Regarding The Occupy Movement

I think we are getting to the point where some of our old laws and ideals are breaking down.  The US is competing against countries that will do whatever they can to gain a competitive advantage while the US is making laws to help multi-national corporations. 

The problem is that these corporate citizens can and do expatriot for tax breaks.  However, their main shareholders often live in the USA.  If we tax these individuals at a reasonable rate that ensures some return for risk the US could solve its deficit.  The current practices of executive compensation often rewards performance over excessively short periods and often artificial "accounting gains".  Taxing any household income above $7.5mm yearly at 60% would not retard the economy while providing the USA with much needed resources. 

In general our living standards are being undermined because others in the world do not have great standards.  I think that any items sold in the USA have to meet certain minimum work standards, for example a minimum pay of $10 a day and workers compensation insurance.  This would help Americans compete in all sectors including manufacturing while helping people overseas. 

What does this have to do with the what the Occupy Movement is about.  Well the fact is the Occupy movement is unorganized and that is a blessing.  A great man said as soon as you organize a truth it becomes a lie.  Right now you have a bunch of guys with ideas like I have outlined above who want to see some change.  There is some real beauty in that.  Because the fact is the system is very close to breaking (partially because our international competitors are purposely stressing it with undervalued currency) and it needs change. 

We need to fundamentally evaluate every part of the government and pragmatically determine if its working.  (Enter conservative appluase.)  For example the department of education can likely be shrunk.  The DEA should problably be shrunk. 

The US should also look at their laws and evaluate their cost and if they make sense.  This country is not as free as our founding fathers envisioned.  Prohibition failed, but we still spend countless trillions on prohibition of a plant that literally grows like a weed throughout the USA, and is actually quite useful for ethanol production and medical reasons with almost no side effects of ingestion.  In fact the governments own research confirms that there is no indication that smoking marijuana causes brain damage, cellular damage, or even cancer.  It might be the only thing in the world that you can smoke that doesn't cause cancer.

The prohibition on Marijuana makes no sense and endorses the more dangerous tobacco and alcohol as alternatives while charging every tax payer millions and countless people in quality of life. (Enter conservative gasps.)

The only thing the Marijuana prohibition is doing is making Mexican Drug Cartels rich.  We could bring those jobs stateside, they pay pretty well.  Most importantly not another American law officer has to die to defend a law of questionable intent and purpose.

These are ideas that the Republicans and Democrats won't embrace in part due to lucrative deals.  In fact the Republicans and Democrats may have too much baggage to be able to govern effectively at this point.  We may see the next election decided with a subtle context of Occupy vs Tea Party. 

The sad part is that these two movements are closer than they realize but they problably won't work together.