Lazy! Selfish! Life is Too Complex to Generalize

With all the back and forth in the news, on blogs, Facebook, etc. about the Occupy Wall Street movement, I've noticed a lot of finger-pointing from both sides of the argument. Labels from the pro-movement group calling capitalists "evil," corporations "greedy" and those in the 1% category, "selfish" for not wanting to share their wealth with the other 99%. On the other side you have the anti-movement contingency stating that the people who are complaining are "lazy whiners who want handouts." While I may not fully understand all aspects of Occupy Wall Street, know enough to recognize there are flaws on both sides of the debate.

I agree that way too many people spend well beyond their means and there needs to be more personal responsibility.

However, I also agree that there are many others who work their asses off to stay afloat and due to unforeseen circumstances like illnesses or job cuts have found themselves in dire situations.

Real life involves a lot more shades of grey than black and white. People are individuals and their situations should be treated as such. Not everyone is in financial trouble because they are lazy or they spent beyond their means. At one point, they may have been living at their means but situations changed. A 10% unemployment rate is a huge figure and can't be dismissed as insignificant in causing turmoil to the current state of many American families.

On the other side, I don't believe that all those who worked extremely hard to earn their wealth should be penalized for doing so. And raising taxes on some corporations could hurt their ability to pay for the new jobs so desperately needed. We also know that the welfare system is abused and can at times discourage some individuals to rise above it.

At the same time it's not like anyone dreams of going on welfare. The people on welfare aren't living like ladies of leisure, sipping tea at the Waldorf. Life on food stamps pretty much sucks from what I hear.

My point is that all these comments back and forth don't paint an accurate portrait of the whole picture: A country in trouble for a hell of a lot of different reasons with many people struggling.

I wish I knew what the answer is. What I do know is that all this back and forth finger-pointing isn't solving the problem.