The Wall Street Protests Are Justified

We're talking about Capital Hill here, their solutions are not always logical. Does this not justify protest? The debt problems were caused be frivolous federal spending over decades, not because of the United States Mint or the Federal Reserve Board. I agree that the debt problems were caused by frivolous spending but that spending could not take place without the Fed giving the government an endless supply of money. As I pointed out, a rate of 3-4% inflation is a healthy rate. Your entire rebuttal rests on the fact that income levels have remained the same. If inflation goes up without a increase in income, then yes it would be stealing from the people. But the simple fact of the matter is the amount of income for nearly all Americans has increased over the past decades along with inflation. I checked out his source, and in fact it says right on the side of the page "Annual Inflation: 3.9%", that is perfectly within the target range according to my economist evidence. My rebuttal, in fact, does not rest on income levels remaining the same. Con is correct that income has risen with inflation but what is directly stolen is savings and money being held. The longer you hold your money, the less it is worth when you spend it. Let’s say your grandmother saved 1,000 dollars in 1913, and finally spent it in 2011. What she would get in return for the thousand dollars in 2011 would be the equivalent of $43.63 in 1913. Actually, it was a direct act, by the Federal Reserve Board. I never said the lowering of interest rates was a result of the market. I apologize for the confusion. In my statement, “A direct act by the Federal Reserve and not the market; therefore, it was artificial,” I was not claiming that you claimed it was the market. I agreed with you that the Fed lowered the rates but since it was the Fed, and not the market that decided interest rates, interest rates were artificially lowered. We don't have a purely capitalistic economy, obviously. What we do have is a mostly free economy, in a pure capitalistic economy such greed and corruption as the likes of Bernie Madoff never would have happened. Government distortions allowed corruption and greed to occur. Con admits that there is corruption in our system here but in his first observation he states, “They protested the supposed (and I argued non-existent) greed and corruption of the 1%. The resolution in our debate is "The Wall Street Protests Are Justified. " Justify is defined as, to prove or show to be just, right, or reasonable by Merriam-Webster. I will make three points in conclusion: 1. Con's only argument is that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are protesting capitalism and he has provided no evidence for this other than outside sources. Who is more reliable when laying out the goals of OWS, an outside source or OWS? It is illogical to believe that OWS is lying when they claim, on their website, the one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. They have no other official, stated goals.2. There is no doubt that corruption exists in our system. The Fed prints money to allow the government to continue its deficit spending and we are left with a declining dollar and massive shared debt. When the Fed enabled the banks to over lend many people received loans they could not afford and lost their homes. The Fed lowered interest rates, creating a false signal to borrow; the people who borrowed are actually victims of a corrupt system. To make matters worse, big banks and Wall Street were bailed out by tax payer dollars while the lower and middle classes lost their homes. There will always be corruption as long as we have central planning of our money. Top, down economics is inherently corrupt because the top few, the 1%, have all the control. 3. Is it not "just, right, or reasonable" to protest the corruption in our system? Clearly, the Occupy Wall Street protests are justified.