Occupy Rebooted.

On Saturday (12/5/12) the global Occupy movement called a day of international action to re-invigorate a campaign that has largely died out with the majority of the original camps long since dismantled. However rather then invoking the spirit of the orginal Occupy Wall Street that began in New York, USA on October 15th 2011 (15/10/11) this new wave of protests set out to emulate the "Indignados" or "Indignants" protests that began in Spain on May 12th 2011 (12/5/11).

Although it has it's roots in the anti-precarity movement that was prevelent in EuroMayday scene during the mid-2000's the Indignados protests are predominately made up of middle-class youth in their 20's and 30's protesting against Spain's economic problems and the austerity measures needed to solve them. As a result the vast majority of the new Occupy protests have taken place in the Eurozone with 14 in Spain, 8 in France and 5 in Germany.

This shift in focus towards the Eurozone and austerity leaves me unconvinced that this fresh round of Occupy protests are a good idea. When Occupy Wall Street began the focus was very much on and the global financial system and the banks, especially ones that were profiting from the Eurozone's economic problems. As a result the protests were incredibly effective in allowing national government's to put pressure on private banks to consider issues other then their own profits in the plans for economic recovery. This resulted in the historic October 27th 2011 Europact deal which saw an unprecedented 75% of Greek debt written off and a fundamental change in attitude to the Eurozone bailouts. By contrast the Indignados are more focused on exerting pressure on national governments to change policy and stimulate consumption. This is basically giving the 1% free money paid for by inflation levied on the 99%. Therefore I think the Occupy protests have reached the point where they've stopped being part of the solution and become part of the problem.

This is because while there is little room for ethics in capitalism the Eurozone's economic problems haven't been caused by some elaborate global conspiracy. Instead they've been caused by European governments spending money they simply don't have especially on giving free money to banks. Therefore if the governments are able to implement unpopular austerity measures in the long run it will make life better for everyone especially Europe's youth who suffer the highest rates of unemployment and make up the bulk of the Occupy protests. Take Greece as an example. Although Greece is an exceptional case where the situation is much worse in the rest of the Eurozone a lot of the causes of their economic problems are common throughout the Eurozone.

In Greece the government provides all it's citizens with free education up to PHD level. It also provides all it's citizens with very strict employment protections that encourage a strict system of seniority making it hard to fire people and equally hard to hire people. Until the EU/IMF bailout the Greek government also provided all it's citizens with a full state pension at 55 years old. As a result a large proportion of Greeks stay in university until they're 25 and then spend 10 years alternating between unemployment and lowly paid, lowly taxed dead-end or "precarious" jobs while waiting for permission to join the workforce proper. They then retire at 55.

Based on an average life expectancy of 80 years and rising this means that Greeks are only economically active and paying tax for around a quarter of their lives. This forces the Greek government to make up the shortfall by borrowing money from the banks at high rates of interest. Regardless of what economic system you're using this is simply unsustainable because even if you're using a Kibbutz style anarcho-agriculturalist economy and only use 25% of the availible land to grow crops you'll soon run out of food.  Also based on my experience of elderly care putting people of the scrapheap with over 20 years of their life left to go is neither healthy nor particularly good for them.

So I think that if the Occupiers and the Indignados truely want to improve their lot in life they should be protesting in favour of austerity and structural reform or at least stay at home.