The short and easy answer is, yes. All people who believe in the legitimacy of the Occupy Wall Street protestors’ rage should be encouraged to take part, even if their good fortune has placed them, financially, within the 1% at whom many people think these protests are directed.
The reason I have raised this question is that a minor story appeared in various entertainment media to the effect that Anne Hathaway spent the better part of a day with the protestors in New York. While some people have reported the story sort of matter-of-factly, but with a slight overtone of amusement that someone worth several millions of dollars should be railing against the people in her income bracket, others considered themselves highly offended, for one reason or another. But then, if I were to hazard a guess, I would suppose that many of them are people, still unaware of which side their bread is buttered on, who resent anybody at all disturbing the peace and tranquility of obscenely-wealthy hedge fund managers.
Okay, let us stipulate that Ms. Hathaway and the other celebrities who have participated in OWS, among them Russell Brand, Kanye West and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, are all very wealthy and probably not in and of the 99%. What does that prove? Exactly nothing.
The people, whether they are in or outside of the movement, who might take umbrage at a wealthy person participating on the side of the protestors, would seem to be missing the point.
I think we can safely say that hardly anyone in the OWS movement wants to institute a socialist state, even though many people on the political right cite that as dogma. If that is so, then the acquisition of wealth, in and of itself, is not necessarily evil. What the overwhelming majority of the protestors are furious about is that so many of these wealthy Wall-Streeters got their vast fortunes through questionably ethical methods and upper-class welfare, chiefly in the form of generous tax breaks, which the Republicans may have instated, by and large, but which the Democrats have not been as quick to eradicate as many people would have hoped or expected.
The protestors are furious because a small number of tycoons are keeping working American families in a state of want and fear through not enough jobs, while they are sitting on trillions of dollars in excess capital. Their protests that they need more “certainty” from Washington are a respectable way of saying they want more Republicans passing more corporate welfare into law. The money the entertainers have earned has nothing to do with those problems.
Quite possibly, many of these well-paid people in the entertainment industry might invest their surplus capital in instruments that will give them favorable tax breaks down the road, but the money they earn to entertain us is straight income, taxable at the highest rate the tax code calls for. Presumably, there is nothing wrong with being rich, as long as you pay your fair share of taxes. Please correct me if I am wrong.
So, yes, if Anne Hathaway and the others are willing to fork over the required 35% of what they earn, then why should they not lend their voices to these protests? Would you prefer they spent their time clubbing and snorting coke?
Now I would not disagree for a moment that celebrities from the worlds of sport and entertainment get paid too much money. Even the illustrious Ms. Hathaway, who has consistently been among the leaders in box office returns per dollar paid, gets more money than she needs or deserves. That is why movie tickets are expensive beyond the value they provide; why the cost of taking your family to an athletic event has become financially crippling; and of Broadway, we shall not even speak. Still, we must ask ourselves, how important is that issue compared to whether or not you have a job or can pay next month’s rent?
As Abe Lincoln said at the start of the Civil War, after his government had seriously ruffled the feathers of the British, “One war at a time.”
Sources
http://wonderwall.msn.com/movies/hathaway-among-occupy-protesters-in-new-york-1653864.story?GT1=28135&/?ocid=marketing_omtr_validation
http://celebs.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980787507
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2063172/Occupy-Wall-Street-Anne-Hathaway-joins-protesters-surely-shes-1.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative, Volume I