What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[kandrathe]

If you consider economy a local national thing yes. But of course it isn't.
Our wealth in the west is made possible by the fact that there are so many indians and chinese. If we couldn't get cheap cloths, gadgets, food, oil etc. we would have to think of something else.....at least we wouldn't have time to enjoy our holidays a lot.

The US used to make all those things here, and ship them to you. We became wealthy by and large due to European self-destruction, and our ability to help rebuild you. The process of wealth creation is the accumulation of value in an item. For example, I create value by using my brain to analyze data, making a mass of information usable by decision makers. I'm a crucial point in delivering the justifications for leadership actions. More simply, the act of mining coal, and iron, then mixing them in a blast furnace to make steel creates more value that merely mining the coal, and steel alone. A cashier adds value by interfacing with customers, and managing the point of sale. The Walmart greeter adds value by creating an initial positive friendly response with guests to the store. In general then, our creativity, productivity, and positive interactions are all used to create wealth, and only sometimes there is a need for raw materials.

I think the whole land of the free and American dream thing are just there to give the people something to be patriotic about (without them really knowing what it means).

I believe much of this sentiment began while we were a frontier nation, and pretty much one of the only democratic nations. Now, there are very few monarchies (Brunei, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland), and a trend away from dictatorships. It used to be that the Statue of Liberty was a unique beacon of hope for the oppressed, but thankfully, the world has more places where refugees are welcomed.