“occupy Wall Street” Movement
“Occupy Wall Street” Movement
Institutional Affiliation
“Occupy Wall Street” movement
The moral foundations of “Occupy Wall Street” include care, liberty, sanctity, authority, fairness, and loyalty. Fairness is the quality of being free from bias. For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have been engaging in cooperative enterprises. One common message that was at the “Occupy Wall Street” was that the rich people in the society that comprise one percent of the population acquired their wealthy status by taking without giving. Through misappropriation of funds by the rich and powerful, the economy has deteriorated. It is the taxpayers’ money that they use to reinstate the economy. The protesters want to restore the law of karma. They would like deceitfulness and indolence to be punished. They would like equality in all fields especially for the downtrodden and the oppressed.
Secondly, they based their protests on care for one another. It is morally inappropriate to harm one another. The rich and the powerful people in the society are out to harm the powerless in the society. Oppression is another moral issue evident in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. The protesters used positive words such as liberty and freedom and even referred to Zuccotti Park by its previous name, Liberty square. As evident in their chanting and posters, the protesters were fighting for the oppressed in the society. Additionally, degradation of most people in society adds to the moral issues in the protests. They had posters that were against degradation of other human beings by the rich and powerful in the society. As depicted in the many signs, the protestors were against order, traditions and authority. The protests ignored loyalty as the protestors carried very few American flags. Most of the protesters were against the mighty in the society especially the politicians as depicted in the signs and posters.
This movement also affected the economy in several ways. First, it created awareness on distribution of wealth in the country during the last two decades. This fact has assisted the people on making vital decisions that may affect the economy, for example, the elections. The people have also become enlightened on the tax policies through this movement. Majority of the protesters were students who had carried student loans and had lost employment over the last few years. This brought about the issue of unemployment in the country. The government had to change policies and create more employment opportunities for graduates. Another impact was the awareness creation on income inequality as an economic issue.
The utilitarianism theory is the idea that the only