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[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Video: Makers vs. Takers at Occupy Wall Street

The Occupy Wall Street protests have popularized the distinction between the lowest 99% and the highest 1% of income earners. Prof. Chris Coyne suggests that a distinction between makers and the takers is a better way to understand the problems that the protesters decry.

For the video impaired differently-abled, Prof. Coyne is a professor of economics at George Mason University and he explains that OWS is incorrectly grouping people by income when they should be grouping them by what they do (make or take). The problem to solve is how to reduce the number of takers in society, whereas the OWS just wants to have government take more in order to "equalize" what the other takers have done. This would be counterproductive and just make things worse. What we want to do is constrain the takers, which includes government, encourage makers (or at least don't discourage them by taking from them).