The Market, Warren Buffett, and the Occupation of Wall Street
The power of consumer society works precisely by blurring the distinction between the street and the interests of financial markets.
By George González
“Do You Really Think 3000 People Are Here at This Park Today to Make a Point About Nothing Important?”–Sign written by one of the protesters at Occupy Wall Street in New York City
In his national debate-stirring NY Times op-ed, “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” Warren Buffett calls for “shared sacrifice” in American public life. Specifically, he argues that current tax codes allow the “super rich,” a group he certainly belongs to, to pay into the public trust at much lower rates than the working and middle classes, who are increasingly squeezed by unemployment and underemployment. Buffett identifies this one important aspect of the disparities he, I and many Americans bemoan: the fact that income produced by wage labor is taxed at higher rates than are the financial gains made by those who “make money from money” or even off wage laborers.
As an ethnographer who tends to understand practices and ideas as dimensions of the human experience within the context of specific life-worlds (or what some anthropologists call cosmologies), the question of what causes a society to value some kinds of labor over others is exceedingly complex. I would look to social practices—not just normative ideas—in an effort to tackle such a question. Continue Reading →