The Occupy Protestors could learn a few lessons from my kids.

by R. Murdock

As I was watching the news and seeing the video footage of the unrest going on around the country and specifically in Oakland, something seemed vaguely familiar about the protestor’s behavior.  Then it hit me.  They reminded me of my kids!  At first I sympathized with their movement and even empathized with them.  But as the protests have dragged on without any specific goals, and as they’ve become violent and destructive, I have no more sympathy for them.  They are a bunch of adults throwing a group tantrum.  If they lived in my home, these are the lessons I would teach the so called 99%.

Lesson 1: My two-year old has recently entered the notorious tantrum stage, or terrible twos.  She is perfectly happy as long as she can eat candy all day long and watch Dora.  But if I take away the candy or turn off the TV, she throws a huge tantrum and is nearly inconsolable.  But I don’t get too upset.  After all, she’s only two, and after awhile she’ll learn that We don’t throw tantrums when we don’t get our way.

Lesson 2: I also have a six and eight year-old who get extremely upset anytime one gets to do something that the other doesn’t.  Whenever they eat, they assess their portion sizes or count every sliced piece of fruit to make sure that they have an equal amount.  If they discover that the other person has more than them, a big whine fest ensues about how life isn’t fair.  How do I respond?  With the same answer my mom gave me when I was a kid:

“Who said life is fair?”.

I hated that answer when I got it, and my kids don’t like it either.  But I’ve tried to teach them that throughout their entire life, they will constantly see people who have more of something than they do.  It may not seem fair.  But life isn’t meant to be that way. The sooner they accept that, the less disappointing their life will be.

Lesson 3: My eight year-old son loves to earn money.  He’s constantly looking for jobs around the house to earn a quarter here and there.  We’ve tried to teach our kids the value of hard work and entrepreneurship, and he’s the child that seems to fully embrace those concepts.  By working hard and saving, as well as coming up with various “business ideas” to sell things to kids in the neighborhood, he normally has a fair amount of change on hand to buy the things he wants.

 

This doesn’t make his little sister very happy.  In fact, she thinks it’s just not fair that he has money to spend when she doesn’t.  She wants me to just give her money. But whenever I ask her to do a chore, she refuses.  She doesn’t normally look for opportunities to make money like he does.  She would rather play dress-ups and Barbies than spend the day folding laundry, scrubbing the bathroom or washing the dishes.  And who can blame her?  She is only six after all!  Since she normally doesn’t have any change on hand to spend I explain to her that If you aren't willing to do the work (any work), you are not going to get paid. 

I’m assuming that these Occupy protestors were taught similar lessons in their own homes.  By now, they are all old enough to have learned that we don’t throw tantrums when we don’t get our way. Life isn’t fair.  If we want money, we need to be willing to work for it.  And another important lesson: we shouldn’t covet what someone else has.

I know that 14 million people are out of work in this country.  In fact, my husband lost his job when the economy came crashing down, too.  We almost went bankrupt and lost our house.  But we avoided our own financial meltdown by renting our house out, moving into my parent’s basement, starting a business and working every random job we could find.  We could be out there with those protestors with signs that read, “Death to Capitalism” and “We’re part of the 99%” But we don’t give our power away that easily. 

My husband has a degree, a lot of experience and has worked in management.  But when he could only find a job that paid $10 an hour, he took it.  It was not enough for us to even barely scrape by.  So we started a business. In the last three years since losing his job, we’ve managed to keep our house, avoid bankruptcy, pay off over $30k in debt and provide employment to other people.  Those things would never have happened for us had we pointed the finger of blame at others rather than work towards a solution. 

Are we mad at capitalism for putting us in that position? NO!  Capitalism saved us.  It provided the opportunity for us to recover.   We don’t have time to protest and whine about life not being fair. We are too busy working, providing jobs, paying off our debts and trying not to be a burden on society.

To these protestors I’d say: instead participating in a massive group tantrum by causing civil unrest, rioting, putting police officers’ lives in danger, destroying property and setting fires-they should be taking control of their lives. They should be using capitalism to their own advantage; to improve their own situation, whatever it may be.  Government can’t create jobs.  Yet, if these 14 million unemployed people tried to start their own businesses, surely a good percentage of them could succeed. It is totally possible. 

We are not wealthy. We are not part of the so-called 1% and we still live in my parent’s basement.  But I don’t covet what the rich have.  I didn’t earn their riches. They did.  I didn’t sacrifice, take risks and put in the hard work to get where they are.  But you know what? I’m willing to do what it takes to get myself in a better place.  And after all that we have sacrificed to pay off debt, build our business and create wealth, I would sure as heck not want any of the 99% saying they want an “equal share” of my hard earned money.  If they want it, they need to go out there and be builders, not wreckers.