Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

"The protesters are protesting against people who make $40,000 - $50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That's the bottom line."
— NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg criticizing Occupy Wall Street

No, they're not. They're protesting against corporations who pay people to gamble with other people's money, and they make half a million and more in salaries, their executives many times that in bonuses, and they almost single-handedly destroyed the world economy in the previous decade and pretty much skated away unpunished. They are wanting to see more social equality for the middle class, which is rapidly being destroyed. They are people making, probably in most cases, no more than $40-50,000. They are protesting our company rapidly becoming a plutocracy instead of a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Case in point of someone getting wrecked: my employer had hired a guy from California, I believe for a GIS position, a classification that we need badly. It was contingent upon his wife, a teacher, being able to retire. Her retirement fund was wiped out and they decided they could not afford for her to retire and then move two states away, and we lost the guy.

I'm not saying the people comprising Occupy Wall Street are lily-white saints, according to some footage that I saw last night some are being rectal haberdashers to a lot of merchants in the area, and we're talking privately-owned, non-corporate merchants. That's a type of mixed message that won't sit well with the middle class that they're trying to improve things for.

"If you look at the U.S., you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can’t read. I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here, only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is."
— Michael Bloomberg

To paraphrase Mark Twain, a man who does not read has no advantage over a man who cannot read. I seriously doubt we have anyone in Congress who cannot read, but we had a president who publicly stated that he does not read who got re-elected, so what's the big deal? And I know lots of people who don't have passports, again, so what? Lots of people spend there entire lives without leaving the borders of the United States. And a trade war with China? Not likely. The two countries are too mutually interdependent. I know the US is trying to get China to revalue their currency as it is artificially kept low in order to favor China, we'll see if that happens. But an actual trade war? Not likely.

"Reality check, Mr. Bloomberg's table please!