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The Reason of Occupy Wall Street
-- Japan and US are similar in a way...
2011/12/04
Occupy Wall Street Protest has been spreading around the world.
In a nutshell, the reason of the Occupy Wall Street protest will be "unfairness
in capitalism.
Because of the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007, Lehman Shock happened, and $700
billion of tax paid by U.S. taxpayers was used to save Wall Street financial institutions.
Workers in banks and financial institutions enjoy unworldly high salary usually,
but when crisis occurs, they will not go bankrupt but be saved by taxpayers pretty
easily.
In this situation, it is strange if there is no protest. The common sense in Wall
Street is very far away from that of general citizens.
In US, the salary of CEO or corporate executives is extremely high, which tends
to be much higher than that of corporate executives in Japan.
United States is an advanced capitalistic country, and US citizens tend to praise
the success of people and think that successful people deserve huge return.
However, this common sense changed with a natural doubt, "What? Don't they need
to take risk?"
Everyone in capitalism will understand the high return based on high performance
taking risk. However, the absolute rule in capitalism was destroyed by the huge tax
input to financial institutions in order to save them.
This is so called, a moral hazard, which should be absolutely avoided in capitalism.
That's why Occupy Wall Street protest occurred and has been expanding.
After the huge tax was used for financial institutions, US citizens recognized clearly,
"Oh, we are forced to work for financial institutions."
Meanwhile, in Japan, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and government employees
have been criticized a lot by Japanese citizens.
The reason is quite similar to that of Occupy Wall Street.
For example, for TEPCO, although their salary is pretty high compared to general private
corporations in Japan, they have been getting/seeking for financial help from Japan government
since their big failure of nuclear power plants (in Fukushima, etc).
Workers in TEPCO (and government employees in Japan as well) have been enjoying high salary
because of their monopoly business, but because of the accident of nuclear power plants, TEPCO
has faced the situation to take risk and handle the situation.
However, after potential risks become present, they have been trying to solve their risk and
responsibility by the tax of taxpayers in Japan, which is exactly same as what happened in Wall
Street.
Therefore, as US citizens are furious against financial institutions in Wall Street, it is
natural that Japanese citizens are very angry against TEPCO.
High salary should be paid for good results. In addition, risks and responsibilities should
accompany those people naturally.
However, when they face a crisis, they don't take risk and/or responsibility although they
just enjoy benefits only. What kind of nerves do they have?
This logic is unacceptable for general adults.
In US, US citizens" anger is turned to financial institutions because of the moral hazard of
capitalism, and in Japan, Japanese citizens' anger is turned to government employees and workers
in TEPCO (or monopoly firms such as electric companies) because of the moral hazard in capitalism
(which is actually, almost socialism in Japan).
A same logic lies in both countries, which is the "unfairness in competition".
Protests against "unfairness" (including Occupy Wall Street) must continue to spread and develop
more across the globe in order to administer a medicine called, "common sense" to patients who are
not aware of the fact that if people eat sweets or delicious foods only, they will be sick someday.
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