I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking on the subject of a just society. The Occupy movement is in essence about trying to attain a just society. Right now, there is a major disconnect between those running the government and those that are being governed. The government is favoring the rich and the corporations at the expense of the poor and middle class. It is wrong for some members of society to be earning amounts of money that border on the obscene, while there are others that don’t have even the basic necessities of life. Even some of the rich, such as Warren Buffet have come to realize this and have asked the government to increase their taxes. They are not doing this to be altruistic, but because they realize that if conditions get sufficiently bad, the poor will eventually have nothing to lose and rise up against the ruling class. This has happened before and has resulted in revolutions such as the French and Russian revolutions.
There needs to be a redistribution of wealth, so that all members of society have at least enough food to eat and a roof over their heads. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it has to be sufficient. The government of the day has been doing their best to remove all the supports for the poor and move that money to the rich, who already have way more than is needed. Before the tax reforms in the 1980’s in the US, the rich were paying up to a 90% tax on some of their income, and this money was used to run the social programs. This was a time of the greatest standard of living for all people living in the developed world. Once the tax cuts for the rich started to take place in the US, other countries followed suit, in order to remain competitive (and also because they saw that the middle class didn’t make that much of a fuss). The real wages in the middle class have been falling ever since. What is needed is a return to those levels of taxation, so that the poor and the middle class can make headway and improve their standard of living. A simple solution would be to have a guaranteed minimum income, which would be sufficient to provide food, housing and basic necessities (cable is not a necessity!). By eliminating poverty, there would also be a corresponding drop in crime, since much crime is a direct result of the poor not being able to supply their needs through their income. Poverty also often leads to drug abuse, since drugs are used as a way to escape the difficulties that face people in their lives.
If everyone had enough to get by on, they would be able to spend more of their time to improve their lives and as a result the whole of society would be improved.