Wall Street Case Study

"Occupy Wall Street Movement"

Myra D. Perez

Professor Stacy Truelove

Business Ethics 309

February 3, 2013

Occupy Wall Street movement is rooted in decades of activism. According to John Cavanagh and Robin Broad, "On October 29, 1979, the two men had taken part in a rally against corporate power at the World Trade Center, the day before the 50th anniversary of the Wall Street crash that ushered in the Great Depression. The rally took place about six months after the catastrophe at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, thousands of protesters blocked off the entrances to Wall Street to protest the corporate funding of the nuclear power industry." (Cavanagh & Broad, 2011)

The Occupy movement is not new, as stated above, different groups have been advocating injustices of the capitalist system for years. The difference is in the way this group was able to organize all over the United States through the use of social media. The message was passed through face book, twitter, and other social media sites, calling out to everyone to stand up for greater democracy and individual freedom.

Discuss the moral and economic implications involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement

The moral and economic implications of the September 17 movement on Wall Street in 2011 was a call for the end of corporate greed, social inequality, high unemployment, increasing wealth disparity and the misuse of power by major banks.

As written in the New York Times on January 9, 2013 on its overview of the Occupy Wall Street movement that took place on September 17, 2011, the group's slogan stated, "We are the 99 percent". The 1 percent refers to the haves: that is, the banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry, etc.: and the 99 percent refers to the have-nots: that is, everyone else. (Times Topics, 2013)

According to Anthropologist Richard Shweder, "there are six clusters of moral concern - care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, or virtue. OWSs main moral foundation is fairness, followed by care and liberty. Fairness is the "1 percent" got its riches by cheating, rather than by providing something valuable or that the 1 percent abuses its power and oppresses the 99 percent. Fairness means proportionality, and if Americans generally think that the rich got rich by working harder or by providing goods and services that were valued in a free market, then they won't be angry, and they won't support redistributionist policies. The second most common moral foundation on display at OWS was care, all measures of compassion and empathy." (Haidt, 2011).

Analyze each of the implications identified above against the utilitarian, Kantian, and virtue ethics to determine which theory best applies to the movement.

General moral principles include fairness, justice, human happiness, equal rights, equality, freedom, and general welfare. By MARC LACEY

Published: October 17, 2011

(Lacy)

In analyzing the implication of fairness against utilitarian ethics, moral reasoning plays an important role in a society in which inequality is widening. Fairness is not just about wages, income, or wealth, but equal opportunity. (Stiglitz, 2012)

The Utilitarian principle has limitations, because we do not only want to create happiness and avoid unhappiness, we also want to be fair. Utilitarianism reduces all morality to consequences, such as harms and benefits.

An analysis of Kantian moral principle has to do with respect for person. In contrast a disrespect of person would include lying, withholding the truth, and making promises you have no intention on keeping. Kant says that we should" never use other people merely as a means to our own ends." The word "merely" in the Kantian principle tells us when it is moral to use another person for our own ends and when it is not. Example, if a housekeeper cleaned our room at a hotel they would not merely be serving our ends, but they are serving their own ends as well, because they are doing it to make money. (Olen, 1992)

So far Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics have focused on an individual's obligation to others. The analysis of Virtue ethics focuses on the human good, not on obligations. The full moral life involves the development of loyalty, generosity, honesty and kindness.

As explained by Olen and Barry, (Olen, 1992) , in "Applying Ethics", "Virtue ethics helps to create a balance in economic practices. The virtue of private competitive enterprise is illustrated thru social responsibility. It forces people to be responsible for their own actions and make it difficult for them to exploit other people for selfish or unselfish reasons. Virtue ethics and utilitarianism, both approaches are needed to do justice to ethic in economics." (Olen, 1992)

Determine who is responsible for income inequality and wealth distribution in the U.S. In your analysis, make sure to include if this is something that happened suddenly or if it built up over time. Explain your rationale.

Numerous studies have been conducted to try to point the blame in one direction or another. First, let's point to average Americans: Financially the average American could only destroy them self. They do this by making poor investment decisions, bad choices when it comes to their education and by spending way beyond their means.

The middle class Americans use to be the driving force behind our economic growth, they typically spent their income rather than save it. This is the reason President Obama mailed out those checks to stimulate the economy, hoping the middle class would spend it on things rather than pay their bills. However, due to inflation, the middle class income has deceased and they can no longer invest in their future. Educating themselves and their children, or owning their own business is no longer something they