In a special event today at the Greene Space, Brian Lehrer hosted
former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Crain's business journalist Greg
David, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City Kathryn
Wylde, and Occupy Wall Street organizer Jesse LaGreca for a dialogue
(not diatribe) about the direction of the Occupy protests and the
country at large.
The discussion, held in front a live audience, often turned
contentious between Spitzer and Wylde, as well as LaGreca and David, who
disagreed about root causes of the financial crisis, the nature of
Occupy as compared with the Tea Party, and what were the long-term
solutions to our economic woes.
"The idea that if we cut wages to the bone, cut spending to the bone,
if we just don't invest anything else and just trust these 'job
creators' to do the jobs for us, it just hasn't happened," LaGreca said.
"It's not going to happen, and we really need to shift away from that
paradigm."
LaGreca's bottom line was that trickle-down economics, as he saw it,
hadn't served the country well for the past 25 years. Concessions made
to "job creators" in the form of bailouts, deregulation, and lower taxes
have not done much to create jobs.
Occupy Wall Street sees corporate greed, but Greg David is hesitant to call it that.
"The purpose of a corporation is to make a lot of money," David said,
"and by making a lot of money, by maximizing its profits, many good
things happen in the economy."
Eliot Spitzer agreed that the purpose of a corporation is profit, but
pointed out that government policy over the past few decades, which has
been heavily influenced by business interests, often favors the profit
margins of those interests above all else. "When we also let
corporations then dictate the rules of society by which they operate,
then crisis occurs," Spitzer said.
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