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Rortybomb thinks about how the Occupy Wall Street movement talks about economic inequality and how those arguments differ from traditional ones about economic fairness.

What about the 99%? I’ve previously looked through the We Are the 99% Tumblr and found that the biggest emphasis was on debt, ranging from student loans to medical debt, and a lack of enough employment to get by month-to-month. Here inequality is less a problem related to the more traditional liberal concerns of fairness or the idea that a few are left behind, and more a problem in which inequality is making indentured peasants of a huge part of the population. Risks are shifted to individuals who are already struggling, opportunities and possibilities are ruthlessly revoked, employment is nonexistent, and month-to-month survival is a battle for more than the just the very bottom….
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This ties into traditional liberal concerns. Liberals want institutions that allow people to develop their talents and also ones that insure them against the bad luck of health and unemployment. These institutions have been unraveled, and their public nature has been replaced with debt. And when people involved in Occupy Wall Street talk about this phenomenon, they connect how debt functions as a new safety net with the experience of servitude and suffering. Not in a relative sense of inferiority and shame (although that’s there too), but in actual deprivation and the feeling of powerlessness against creditors, bosses, and the top of the elite.