STEVE FORBES: The Wall Street Protesters Should Occupy Congress Instead
Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook here!
Today marks the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. To celebrate, organizers have called for a national "Day of Action" for the country's 99% to rally against Wall Street and the richest 1%.
This morning, the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters in New York tried to shut down the New York Stock Exchange. They failed, but they made a bunch of noise and created quite a spectacle outside.
Steve Forbes, the Chairman of Forbes Media and a former Republican candidate for President, thinks the protesters are protesting in the wrong place.
Specifically, Forbes thinks the protesters should be occupying Congress and the rest of Washington.
A die-hard free-market conservative, Forbes thinks the problem with the U.S. economy is over-sized government, over-burdensome regulation, and huge debt and deficits that are destroying the value of the dollar. If we shrank the government and got our fiscal house in order, Forbes argues, confidence would return. And the inequality and joblessness that is fueling the social frustration would begin to ease of its own accord.
So why aren't the protesters occupying Congress? Why are they symbolically trying to shut down the economy (and make the jobless problem worse) by storming the New York Stock Exchange?
Forbes thinks the protesters are focused on Wall Street because they don't want to bite the hands that feed them--Congress-people who support the big labor unions.
The way out of our current problems, Forbes maintains, is less government intervention and more free-market capitalism, not the reverse.
Meanwhile, a couple of brave Wall Streeters in suits and ties joined the protesters this morning. They carried signs saying "Occupy A Desk!" and "Get A Job."
