The occupy movement is less than two months old. The ideas, problems and issues that have arisen from it as well as why it has spread all over the country (and the world) and connected with so many people are they can easily identify with the underlying ills that spawned it.
The present plutocracy of oligarchs that arose and usurped power in this country was not done in a traditional coup de tat; some overnight phenomenon.
That process began with Reagan in the early 1980's and his denunciation of government as the problem. Reagan condemned the regulations that constrained businesses, particularly those regulating the financial industry. He also began reducing taxes of the rich, all under the false assumption that tax reduction and laissez-faire business practices would spur growth and have a trickle down effect and would benefit everyone (supply side economics as it was called then).
The process begun under Reagan continued and was abetted by Clinton and the Democrats, then culminated under Bush Jr. with the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008 and the resulting great recession whose reverberations continue under Barack Obama.
The gilded age that resulted with the rich getting richer, controlling an ever larger share of the nations wealth along with the concomitant decimation of the middle class and the increasing growth of the poor and the ever widening gap separating the fortunes of the richest 1% and the other 99%, has brought the great awakening that is the occupy movement which is highlighting all the ills that are corrupting this country.
Looking back, the gilded age of the 1890's was overcome with the trust busting efforts of Theodore Roosevelt after the turn of the century, the establishment of the federal income tax in 1913 as well as the Federal Reserve in that same year.
The next great economic dislocation was of course brought about by the stock market crash of 1929 and the 1930's great depression which was a direct result of the roaring 20's and the wild speculation activities of Wall Street and the unrestrained and unregulated financial industry. The necessary regulations that contained and restrained the financial industry came about in 1933 under the Franklin Roosevelt administration and lasted some 60 years before they were undone and completely overturned in 1999 under Bill Clinton. His signing into law the complete deregulation and unmooring of the financial industry solidified its hold during the Bush era and brought about the current gilded age that has yet to be rectified, but has spawned the occupy movement.
Know one can predict the eventual outcome of this movement or how the present gilded age will end.
But if history is any guide, when the country endures a great economic dislocation caused by the greedy excesses of the big financial interests and the suffering becomes widespread and intolerable with the injustices, lack of accountability and basic unfairness too great, that gilded age's reign of impunity will not continue unchallenged. Change will be demanded.
The revolution demanding those changes has just begun.
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