I wish this movement had discernible goals. it is difficult to cut through all the BS about it out there, propagated by people who have no idea why they are there and by such things as the dissemination (one example in particular) of a list of 20 "goals" of OWS that was actually created originally to mock the movement but is now quoted as a legitimate list, kind of like how some can mistake articles from
The Onion as news. I can't bring myself to form any kind of opinion about the whole thing because anything I would judge would probably be unfair, either weighted too heavily to one side or the other or just flat-out made up.
There are plenty of kids who have made foolish decisions involved, sure (then again, in the past three years pay for new college grads has dropped about 10% while those having to take jobs that don't require college degrees has gone up 17%, though watching friends who graduated this year, all of whom are working jobs like that right now, it's taken all of them 150-300 applications throughout an entire state before someone calls them back because they're overqualified with a college degree... not including apps to starting positions requiring their degrees, which aren't biting either). My exposure to it via internet discussion forums, however, has been not to kids but to those in middle age who have lost everything for no reason. I'm more familiar with this:
Quote:
I was a teen mom, but I did everything right from that point. I got married, dh and I both have degrees, we saved, we invested, and now we have nothing.
Besides rent, medical debt is our largest bill every month. No one wants to take less than $100 per month, but the bills are spread out so that I owe the hospital this much, the doctors who treated me this much, etc. If I pay them each what they want, it is more than $400 per month. We earn $1600 per month and I get $500 in child support for my oldest. It is.not.happening. But if I don't pay what they demand, they tack on a fee in addition to the exorbitant interest. So we end up with an equal or larger bill every month even though we pay religiously. srsly, wtf. Also, they are religious reporters to credit agencies, so I recently found out that my formerly excellent credit score is now comparable to someone who has filed bankruptcy.
In my state, most adults can't get Medicaid. You have to be disabled or??? I don't even know! I have a non-disabled friend who gets it and I wish I knew how--she makes more than me but gets more food stamps, plus HUD and medical and an electric/utility discount. When I asked about it at DSHS, they told me I was not categorically eligible. I wish I could get a firm definition on that phrase because I hear it a lot. Luckily, our food stamps were increased to $400 per month. So we will eat at least.
Honestly, most of the time people are getting screwed over because their employers have raised the rates of health insurance due to passing the buck to employees, to a level that they can no longer afford. One member of the family is hospitalized at some point, and everything is lost as a result. The poster I quoted above has explained in subsequent posts that they have moved to a terrible apartment and greatly downsized their lives, but it doesn't matter. This is something that could happen to
anyone. My parents could easily be in this position within a few years, and my father has worked his ass off his entire life, going from being a high school dropout to comfortably raising five children and sending them all to private high school (when I was a child we still had nothing while my father was in college, but my younger brothers never had that experience).
I will be there with a nursing degree in a couple of years. I will not have the money to support myself, even if I drive the worst POS car and live in the most disgusting apartment I can find, because of my debt which was originally not going to give me a useless degree because of how I was going to use it but now cannot because to do so would be foolish in this economy. I will not be able to afford health insurance even if I do those things as well as go on food stamps. I will not be able to save anything. I will not have any extra dollars to spare if my car needs new tires or anything else that will come up. I know this. There is nothing I can do about it, for no reason other than that I'm going to be entering the workforce at a
really bad time. I am getting my nursing degree because my bachelor's degree in psychology is almost useless, and there is absolutely no way I can afford grad school (nursing school is only $10-12/credit). I have completely changed my plan for life in response to the economy, and there is still nothing I can do, no amount of time I can work, that will bring me out of poverty. I am intelligent, I readily work 50+ hours a week during the summer, and there is still nothing for me, and that's without any dependents.
That kind of thing is what I've been exposed to, only instead of college kids it's happening to those who are in middle age because of changes their employers have made.
This is more a commentary of the economy than anything else, though, which is why I wish this movement had more cohesive, readily available goals to critique. All I can gather is that people in these positions are fed up that while banks make record profits with money they have gained from those who have lost it all, and as CEOs' salaries have gone up 23% (I think?) since 2009, there is no "bailout" that will be afforded to people who have worked hard and made the "right" decisions their entire lives only to crash from middle class to working poor, while banks were bailed out in 2008 for things that were their own doing. They
don't want a handout and are willing to work as hard as they always have to get themselves out of their situations; they
do want those responsible for what is happening to them to be held accountable. I honestly am not well-versed in the relationship between the government and banks and the economy, so I don't know how accurate their analysis of everything is. I just know what my exposure to this movement has been.
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). I always expected to be in debt and was never naive about that, and it's manageable at the amount I was expecting, but not this. Not asking for sympathy, just the absence of condemnation.