Much obliged, Mister.  Wait, wait, I thought that one whole issue here is that the 99% are bearing more of the brunt in taxes so that the 1% can ‘git’ something from the government.  Like tax breaks.  Like bail-outs.  Also, it bugs me even more when the super-rich aren’t even dapper, eccentric and aristocratic. I think this US- style shlepper-rich attitude is beyond cocky.  ”Look world, I don’t even have to have any social graces!” – but what’s worse is that it makes it look like these people were only recently standing in line at your local Arby’s in cargo shorts with a cell-phone holster and then – POOF! – became mega-rich because the American Dream came true for me and can come true for you, too.     

Since the Occupy movement has not clearly defined who is in the “99%” besides non-bankers…

Yes it has. The “99%” is anyone who controls less wealth than the richest 1% of the population does. Further, few in the Occupy movement categorically state that the top 1% are all evil bastards. As a group they may not have more evil bastards than any other segment of the population, but that’s not the point. The point is that their interests are over-represented.

The BOTTOM 99%? There’s a bottom all right, but it’s not 99% of the population. You know better. It’s a distortion of the true poverty level in this country.

Read my comment again. I didn’t say the bottom 99% were all in poverty, I said their political and economic interests are under-represented compared to the interests of people in the top 1%. Frankly I have a hard time understanding how that could even be a controversial opinion.

B-spore: The bottom 99%? The BOTTOM 99%? There’s a bottom all right, but it’s not 99% of the population. You know better. It’s a distortion of the true poverty level in this country. And it isn’t 99% of the country.

The whole 99% slogan is daft. Simple maths tells you it’s just an artefact that can’t be eradicated, and just sounds like a legitimisation of envy. Surely what matters is whether you deserve to be in the 1%?

The point of the slogan isn’t that it’s bad to be in the 1% or that we should be trying to eliminate the 1%. The point is that 99% of all people will ALWAYS be in the bottom 99% so we shouldn’t be supporting economic policies which treat the people at the top like they are the only ones who matter.

He convinced a barbaric world that the way they treated each other was unacceptably cruel and evil. He did it using metaphors the people of the time would understand and believe. He probably believed it himself, but that is irrelevant to his accomplishments.

Yes they can just become rich then use their new-found wealth and power to make it possible to become rich when previously poor. 
Problem solved. 

There is a huge difference between being proud of one’s success and gloating about one’s success.

Plus, the guy in this clip is factually wrong, as “the 1%” is defined by income alone.

Yes, but what great things have any women or black people ever done.
(note that I say this because it has been said and is said, and it is exactly as ugly as this man’s limited, privileged, and ultimately WRONG statement. I don’t doubt that to this scumbag, those count as non-great things.)

Like Gene Kelly?

Swingin´in the rain.

It’s indeed very powerful to catch the attention of the entire world they way they have, I remember the first weekend which didn’t get any media coverage except for us on twitter, google+, youtube, ustream…

who knows, maybe they can use the kind of attention they have now to start a brand “#occupy”, that alone could get far.

like you say what the company does is not important, I just see a powerful brand doing lots of different things. Usually when you look at the numbers of public companies, and the number of employees, most people would be making hundreds of thousands a year if profits were distributed equally across entire organizations, but the reality now is CEOs getting multimillion dollar salaries and bonuses, and firing a lot of people to lower costs, which is probably fair because it’s their companies and they run them however they want.

However, I think these people would probably be up for that kind of experiment. We all own the brand, we all own the profits. But in reality, again, it will not pass, there will be always people that will actually contribute more to the whole and who will feel that they deserve more. I just think that if my utopian company could exist, the individuals that joined the company with new products would probably have a bigger chance of succeeding than if they did it on their own.

it’s so easy to dream.

So… that’s a few hundred people whose problems are solved. Have we really gotten anywhere?

There’s really very little chance of such a company succeeding so much that they would have the financial power to lobby, at least to the extent of affecting any real change.

They’re in a much more powerful position now, even if they do nothing more than cause people to talk about these issues.

This is beating the system at its own game! Changing what people are talking and thinking about nationally is hugely powerful, politically.

When was the last time you heard someone discussing a so-called political issue that we all know is really just a distraction (i.e. stem-cell research, gays destroying family values, or whatever conservative bullshit of the day it is), unless of course you’ve been watching Fox News?

To be clear, I think your idea of getting groups of smart but unemployed people (who don’t necessarily know each other beforehand) together to start small businesses is a great idea. As an unemployed smart person, I’d be all over that.

But we’ll still need people to focus the attention of the general population on the right issues, and until occupying city parks becomes inaffective it seems like a pretty good way to do that.