Occupiers are part of our capitalist society
The Occupy movement claims that our contemporary capitalist system has become incompatible with the requirements of a true liberal democracy. Some Occupiers want an equal distribution of wealth, some look to change our economic system, and some of them seek a socialist government. The movement’s sheer ingenuity and commitment to their cause has sparked debate, criticism and support from all over the world. Even though the ideology behind the Occupy movement may be somewhat flawed, they still possess the right to contribute to our democratic process.
The main issue exemplifies itself through the “We are the 99 per cent” motto representing the entire Occupy movement. There is a tremendous disparity in wealth accumulation within our global system; however, the 99 per cent motto isn’t all that accurate. According to the CIA’s website, the top one per cent of United States households owned 34.6 per cent of the wealth in 2007. 20 per cent of the population owned a staggering 85 per cent of the wealth, leaving 15 per cent of the wealth to the bottom 80 per cent of the population. It’s evident that in the United States, the majority of wealth is held by a relatively small amount of hands.
According to the American Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) website, it takes an annual income of $343,920 USD to be ranked among the top one per cent of tax earners in the United States, while in Canada, the IRS reports that it takes an annual income of $181, 000 CAD to rank among the one per cent, or top 237,000 income earners, approximately half of the income needed to rank in the same category in the U.S.
The economic disparity in Canada is relatively similar to that of our American counterparts. In Canada, wealth is much more unequally distributed than income, with 58 per cent of the wealth in the hands of the top 10 per cent. It is interesting to note that even though the Canadian economic system is regulated tightly and has not participated in outrageously large bailouts similar to the ones south of the border, according to the Canada Revenue Agency’s website, the top half of Canadians hold an enormous 94.4 per cent of the wealth.
The asymmetrical distribution of wealth on earth is outrageous. According to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) website, one per cent of the global population possess 40 per cent of the world’s wealth—that is total assets free of debt—and 10 per cent of the world’s population possess approximately 85 per cent of the global wealth (the average Dal student falls into that 85 per cent). According to the IMF, the disparity in global wealth is so severe that an individual with $2,200 USD would be in the top half of the world’s wealth distribution.
Liberal democratic capitalism provides Canadians with the monetary backing that support our vast welfare programs, healthcare systems, educational structure, and military. Not only has the liberal international economic order enabled the many states that benefit from free trade to grow economically at an unprecedented rate, it has provided a forum for established economic powers to support newly developed economies.
Freedom is an essential part of any liberal democratic system. Without the right to pressure the governing polity of a state, a mechanism for citizens to get involved in the political process is lost.
Individuals should be free from constraint, and it doesn’t matter whether they decide to engage in our successful capitalist economy or occupy public spaces to prove a point. But the amount of economic growth both domestically and internationally over the past few decades makes it almost naive not to acknowledge the importance of capitalism in the economic spectrum.
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