And was only brought up by one person as far as I know. I agree this is anti-capitalism, but so is bailing out endangered companies, which is akin for forgiving corporate debt. Are both major political parties anti capitalism?
I think the protesters make too much out of the bailouts. TARP was very cheap compared to the reward as was the automotive bailouts.
What is really ironic is that the UAW, which was saved by bailouts, is now joining the occupy movement. This is specially ironic when you realize that the auto bailout cost more than the bank bailout that they are protesting.
There is already a minimum wage in the US. I don't believe it should be raised to $20/hour, but if you think a minimum wage is anti capitalism then I guess the US has been anti capitalism for years.
There are a lot of people who don't like the minimum wage and claim it hurt low skilled workers, especially high schoolers.
And it is anti-capitalist since capitalism is based on the notion that you get/pay/earn what ever you are worth and not what society thinks you should be worth.
There is already free education in the US, though organized at the local level. How long has public education existed for? Is public education anti capitalism? This is an INCREMENTAL change (though still major in terms of cost). It just extends the length of time and specialization of public education.
I was talking about free college which is one of their demands
Medicare is nearly this already, and many capitalist first world countries already employ it in its fullest. This has nothing to do with capitalism, unless the government itself owns the hospitals etc.
Medicare is not universal as it is only available for certain people.
Medicare is not capitalism either, it is socialism and many of the countries with UHC are quasi-socialist states or socialism light or European socialism aka highly regulated economies.
None of the above actually hand a person success. There are countries in the world that employ all of those things (short of the debt elimination which I agree is stupid), and manage to have winners and losers. Calling these demands anti capitalism is nearly akin to saying that capitalism doesn't exist anywhere.
Technically there are no countries in the world that have true capitalism.
Instead we all have modified forms of capitalism. In Europe you have a free market economy that is highly taxed and used by the governments to provide socialism like benefits such as free healthcare and extensive welfare benefits. The US economy is similar, except we have less taxes and less benefits.
Taxes are like an anchor around the waist of the economy. The higher the taxes the more it hurts the economy which is why Europe with its much higher taxation has a much lower standard of living than that the US. Which is also why the US has the second highest median income in the world, despite all our illegal immigration and our vast size. The median income of the worlds 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th largest economies are only two thirds our median income, which equates to a HUGE difference in stand of living. (China is 2nd)
So what you say about other economies having all the things the protesters demand (UHC, free or cheap colleges etc etc) but they pay for these things by having a much lower standard of living.
That is probably the biggest failure of the occupy types. They want a socialistic system because they think it will result in a more even distribution of incomes, which it will, but they fail to understand that it will also result in a much lower level of income as well.