - and their parents - to both movements' rallies. Twenty-somethings may be more prominent at OWS venues, but they are found at Tea Party events, too.
The higher education establishment has been extremely successful, up to this point, in brainwashing most politicians and much of the populace that you can't succeed without a college degree. (See my four-part series earlier this year entitled "Too Big to Fail: The Academic Establishment.)
In turns out that in the current environment lots of young people have the degree and $20,000 plus in debt but can't get a job - despite the fact that there are over three million job openings, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We have too many graduates with degrees in communications and sociology and not enough young people with the vocational training, technical smarts and work appetites that manufacturers and energy companies are looking for these days (see my recent blogs on "Jobs Looking for Workers").
4. Unemployment. Take the first three "discontent drivers" and mix in a more traditional source of unrest - an above average cyclical rise in unemployment - and you have a steamy stew of popular unrest on the left, right and center of the political spectrum.
No matter that the bottom line number - 14 million unemployed - is made worse due to extended unemployment compensation benefits and the vast amounts of Washington-generated uncertainty about budget deficits, future tax rates and prospective healthcare costs. The job situation plus the three other drivers discussed above account (in varying proportions) for the bulk of the energy behind the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements.
Addressing the Discontent. How to address these four drivers of discontent? Turning around the CEO pay spiral and the higher education establishment's marketing mantra and wastefulness requires a few intellectually credible, politically-savvy leaders, whether they are politicians, academics or maybe someone off the street or the TV screen.
Bankers will always labor under a suspicion of being evil magicians, but they usually survive concentrated popular assaults. And the unemployment problem normally resolves itself as the business cycle moves on - if the uncertainties generated by government policy and inaction can be reduced in time.
Of course there are significant differences between Tea Party and OWS followers. The most important is the size and role of the Federal government in the economy and in our lives. But the four common drivers are perhaps the most significant aspect of these movements today.
Are there any statesmen (or women) out there who can credibly and sensibly steer the ship of state through these choppy waters?
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