Currently many in the media are stating that the financial inequality between the wealthiest 1% of U.S. population and the remaining society is responsible for the protest movements such as OccupyWallStreet. However, the real issue is not with these individuals, but a current shift in social mood of the majority of the population that is affecting their perceptions of the long standing political economy of the U.S.

The Fantasy of the "American Dream"

The 99% have always known that some people in America make a lot of money. However, this has not often been a major cultural issue. The reason for this stems from a cultural belief that started with the original settlers on the east coast. Unlike in Europe, where resources were constrained by high population density, America possessed seemingly endless wealth (Wright 2009). When current resources were exhausted, it was of little concern, because there were always more resources in adjacent lands (Wright 2009). To a citizen therefore, it would have appeared that in the New World there were enough resources that eventually everyone would be wealthy (Wright 2009). I would argue this myth has remained in the average American's psyche for many generations. As a consequence, rather than resenting the wealthy and powerful as many citizens in defined class societies have done, and periodically readjusting the financial system to be more egalitarian, for many years the average American has instead identified with the wealthy and powerful as they have tried to join the elite. As John Steinbeck wrote,

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.'

This consensus perspective, that their families would be eventually joining the new landed gentry, has caused generations of Americans to in effect, take positions against their own economic interests.

Today there is an approximately 6% combined chance that a U.S. citizen will move either up or down the socio-economic ladder. It might appear that social mobility was higher in the past and that today's financial system is to blame for this low probability. However, the best odds of moving up the socio-economic ladder ended about 70 years ago, and even then, it was only about 12%. Those are not the chances of moving into the top 1% in terms of net wealth; those are the odds of moving up at all. Since then, the odds have remained within a relatively tight range. That doesn't bear much resemblance to the "American Dream" that is often touted as making America unique in the world.

OccupyWallStreet therefore can't solely blame the elite class in American society for protecting their own interests and the status quo; they have had partners in the silent majority for many years. Many people are dismayed to hear that 1% of the U.S. population owned about 34% of the total wealth of America in 2007 (Domhoff 2011). They have camped out and protested across the country at this new injustice. Some protestors and media believe that the elite have used their power and influence to take hold of a larger percentage of America's wealth than ever before. But in terms of net wealth, they are wrong. In fact, the 1% actually held a marginally smaller share of America's net assets in 2007 than in the early part of the 20th century. In 1922, the top 1% held 35% of the nation's wealth (Domhoff 2011). In fact, the net wealth ratio of the top 1% remained fairly constant over the 20th century (Domhoff 2011).

Perhaps one would need to go back to America's beginnings so they could see what the "American Dream" actually looked like at its inception from the perspective of a settler. One might imagine a large number of settlers, all poor, working the land and slowly growing wealthier together? Not quite. What one would find in 1774 would be 13 colonies and 28% of the net wealth in the hands of 1% of the settler population (Shammas 1993). Separating the society into quintiles would yield the wealthiest 20% holding 95% of the wealth, the next 20% with 5% and the remaining 60% (including slaves) having no assets whatsoever (Shammas 1993). It may have been a long sleep, but the "American Dream", has always been just that, a dream. It has also been almost exclusively a dream of the Caucasian persuasion.

Class Dismissed?

There has never been an honest reckoning in the U.S. about the existence of a static, economically stratified society and the political system built around it. But it has existed from the very beginning. The majority have allowed the economic elite to systematically dismantle most of the controls designed to nominally separate government from the elite's private economic interests over many years.

The media and the protestors say that the OccupyWallStreet protests are the result of economic inequality in America. They decry the immorality of the Wall Street bailouts and financial criminality, and in my view, their viewpoint is entirely warranted. But the protestors and the media can hardly state that inequality is the "reason" behind these protests. If this were the case, the protests surely would have occurred before the American Revolution or at some other time in the last century when the level of economic stratification was approximately as unequal as it is today.

The protests are actually due to a change in social mood and more specifically, the breakdown of a societal fantasy of "economic opportunity for all". The reason for these protests is not any exogenous event, but the result in an internal shift in perception from safety to danger. These protests did not originate in the rational mind of the protestor. They are derived from the limbic part of the brain that governs impulse and fundamental immediate survival needs. That is why OccupyWallStreet is not a rallying point for a centralized rational message and why the Tea Party similarly had no defined message when it began. As Robert Prechter states in his book "Socionomics", the rational brain ( neo-cortex) is easily overwhelmed by the Limbic brain and can take impulsive action before the rational brain is even engaged (Prechter 1999). However it will always come up with seemingly rational evidence to support any action which resulted from the limbic brain (Prechter 1999). The fact that thousands of people suddenly decided to sleep in the street speaks to impulsive decision making. The rational mind does not have the impulsive influence that such a choice requires.

The theory that these movements are not caused by exogeneous events may seem ludicrous to many. But is the hypothesis that inequality caused these protests supported? We should seek to apply deductive reasoning to disprove hypotheses before they are accepted. I believe that decades of consistent wealth inequality in the U.S. coupled with the absence of large, sustained protests on this topic in the past disproves the notion that these movements simply stem from economic inequality.

OccupyWallStreet and The Tea Party: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Some will state that each movement started for different ideological reasons. But I would argue that these protest movements are both outgrowths of the same shift in social mood. What is different is the framing from the rational brain by different individuals within these groups. Those with an authoritarian mentality will identify with the Tea Party, with its focus on "acceptable groups" and "unacceptable groups" and organized structure. Those with laissez-faire decision making values will lean toward the OccupyWallStreet crowds. But the root impulse to herd together out of a sense of danger and to relieve stress started in exactly the same part of the emotional brain of each protestor. This is an essential message of Prechter's socionomic theory, that social change is an internalized process that is unconscious.

The implication that these protests are not a result of economic events, but from a shift in social mood is important. It means that violent government crackdowns, such as what we have witnessed in Oakland, California will potentially feed further emotional responses in people at the margins of the protests, making the protests larger and more radicalized. It also means that government policy responses that attempt to placate or discern all of the multiple rationalizations of the protestors will likely meet with failure, as the reasons for discontent are not necessarily rational. Further, trying to diffuse or deny the shift in social mood will be a futile exercise. The government can only channel the protests into the least destructive areas possible and accept that peaceful disorder will be a reality for some time to come. Unfortunately, it is more likely that the government will seek to channel the negative mood of the public away from itself altogether. This would engender the creation of more external military threats in order to create the illusion of socio-economic stability at home. In the past this strategy has held tragic results for the world.

Sources Cited:

Carole Shammas, "A New Look at Long-Term Trends in Wealth Inequality in the United States," American Historical Review, 98 (April 1993), pp. 420 and 424.

Ronald Wright, "What is America?", 2009, Random House.

Robert Prechter, "Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction", 1999, New Classics Library.

G. William Domhoff, "Who Rules America", 2011, University of California at Santa Cruz, URL: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html