What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[Jester]

I believe there is a tipping point where it costs an average (or above salary) just to live, leaving very little for savings or investing. If the government subsidizes low incomes, then people are comfortably trapped in the bowl, without the means to climb out. Otherwise, civic unrest would break the structures holding people in their gilded societal cage. I'm not saying that the government shouldn't help the disadvantaged. I'm saying that a collusion of making people comfortable, AND removing all opportunities is what creates a de facto gilded social prison..

I've heard you make this argument dozens of times, and it still makes no sense to me. It seems to run like so:

1) People on a low-middling salary earn barely enough to scrape by.
2) This leaves little surplus to invest with for future wealth.
3) Government helps out poor people.
4) Poor people become trapped in poverty.

I do not comprehend. Number three sounds, if anything, like a potential solution to problems 1 and 2 - and a counter to 4. How does giving poor people more money, make them poorer? Anyone living in situation 1 and 2 is surely not doing so because of how incredibly comfortable it is. Poverty sucks, and people work damn hard just to get by.

Or, put another way, in countries where they have very generous social security nets, they also have fewer people "trapped" in poverty. Why is that true, if your argument is sensible? Are only Americans affected by this particular trap?

-Jester