Letter to the Editor: Occupy Wall Street Doesn’t Speak for Me

By George Vreeland Hill | Published on 12.23.2011

Occupy Wall Street needs to shut its stupid mouth.

How dare they count every person in the 99 percent they talk about as in with them. They do not have a right to speak for me.

I like the rich. Many of them started with nothing or almost nothing. Steve Jobs and countless others became very rich after being very poor.

They did not complain. They had ideas and went with them.

The top 1 percent creates jobs. Our companies, stores, firms and on and on that employ millions were not started by poor people. They were started by the wealthy. Now, OWS states that the rich are our enemy. Great, go against those who create so much.

Occupy Wall Street has got to be the most stupid bunch of idiots to ever band together. They have no real clue as to what they are doing.

In Los Angeles, they accomplished nothing and left a mess that cost the city a lot of money. In Seattle, OWS blocked docks and tried to prevent people from going to work. Yet, they claim they want people to go to work.

The entire Occupy movement is a joke. They talk for the entire 99 percent, but of those 99 percent of the people, about 90 percent are working.

I live in Beverly Hills and I’m doing fine. I don’t need Occupy Wall Street to tell me what to do.

George Vreeland Hill
Beverly Hills

Comments

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» noleta res on 12.23.11 @ 09:38 AM

Was that satire?
Seriously, Noozhawk Editors, did Mr Hill write this letter to you? Or did you pick one out that was written to another paper or blog? I just don’t get why these “Letters to the Editor” seem so boilerplate and are written by people from Texas or Beverly Hills. Please explain, or maybe just include a little disclaimer upfront. That would help.

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» AN50 on 12.23.11 @ 02:57 PM

More to the point Noleta, do you agree with the writer or not, and why? That is the purpose of publishing opinions. It s seems, more often on the left than the right, that those who disagree with an opinion, argue about the messenger or how the message is delivered as in this case, than the actual message. I know I am guilty as well and do it often. However the message in this case was how the occupy movement claimed it spoke for the 99% and the writer in this case disagrees. The author gave his reasons for disagreeing. So rather than question the source, the author or anything other than what he wrote. Try telling us what you think.

In my humble opinion the author is right that the OWS movement does not speak for the rest of us. I agree some what about the wealthy but as always try to distinguish between those wealthy whose activities enrich the economy as a whole from those who are more parasitic in nature (wealth generation versus wealth accumulation, as lefty Rambler pointed out some time ago). Warren Buffet creates less wealth than his activities consume and Bill gates, Steve Jobs both generated far more wealth economically than either accumulated.

So what about your thoughts?

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» noleta res on 12.23.11 @ 04:57 PM

Actually my point was about the messenger, or to be more precise about the piece itself and how Noozhawk is presenting opinions. Both of the “Letter to the Editor” pieces I have read recently are by out-of-towners, and I was curious. But you are right: the opinion Mr hill expresses is more interesting than how Noozhawk chooses to post articles, so I’ll answer your question.
What do I think? Obviously Hill is correct: OWS movement does not speak for him.
He likes the rich and he lives in Beverly Hills. Whatever. I’ll never be wealthy like that, but I don’t really care one way or another about rich people, and I don’t think that most people supporting OWS do either.

Hill is wrong about one thing: The 1% type of wealthy do not create jobs. They invest and hold on to their money to make it grow to astounding proportions.

The people creating jobs, if there are any, are generally a lot more well-off than the average worker(who, by the way has seen no real wage increase in over a quarter-century), but they are not the super-rich, and Steve Jobs is not typical. The vast majority of small business owners are moderately successful, creative, energetic, and care about their community. They are the people we should be looking up to, not hedge fund managers or investment banker CEOs getting 7-figure bonuses routinely, no matter what their performance on the job was. One could just as easily say that consumer demand is what creates jobs, not the richest 1%.

As to the OWS movement itself, it’s a mixed bag, to say the least. They’ve been caricatured by people like Hill into freeloading dopers who want something for nothing, and that’s just a simplistic and thoughtless generalization. Not to mention it doesn’t address the point they are trying to make. But that’s kind of a problem: what exactly IS their point? They don’t really have one point. They are trying to say that there is something very wrong and destructive about the financial system in this country, and the way it separates and locks people into strata. The financial institutions and the government have synchronized systems to benefit each other and left most of us out of the loop. I have to say that’s how it looks to me, too. Is is really 1% vs 99%? Of course not, but that’s just an easy way to define things, and like all social commentary, how you define things is often overlooked.
So Mr Hill of the Beverly Hills can say OWS is bunch of stupid morons and then he doesn’t have to think about them anymore, plus he gets to sound super irate and tough in a letter to the editor. He’s bought into the self-preserving mythology of the “job creator”, and can say facile little airballs like “poor people don’t create jobs”, and he’s right, but so what.
The OWS movement provides interesting social commentary and makes, in my opinion many valid points, but they do sound pretty goofy sometimes and their encampments seem kind of pointless to me. I can’t really say they “speak” for me either, but I do agree with many things I’ve heard from them, and they’re a lot more interesting than people give them credit for.
Here are a few things I’ve come across about OWS:
from the christian science monitor,
“Indeed, the Wall Street Journal found:

The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%).

