OWS: A squandered opportunity

When a conservative scholar leads his think piece with a gentle ridicule of, rather than an uneasy defensiveness against, liberalism's principal propaganda campaign, you know the latter has probably squandered an excellent political opportunity -- again. 

Such is the frame of political scientist James Q. Wilson's op-ed, "Angry about inequality? Don’t blame the rich," which opens with this mild mock of a yawning ho-hum:

There is no doubt that incomes are unequal in the United States — far more so than in most European nations. This fact is part of the impulse behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose members claim to represent the 99 percent of us against the wealthiest 1 percent [italics mine, ridicule his].

From there we enter an argumentation minefield of obscure statistical bloodshed -- did you know the Swedes' "Gini index" is much lower than America’s; or that Greece's "went from 0.413 in the 1970s to 0.307 in the late 2000s"? -- chiefly because OWS was foolish enough to slap a specific (not to mention far too narrow) percentage on the target of its justified anger (much as Mitt Romney was foolish enough to conjure a specific numerical creation of jobs). That is, by limiting its valid indignation to the huge incomes of the 1 percent, OWS necessarily disregarded the grossly inequitable structural advantages among the 99th percentile, the 98th percentile, the 97th, and so on.

In other words, in favoring the "income inequality" argument over exposing the much deeper injustice of wealth's far broader maldistribution, OWS let the intellectual quarry slip away. The movement also allowed this sort of easy counterpoint to be made, as Prof. Wilson easily does: 

The "rich" in America are not a monolithic, unchanging class. A study by Thomas A. Garrett, economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, found that less than half of people in the top 1 percent in 1996 were still there in 2005.

In yet other words, much of the physical quarry -- not merely the intellectual -- slips away. Again, had OWS not restricted its volleys to the 1 percent, the above point would have been rendered utterly pointless.

Of course we can always ask, But what have the practical results of OWS's propaganda been? (Note: I am not using "propaganda" pejoratively here.) Wilson gleefully answers:

[A] December Gallup poll showed that 52 percent of Americans say inequality is "an acceptable part" of the nation’s economic system, compared with 45 percent who deemed it a "problem that needs to be fixed."

Shortly after that poll's release, a rather stunned and definitely disconcerted Charles Blow, of the NY Times, noted the results with an infinite dreariness:

A Gallup poll released on Thursday found that, after rising rather steadily for the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who said that the country is divided into "haves" and "have-nots" took the largest drop since the question was asked.

A squandered opportunity. No one of any thoughtfulness is questioning the sentimental nobility behind OWS's efforts; Wilson, certainly, does not, nor do I. It's just that the organized left, disorganized as it is, always seems to hit its target with so little strategic effectiveness.

Comments

[ren]

At least they went down swinging.

[janicket]

I'd rather see our side standing, bloodied but unbowed, while the other side went down hard.

[SueMe]

Liberals (and I consider myself one) seem to always splinter into too many causes. As the saying goes, "its like herding cats."

[dr.e]

It's a shame that you weren't out there to educate and guide them. \snark

[gn]

Frankly, I'd trust Warren Buffet to vote for political representation who would implement a fair taxation scheme far more than I would trust the average working class not of color voter in South Carolina. Full stop. I'd trust the millionaire POTUS and FLOTUS to do likewise far more than I would
trust the average working class not of color voter in Ohio. Full stop. So long as this is the case, the problems in this country cannot be reduced to mere class. Charles Blow may have been shocked by those gallup results, but I certainly am not.

By subsuming all of this country's problems into a class reductionist frame of "the 99% versus the 1%" indeed ows created a movement which was in my opinion tin-eared, unattractive to some otherwise natural allies, and not nearly as effective with regards to turning sentiment into forward movement as organizations like OFA and ACORN. My opinion.

[priscianus jr]

"We are the 99%" is just a slogan, and as slogans go, it's a pretty good one. If you want to be more exact, though, the number of people who are both very wealthy and fully support the status quo really is considerably less than 1%. We all know that there are plenty of wealthy people who are liberal Democrats. We also know that, especially in high-rent cities like NY -- a quarter of a million dollars annual income, with a family to support, does not exactly make you super-rich. Also, many of such people understand that the tax raise proposed on income over that amount would not exactly put a crimp in their style.
It is also true that a fair number of less wealthy people -- oh, I should say around 27% of the population -- are on the side of the super-rich me-firsters.