Occupy Spokane, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy everything!
I decided to go down to the Occupy Spokane rally Friday afternoon to check it out. I was amazed at how many people were there. I would estimate 1-200 people! I know there’s some great talking points in the whole thing, but it appears as if these people don’t really have a centralized idea of what they actually want to accomplish. The big theme it seemed to have was that people were out of work and wanted the government to do something about it. Right?
I kind of liken this whole Occupy Wall Street / Occupy Spokane / Occupy anything movement to a bad family or friend loan.
You know the one, where you offer to help your struggling friend out and loan them 500 bucks to pay some bills. They don’t pay you back. You see them going out for a nice dinner and start thinking hey if they have money for that, why aren’t they paying back the money to me? You bug them about it, they blow you off, you develop resentment about it, they develop resentment towards you for bugging them about it, and before you know it, you hate each other? I think our government has created this unhealthy addiction to government handouts for both the “Poor” AND the “Big corporations.” They BOTH have developed an unhealthy attitude of what society owes them. Poor people just for being poor, and big companies for researching to develop new technologies and “In theory,” provide more jobs.
All these occupy Wall Street people seem to me to have given up hope of relying on themselves for their own income. They have become so dependent on others that they feel the only thing they have left to do is just get mad about it and occupy Spokane or whatever else they can find to occupy. In my mind, it’s none of my business what someone else makes. But somehow over time, these people have developed a mentality that it’s an injustice that they aren’t making as much money as others, and they aren’t willing to get out there and do anything about it, but complain.
Seeing all those people Friday felt like déjà vu watching the Egyptian uprising on CNN after a long day at work.
But it leads me to ask: What the heck are these people doing out here?
–Why aren’t these people spending this valuable time looking for jobs or trying to do a side-job to make more money if they’re so broke?
I stood there and listened to some professor from Gonzaga yelling that if CEO’s didn’t pay themselves so much there would be more jobs. WOW! People actually pay money to get a degree from this guy? I feel sorry for people that have wasted 4 years of their life with a Gonzaga degree if they have been even remotely as misled as this Gonzaga professor is. I mean, this guy honestly thinks there will be more jobs if CEO’s lower their salaries? What a bunch of horse crap.
For some reason it made me remember a moment in my childhood, where I asked my mother for a pair of really expensive jeans. I went to a private school and I was from a lower middle class family. I just wanted to fit in. I was about 10 years old. My mother said that it was too much money to spend on jeans and she wouldn’t buy it for me. I complained further, threw a temper tantrum and a guilt trip, but it didn’t get me anywhere. Looking back on this moment, it’s amazing what a fork in my lifelong road this was. It just wasn’t acceptable to me to not buy these jeans. During my nightly driveway basketball playing, I noticed our elderly neighbors across the street raking leaves. I asked if he would pay me to rake his leaves. He offered to pay me $5.00. The jeans were $60.00. I spent the next evenings and if I remember correctly Saturday finishing raking those leaves. I remember we had to go to the store to buy more brown leaf sacks to put the leaves in. When I was done, it probably would have filled a couple dump trucks. It was a horrible experience. I hated every minute of it. I don’t remember how much, but they paid me more than $5. So I went down the whole street raking leaves, and eventually bought my first pair of nice jeans. It was amazing to buy them with my money instead of my Moms. I remember being scared to play in them. I treated them differently than ones my Mom bought me. So, I started mowing and power edging for about $5-$10 in the neighborhood. I then started cleaning pools for about $10-$12 as well. Then one day these two ladies that lived together across the street asked me to trim their bushes. They were holly bushes. They were poky and had bees in them. It took me an entire Saturday, BUT they paid me $30. NOW THIS IS THE MOMENT. I remember feeling this excitement that night. I didn’t really know what it was, but I remember thinking why the heck would I go rake leaves when I could trim bushes for $30?
At this moment, I learned that MY destiny was just that: MY OWN DESTINY. No one could tell me what I could and couldn’t buy if I controlled my own budget. This was an amazing revelation to a 10 year old. Up until the point of raking those leaves, I thought the only way I could get jeans was to ask my mom and dad for them. Raking those leaves created an entire world of opportunities to me. Then trimming those shrubs showed me that life wasn’t as simple as just putting in the hours. There were actually different levels of making this money and if I made the right choices in life, I could actually make more of it.
I look at this occupy Spokane and occupy Wall Street movement and it saddens me. Initial good intentions created this messed up mentality.
Decade after decade, we have slowly created an entire class of people that don’t make much money, don’t pay income taxes, people with lots of kids actually getting paid to exist from our government, and pretty much demoralized these people by helping them survive instead of thrive. They’ve gone so long without paying income tax into our society or feeling invested that they are developing an ingrained hatred towards people that have decided to not stand on the sidelines and make their own destiny happen. They are so addicted to our government handouts that they can’t even think about getting out of this mess. It’s not even an option to them! In their mind their only option is to ask mom and dad for more money. To ask mom and dad to tax the evil rich people more, and give them a better handout. There will never be self-fulfillment in this.
So how do we empower these people to get out of this mess? How do we get the “Non-rich” people to get back on their own feet, so they don’t need government handouts and can start paying income tax because they’re thriving on their own, not surviving on other peoples dime. I mean right now, the numbers are irrelevant. You could start taxing evil corporations 80% tax and these occupy wall street and occupy Spokane people wouldn’t be satisfied. It’s such a philosophical divide that the numbers don’t matter.
45% of Americans don’t pay anything into our government to keep it going. Have you ever used a rental car? Do you care about how bad you slam on the brakes or romp on the gas? If the shocks creak when you go over bumps? No. It’s a rental! Who cares! Why? You have no money invested in it. The first time I had enough money to buy a brand new car; I washed that thing every other day. I’m not exaggerating. I was so proud of that thing. I was SO invested in it. Why? Because it was mine and it was my money that I spent on it. These 45% of Americans NEED to buy into America. They need to feel the strength and power of supporting themselves again. They NEED to be pissed off when they see how much of their check gets taken out to pay for our freedom. They NEED to NOT get a refund when they file their taxes, so they feel invested in our country.
The trouble with blaming big corporations is that they operate under the same tax laws that small businesses do. When you raise the income tax on doctors, you raise it on small business owners. When you raise the corporate tax on Microsoft, we small business owners have to pay the same higher tax. It just won’t work. Nothing will happen and these Occupy people will just grow older, have less self-esteem, and be further reliant on our governments help. The only way out of this is to lower taxes to the point where people are begging to come to America to set up businesses and thus creating more jobs, and hopefully creating MORE people and income we can tax. If our tax rate was so low that it wouldn’t pay for companies to hire tax lawyers to figure out how to shuffle jobs and “Worldwide income” oversees, they would simply never be motivated enough to attempt complicated and expensive structuring to avoid taxes. When we tell Americans that we’re just going to keep punishing you for being successful, there’s no real point to being successful.
So what could I do to help? I’d like to offer our help to get you occupy Spokane, occupy Wall Street, and occupy anywhere people going on a new road. I’m offering to waive our incorporation service fee for anyone associated with the Occupy movement that wants to start their own business.
All I need is some type of proof that you’re now relying on the government for some type of handout OR that you’re not paying income tax. I don’t want your private tax return. Just something showing that our company is actually going to help you get off the sidelines and embark down the journey of establishing your OWN destiny.
If our services can help you get a taste of getting back on your feet and contributing to America again, well maybe it will be our little part in turning things around.
Please email proof of your non-participation of funding our government, or proof of any type of government handout to:
Info (at) northwestregisteredagent.com and we will email you back the incorporation signup link with our incorporation filing service fees waived.