Keeping Wall Street Occupied... and More!

I just discovered this video via social networking. I think this guy is brilliant, but I don't think he's grasped the entire scope of his idea.

For those of you who can't or don't want to watch the video, he is suggesting that people take the return envelopes that come in the junk-mail credit card offers and send them back to the banks... minus the credit card applications. He says this is an opportunity to both keep Wall Street occupied and open a dialogue with big banks (he sends notes asking the clerks who open the envelopes to join unions, I suggest "Helping you help us"), with the happy side effect of running up the banks' postage tabs with the USPS. The banks pay for postage on every envelope sent back to them. The deal they have worked out is .25 per, but the heavier the envelope, the more they pay. The big payoff of this action however, he says, is that the more of these the bank gets the more they'll have to spend time figuring out how to deal with it, and the less time they'll have to screw people.

But I see far more benefits.

In recent years, the USPS has been struggling, losing a massive amount of revenue and falling extremely behind on its bills. There are a number of reasons for these troubles, which include decisions that made the post office less competitive with private carriers. To try to save the USPS, one of our last truly public services, postage rates continue to be raised and the president has decided to cut back its services even further. But what it really needs is more revenue.

I look at this action as a tax on the big banks. The government isn't likely to start making them pay taxes any time soon, but we the people can take matters into our own hands. Look at this action of sending mail on the banks' bill like making them pay a tax (or give back some of that bailout money). Better yet, this tax doesn't have to go through government channels where more than half of it is likely end up funding a war overseas. This money goes straight to a public service.

And here's where it gets even better: JOB CREATION!

The rich, which definitely includes the big banks, say they need lots of breaks because they are job creators. Well, we can make them follow through on that statement. When the USPS starts getting more funding, they can reinstate its weekend hours and more people to fill those hours. But those aren't the only jobs this action can potentially create. The gentleman of this video suggest putting heavier items like wood shims and roof shingles in the envelopes to make them heavier.* Adding these things is probably enough to create a need for more postal inspectors. (Get your job applications ready.) These envelopes are probably going to seem pretty suspicious and need to go through additional screening. Fortunately, because of the banks, they will likely have the extra revenue to cover the extra staff they'll probably need to do that. My hopes are not up for the banks themselves hiring more clerks to deal with the increase in incoming mail. But who knows, maybe with enough of these credit envelopes mailed back, they'll have no choice.

So instead of filling up your recycle bin with those credit card offers, send them back! They wouldn't have given you the return envelope if they didn't want to you to return it.

*Plastic could also be added, but avoid any thing dangerous, like things that are sharp and likely to poke through the envelopes. We want to help the USPS workers, not hurt them. Also, it's probably a bad idea to mail anything that comes across as threatening.

Economic thoughts

An extremely low median wage, the mounting costs of higher education, and the destruction of the middle class are all part of why the American Dream is dead. For a majority of people working hard is not a guarantee of upward mobility let alone raising a family in the modest, comfortable surroundings that inhabited so much of the postwar 1950's landscape of optimism.  And if you still think that pulling yourself up by the bootstrap - that great Hortaio Algers myth - is still possible: it never was. The only way to get ahead in the US is through the help of others with influence, and if you are not already wealthy, chances are you're not getting that help any time soon. The other option is white collar crime. 

Several years ago,  I wrote an email to someone in reaction to their complaining about the homeless to explain how this system works: "you cannot just leave the poor to themselves, expecting them to die off because of their condition (not being able to afford healthcare, living in violence, poor diets, living in low rent districts surrounded by the highest levels of pollution and toxins), saving the elite from the burden of having to deal with the situation, because as long as there is a culture of 'more' there will always be people with less. And as long as we are part of that culture of 'more,' expecting larger profit margins every year and aspiring to the level of the elite, we are complicit in the poverty of those at the bottom." In the midst of the Occupy Wall Street movement I think it is even more relevant to consider. 

Barbara Ehrenreich talks cogently about the homeless in her article "How Homelessness Became an Occupy Wall Street Issue." She says, "to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born “illegals,” facing prohibitions on the most basic activities of survival. They are not supposed to soil public space with their urine, their feces, or their exhausted bodies. Nor are they supposed to spoil the landscape with their unusual wardrobe choices or body odors. They are, in fact, supposed to die, and preferably to do so without leaving a corpse for the dwindling public sector to transport, process, and burn."

This is something that ought to scare us all. Because as the rich in this country strive for even more riches, they drive more of us into this state. As Ehrenreich says, "It’s where we’re all eventually headed -- the 99%, or at least the 70%, of us, every debt-loaded college grad, out-of-work school teacher, and impoverished senior -- unless this revolution succeeds." And a revolution, as I see it, means overthrowing our system that promotes wealth of 1% at the cost of impoverishing the rest of us. It also means no longer sympathizing with and rationalizing the behavior of the extremely wealthy because we aspire to one day be like them if we work hard enough, because we won't (check out "Don’t EVEN Get Me Started, Mythical Bootstraps College Student").

To quote, but not name a friend, "Leave the millionaires of the private sector alone, most of them worked hard to get where they are (this is NOT France in 1789!) and deserve their rewards. " I ask do their rewards include screwing the rest of us? And does that mean the rest of us haven't worked as hard (I think of those working two or three jobs -- if they are available -- at minimum wage)? Maybe we should all just go eat some cake and drink champagne.