The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread around the country and around the world in the last few months. It is made up of a diverse group of people with diverse goals, united by one simple idea: to reverse the last 30 years of increasing inequality. The increase in inequality has not only been relative but also absolute. The top 1 percent of the U.S. income distribution has seen enormous growth in income and wealth over the last 30 years, while the bottom 80 to 90 percent have seen almost no real growth in income, wealth, or standard of living.
Within that general focus Occupy Wall Street protestors are talking about many different specific policies, and among them is the Basic Income Guarantee. One blog, which managed to get quoted in Forbes Magazine listed BIG as one of the key demands of protestors. This appears to be an exaggeration, but a lively discussion of BIG is underway on the Occupy Wall Street website.
For the BIG discussion on the OWS Website, go to:
https://occupywallst.org/forum/basic-income-guarantee-for-the-us/
The blog post mentioned above is, “Parsing the Data and Ideology of the We Are 99% Tumblr:”
https://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/parsing-the-data-and-ideology-of-the-we-are-99-tumblr/
The Forbes article about the protestors’ demands is, “Understanding What the Occupy Wall Street Protesters Want”:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/10/11/understanding-what-the-occupy-wall-street-protesters-want/
