So answer me this, Dragon? Do you support the list of demands that the Occupy Wall Street people have put forth? You support them so I assume you support their goals as well?
What I've seen has been the Manifesto which is a list of grievances rather than demands per se, and yes, for the most part I support those. The only person I've seen mentioning a $20 minimum wage or cancellation of debts was you.
Rather than raising the minimum wage, I would like to see a return to government support for workers' rights, especially the right to form a union, which would over time increase the rate of unionization of the work force and raise wages across the board. (A higher minimum wage would of course only impact very low-wage jobs. It might be a worthy move for its own sake but it would have little impact on the economy as a whole.) Although I think a general cancellation of debts would be excessive, I would like to see forgiveness of student loan debt and a restructuring of our education system so that it becomes affordable for all qualified students without burdening them with crushing debts -- such as was possible when I was in college. Help for people threatened with foreclosure would also be a good thing.
Most important of all, I would like to see an end to the system of legalized bribery that allows corporations to exert undue influence over the government. This would require getting around the
Citizens United decision in one way or another, and might require a constitutional amendment clarifying that money is not speech and not protected by the First Amendment. Or it might just take a new Court decision reversing that one.
The bottom line is that we MUST, if we are ever to see prosperity return, reverse the lopsided economy we have built over the last thirty years, in which the richest 1% of the nation take more than a quarter of the total income, and in which corporate profits soar while wages stagnate or decline. That's what this protest is really all about, at bottom.