Forum Post: "Political corruption" is not the problem. OWS needs to move beyond this to solutions.

There is some value in pointing out that people are wrong about why the economy is doing poorly, and that the rich ("the 1%") do in fact have lots of money despite, or even because of, "a bad economy" and high unemployment. But there is much more value in going beyond that to suggest a workable solution.

Saying "we just need to fix the corruption in government!" is not an effective solution. The US has very low rates of actual bribery compared to, say, China; most of the "corruption" that people complain about has the effect of helping working-class people in a local area at the expense of the federal budget as a whole. Higher inflation due to out-of-control government spending DOES lead to higher employment, as economists are well aware but many people seem to be ignorant of.

So asking for "lower corruption" is not really distinguishable from asking for lower government spending (including tax expenditures), which will have the overall effect of higher unemployment. Politicians, no matter how they were elected, are unlikely to commit political suicide by reducing government spending unless there is a reasonable expectation that jobs will be available in the private sector. This is unlikely to happen except through the accelerated work week.