New at Reason: Matt Welch on Occupy Wall Street’s Support for Government Bailouts

November 7, 2011

The biggest point of commonality between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party is opposition to the federal government’s 2008 bailout of the financial industry. “They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity,” the protestors' first official “Declaration” complains. “They socialized their own losses on our taxpayer dollars and on our currency and dumped that onto us,” one Occupy Boston protester told video journalist Garrett Quinn. But at the same time, observes Editor in Chief Matt Welch, activists are demanding free college educations, holding up “Debt Is Slavery” signs, and asking the rest of us to socialize their losses in the higher education market. Why are the demonstrators advocating policies that helped create the very mess they’re protesting?

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