Professor Hector R. Cordero-Guzman and business analyst Harrison Schultz from the Baruch College School of Public Affair puts the unemployment rate of the Occupy protesters at 13.1%. In other words, approximately 85% employment rate.”

So they’re not just wasted freeloaders, by and large.
Sorry, out of time, gotta go.

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» GeeWillikersWally on 12.28.11 @ 05:37 AM

Mr. Vreeland Hill and Professor Know It All aside , apparently most Americans agree with at least one core message of OWS -
” More than three-quarters of Americans say the country’s economic structure is out of balance and “favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country,” taking up the calls of Occupy Wall Street protesters to reduce the power of major banks and end tax breaks for the affluent and for corporations, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows.”

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» John Locke on 12.28.11 @ 11:43 AM

OWS makes a few good points and some really out-of-it observations. They do not speak for me and I find it outrageous that they presume to speak for 99% of the population.

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» someguyinsb on 12.29.11 @ 09:34 AM

As expected, the intentions of the OWS flies right over the heads of AN50 and the writer. Amazing really, but not surprising.

To clarify what the point of this populist movement is:

Get the money out of politics.

You can argue until you’re red in the face about whether the “rich” are job creators or wealth compilers… they are both and neither. Most did not make their money, they inherited it or they were handed it by virtue of their social economic status.

AN50 has made nothing remotely close to that of the super wealthy yet he thinks he is special. There in lies the issue. Too many Americans think they too are special when in reality they are as ordinary as the next guy. So you are the 99% AN50 whether you care to admit it or not… we know that, they know that, you’re the only one that doesnt seem to know…

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» AN50 on 12.30.11 @ 08:18 PM

Someguy, you might have more credibility if even some of your blind rhetoric and insulting inventive had a smidgeon of sense to it. How can a wealth generator or accumulator be both and neither? If one is a wealth generator why does that mean they inherited it?

The two richest men in America are both liberals, neither inherited a dime. Bill Gates accumulated his billions adding trillions of dollars in value to the economy. Warren Buffet accumulated his billions transferring the wealth from others to him self. Both men are examples of wealth generation and wealth accumulation. Both are moral, upstanding men of integrity. Yes their business dealings are shrewd to be sure but neither is a criminal, made their money illegally or amorally and both as I said are liberals and very generous with their personal fortunes.

Do you understand the difference between them? Maybe if you spent less time whipping up your sophomoric, pedantic partisan invective and spent more time trying to actually exercise reading comprehension you wouldn’t have to have your mom medicate you into a more civilized state.

What is truly pathetic is that you seem to be the poster child for the ignorance rife among OWS protesters who exhibit little understanding of the economic system they are being told to protest against. You only see that some have more than you and you want it.

As a capitalist I have no problem with the Warren Buffets even though I know they would not be here if not for the Bill Gates. I know that Wall street is nothing more than a reflection of the entitlement minded in government. The government you and the OWS movement wants to grow ever more powerful does not make wealth any more than an investment banker does and both are very good at transferring wealth from those who have it to those who want it. The biggest difference is in how the transfer is legitimized. The banker/investor/speculator is risking their own capital up front and they provide a service for the wealth they suck out of the economy. They may still be a net drain, but no one is forced to use a bank, broker, investor, etc. The government on the other hand, though providing a service, does not ask for its payment, it demands it and will punish you if you do not participate (taxation).

Do you comprehend? I don’t mean to sound so condescending, but conversing with you seems a bit like arguing with a six year old sometimes, so I often wonder if you are a minor trying in vein to have an adult conversation. I not I apologize, but please read what I write instead of making these asinine partisan insults that serve no purpose. Wealth generation and wealth accumulation happen in all economies whether they are private (capitalist) , publically controlled (socialism) or state owned and controlled (communism). So what I have been arguing for is non partisan. We can have a very ripe conversation about ownership merits and that is fine, but lets get back to expanding the pie first. We have a $70 trillion debt looming over our heads right now and screaming at the wealthy like spoiled brats isn’t going to pay it off.

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