Do the Occupiers even have a legitimate gripe?

Or, what They don’t want you to know about the “class war” and who usually wins it.

As a matter of historical record, we are told to expect to see a history replete with examples of “the rich” exploiting “the middle class” and “the poor”. This usually takes the form of a just-so story to explain why the rich are rich and the poor are poor. You have probably heard some version of this story at least once in your life, if not a million times by different people. It is also the very basis of the Occupy movement: the vague notion that those greedy rich people are somehow exploiting us hard-working blue collars.

The Wall Street that isn’t.

There has been a financial district in Lower Manhattan for over a century. Its most famous road, Wall Street, has become the metonym of business prosperity and of the Financial District itself. Wall Street and the surrounding area has been home to some of the largest and most wealthy banks, insurance companies, and financial consulting firms in history. However, Manhattan’s Financial District hasn’t been a real financial district for years, and almost no major financial institutions call Lower Manhattan home anymore.

Who are the 99%? Which 99%? What is their income?

Occupy Wall Street. A minor leftist interest group which presumes to speak on behalf of 99% of Americans. Do they? Even if not, are their grievances well-founded? Are they even self-consistent? Is this really about anti-corporatism, or is that a red herring? Whose interests, exactly, does the OWS group represent, if not Americans at large? What is “Wall Street” and how much of the finger-pointing of OWS genuinely belongs there? This is the first of a series of articles intended to address these questions.