Letters: Occupiers not looking for hand-out

Regarding " 'Occupy' crowd wants everyone to be winner" [Letters, Dec. 5], what the Occupy Wall Street folks are protesting is that America is no longer a country where intelligence, talent and hard work are the keys to "success," but one where the shiftless, crooked and dysfunctional are still rewarded.

Between 1995 and 2000, the giant retailer for which I worked closed stores throughout the United States, opened stores overseas, stepped up its sales of foreign-made merchandise, nickel-and-dimed customers, fired multitudes of longtime employees to replace them with lower-paid people, and saw its stock tumble while the chief executive walked away with a multi-million-dollar bonus.

The Occupy Wall Street people just want an honest day's pay for an honest day's work -- what used to be called the Puritan work ethic, and the fruits of which used to be called the American dream.

Paul Manton, Levittown
 

This letter was 180 degrees wrong. I think it is fair to say that Thomas Jefferson, in drafting the Declaration of Independence, envisioned a society where each man had equal access to wealth (happiness). Today, it is a sad joke to equate wealth with intelligence or hard work.

Teddy Roosevelt, coming from wealth and privilege himself, realized this. It is why he pushed for inheritance and income taxes, and antitrust laws. He saw a European-style aristocracy developing and was revolted by it: a society where birth was the greatest determinant of success.

Occupy Wall Street is a reaction to these imbalances and the declining standard of living for the overwhelming majority of Americans, no matter how much debt they incur educating themselves.

The wealthiest among us have seen their wealth grow by leaps and bounds. The "best and the brightest" use political influence and money to change laws, allowing them to jeopardize the world economy and to create financial instruments that were time-bombs. When the whole system collapsed, they were shielded from the losses. Has one of them gone to jail? No, as Ed Koch says, only the teen who steals a bike goes to jail.

This is what Occupy Wall Street is about: allowing trade agreements that put American workers out of a job while enriching shareholders, allowing corporations to abandon pension obligations, allowing labor laws to be ignored and labor unions destroyed, going after illegal immigrants rather than the employers who hire them, putting the cost of a college education out of reach of working families, and using brutal police force to jeopardize Americans' First Amendment freedoms of assembly and speech.

Occupy Wall Street is about opposing unequal access to "happiness" and unequal treatment under the law. Where is Jefferson when we need him?

Joel Herman, Melville