In 1878, then-congressman John G. Carlisle, a Democrat from Kentucky, billed the contention between moneylenders protecting the gold standard and their blue-collar borrowers promoting a bimetallic system as a dispute between “the idle holders of idle capital” and “the struggling masses.”
Who are “the idle holders of idle capital” today? The “struggling masses”?
Protesters in the Occupy movement represent many theories of why the Wall Street fat cats are to blame for the stagnant economy keeping them — the struggling 99 percent of America, most of whom would still be considered a part of the upper 1 percent of the rest of the world — from ever-scarcer employment.
I’m uncertain about where I fall in the protestor-CEO continuum. While I agree that corrupt CEOs ought to be punished with more than a slap on the wrist, you won’t see me camping in a borrowed tent at Fourth and Ferry in Little Rock — not even after my induction into the Failure to Launch club come Dec. 17, when I’ll join countless other grads who have refilled those empty nests. I won’t be joining the Yale students who protested the attendance of their finance-major classmates at a recruiting session of global financial firm Morgan Stanley, yelling slogans like, “Take a stance, don’t go into finance!” No, I won’t be joining the Occupy Student Debt campaign by refusing to pay off my loans and demanding that lenders forgive student loan debt (um … they can’t). You see, I don’t feel tricked into my debt and unemployment.
I admit it: It was foolish to enroll with no clear idea of what career I wanted to pursue, no idea what types of workers were in demand and assume everything would turn out fine simply because everybody was doing it. Sure, the standard pressures to take the plunge were there, but if I had stopped to think for myself — for even an instant — I would have realized that the piper’s tune sounded oddly like taps. So I should have been more resolute, more individualistic; that’s not the bank’s fault. We don’t blame the credit card company when we buy that extra credit card we don’t need.
What if I had had a plan? I’m confident that if I had graduated high school with a crystal-clear vision of a 10-years-distant self and pursued that goal zealously only to find myself browsing Monster.com, even then I wouldn’t pretend resentment was an appropriate response. There is no group that is singularly responsible for the current state of affairs. Everyone is, to a degree, implicit in the crime of this prolonged recession. With no one to blame and, thus, no measure of entitlement for the out-of-work like you and me, what realistic option is there for a young bum but to chalk this misfortune up to fate, seclude yourself and innovate?
That’s right I said, “Seclude yourself.”
When you’ve exhausted all of your job opportunities, networked to the ends of the earth fruitlessly, nothing remains but to step boldly into seclusion and immerse yourself in what interests you. Stay within the realm of reason, now; you know what’s healthy and what isn’t. But the things you’re really passionate about are getting short-changed if you don’t have time set aside to be alone. If watered properly with the skills of study that won you your degree, passion will give rise to innovation and innovation is the element we’ve been lacking, the only thing that can truly cause our economy to bloom.
There’s a phrase that’s circulated the Internet and appeared on the signs of Occupy marches recently. It adds to the abuse the word “occupy” has suffered lately, but I’m actually a bit fond of it: “Occupy your mind.” Well, of course you have no choice but to “occupy” your own mind, but we know what is meant by the slogan. What the Occupy movement chanting this mantra fails to understand, however, is that the Wall Street yacht club isn’t alone in lethargically holding onto idle capital. The protestors, too, idly clutch capital — human capital — precisely what needs to be reinvested in our society.
