Finally someone went into the Occupy Wall Street protesters and conducted a survey. The person who conducted the survey admits that his work was is in no way a scientifically valid sampling of respondents. Yet, he feels the data gathered from 50 respondents yielded enough information to dispel criticism that the OWS protesters have a lack of vision, specific demands, and suffer from a disparity of beliefs and goals.
David Maris conducted the survey. After a brief introduction I will share the results of his work. It is very telling; especially since the sampling was so small.
This post was written by David Maris, a writer and well-known health care equity research analyst. He has been ranked #1 six consecutive years by Institutional Investor Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @davidmaris.
Here is what our survey of the Occupy Wall Street protesters found:
- 80% of those polled said that the rich should pay higher taxes and that it’s fair that approximately the top 10% of tax payers pay more than 70% of the taxes in the US and about 40% of employed people pay no income tax.
- 93% say that student loan debt should be forgiven
- 98% believe that health care should be free
- 98% believe that Insurance companies make too much money and some of their profits should be taken to pay for more healthcare for others
- 95% believe that drug prices should be controlled
- 32.5% think the government will do a bad job managing healthcare
- 44% believe that instead of spending money on ObamaCare, we should spend it on jobs today, while 30% believe that we should do both, and 27% say ObamaCare was fine use of money
- 88% agree with the statement that “The government should put some controls on CEO pay – like limited to 20x or 30x the lowest paid employee.”
- 93% believe that communications like cell phone and internet access be a right and not just reserved for the rich and we should have free internet and cell phone service as a national goal.
- 54% do not believe that the Obama stimulus program was a good idea.
- 84% said they think that if a bank decides to implement a $5 debit card fee, the government should not allow it, while 16% said let them do what they want – customers can move.
We asked respondents “1 to 10, with 0=Horrible and 10=GREAT, what are your impressions of the following organizations?:
Banks (such as Goldman Sachs) 1.2
Conglomerates 1.0
Oil Companies (such as ExxonMobil) 1.0
Tech companies (such as Apple, Google) 5.2
Auto companies (such as GM) 2.9
Drug companies (such as Pfizer) 1.5
Congress 1.7
Labor Unions 6.5
President Obama 5.1
Hedge Funds 1.9
WikiLeaks 7.1
Billionaires 2.3
NOTE: The 50 seems to like–to varying degrees–Tech companies, Barack Obama, WikiLeaks and Labor Unions. They also felt that Healthcare should be free but the Obama Health Care bill was not a good use of money. They felt that money should have been used to create jobs. Now, that is really a telling statistic for people Like Herman Cain (and others) who feel these people have nothing better to do and are seeking govt. handouts. People need life-sustaining jobs vs health-care!
Hell, no wonder the Right hates the protesters! It should not take much for you to realize that a Tea Party survey would yield diametrically opposed results.
I’d explain why this is all naive pipedreams with absolute disregard for reality, but I don’t have to. I already publish a blog post explaining just that: http://blamethe1st.blogspot.com/2011/10/survey-shows-ows-protesters-are-batshit.html
College is a privilege for whom? Masochists?
Telephones are the devil, but I agree there should be an abundance of public Wi-Fi hotspots.
Autocorrect strikes again. “it was not easy” not “it was not ready”.
I took out a substantial number of student loans to pay for my education, and worked hard for many years to pay them off. it was not ready but one of the best investments I could have made. Having said that I have no objection to others having their loans forgiven.. it’s in everyone s interest to have an educated population, except those who make their money exploiting peoples ignorance (dodgy financial offers and those who only want mindless minimum wage workers in their workforce). For everyone else forgiving those loans is a minor cost to the national budget but would make all the difference in the world to struggling recent graduates.
“College is not a human right, it’s a privilege.”
In fact, higher eduction is a human right not a privilege. It is also recognized as such by the UN Declaration on Human Rights, to which the US is a signatory.