Wall Street Protests

New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, chastised protesters on wall street claiming they are chasing away jobs from those who are employed there.

"If the jobs they are trying to get rid of in this city – the people that work in finance, which is a big part of our economy – go away, we're not going to have any money to pay our municipal employees or clean our parks or anything else."
Michael Bloomberg: Occupy Wall Street is trying to destroy jobs

But I think there is a big problem Bloomberg is missing. The protests are for that very reason. I guess the problem is why should an industry be solely responsible for municipal employees or clean parks and 'everything else'? Why aren't municipalities robust enough to finance themselves?

More and more people are losing their jobs or working long hours for low wages. A large part of wages, if one is lucky to have a job, goes to paying debt and not to support their community. And more and more people are starting to question how they have become so useless to take care of necessities.

Bloomberg's comments highlight a major problem: a person in charge of managing a municipality isn't concerned about the health of the municipality depending so much on finance rather than its citizens.

He isn't emphasizing strengthening municipalities by protecting it from industries attempting to dominate it. He's just announcing that New York is pinned.

Essentially Bloomberg's telling the protesters:

I get what you're saying but so what?

He's advocating letting the machinery of government rust even more and rely on an industry the protesters see as harmful to upkeep public infrastructure.

Why should people even feel secure public parks and employees will still be around the way things are going if wall street isn't reformed?

When a wolf comes huffing and puffing, it's good not to build your house out of straw or sticks. If you build it out of bricks then it's no problem. Unfortunately the way we've been treating municipalities and government is to build them as cheaply as possible while hiring the big bad wolf to personally over see their construction. And politicians are just broadcasters of this message instead of getting out the bricks and mortar.

Of course politicians do not get elected by giving speeches of what they personally think. Much of their actions and words simply mimic what argument the public finds most attractive. It will take consistent pressure by the public and a nack to side step attempts to obscure the message to see civility take hold of system of brutes.

In order to be effect the wall street protesters have to be persuasive that this is persistent and it is an itch that will be scratched until it goes away.