Only the idiots are Occupying Wall Street

For several weeks now the Occupy Wall Street protests have made headlines across the nation and throughout the world.

The movement has grown in popularity with Occupy events in cities throughout the United States and a few have popped up in Europe.

While I have no problem with people peacefully protesting, even if they are protesting against something I support, I do have a problem with people gathering and protesting with no idea of what they are protesting or how they can change the things they are protesting.

The Occupy protesters are a great example of this. There is not a main objective to the protests other than to say Wall Street is the cause of America’s problems.

Is there a specific item they would like to change such as banking regulations? No. Do they want Congress to enact laws to help reduce the unemployment rate? Nope.

These appear to be a group of people who want to protest for the sake of protesting.

An interviewer asked one protester what he was protesting. The man’s response was, “Uh, um. I’m protesting, um, uh…I can’t do this, I’m sorry. I just hope to get our voices heard.”

Somebody should tell that guy that he might have better luck getting his voice heard if he could first come up with a legitimate concern and then find a way to articulate it in a clear and precise way.

That might be asking a little much. The interviewer later asked if the guy had tried to have sex during the protests. He said yes. The interviewer also asked him if it was more important to smoke marijuana or to get a job. “Getting a job so I can buy the weed,” the man said.

A different protester also had problems telling people what his hopes for the protests were. When asked why he was participating in the protests he responded, “I want to show awareness and explain why we are here and get other people to think about it.”

Did you catch that? He was asked why he was there and he said he wanted to “explain why we are here.” He had a golden opportunity to explain, but didn’t — or couldn’t because he only wanted to be part of the mob.

Even the protesters who know what they want don’t understand how the real world works. Another interviewer asked a young woman about employment and she said she would rather work for herself than work for a boss.

“I would rather make my own money,” she said. “I can control how much money I make when I make it.”

She also said there was a simple way of curing the nation’s economic ills.

“Abolish money,” she said. “We don’t need money to establish the good living. It is &%$#@^ up how we have to pay to live. There is enough food and supplies to go around for everybody. We should ration stuff out.”

Apparently she wants to live in a communist society. Perhaps she should ask the residents of Cuba, North Korea, China and the former Soviet Union how well that system of government has worked out for them.

As awful as her solution was to the economic problems, another protester — believe it or not — had a worse idea. She wanted people to “have the right to print their own money.”

Wow! How stupid can somebody be? Printing money without any backing leads to hyperinflation and makes money worthless.

Don’t believe me? Look at Germany after World War I.

Before World War I the Mark, the German unit of currency, had an exchange rate with the U.S. Dollar in which one dollar was worth 4.2 Marks. By 1923 the exchange rate changed to 4.2 trillion Marks were worth one dollar.

Yes the United States is having serious problems, but there are not simple solutions to these issues.

While I support people protesting in order to influence change, I do have a problem with those people not understanding how the system works and calling the system corrupt.

Just because they are either too ignorant to understand relatively simple economic principles or too lazy to learn about them does not give them the right to dumb down America in order to get the things they want. When that happens, nobody is helped and everyone suffers.

Perhaps the protesters would be better off spending time occupying a classroom before they make their way to Wall Street.