A 1%er Stands Proud and Defends Businesses: Peter Schiff Goes Head To Head With Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Peter Schiff is great in these videos.  I love how he is willing to engage in conversation with the protesters.  He came armed with facts and asking what the protesters beef is with the 1%.  What more do the protesters want of the 1%?  He tries to explain to the protesters how businesses function or are run on a day to day basis.  Plus, he points out that if the incentive is low above a certain amount of earnings why would he waste his time working hard to keep a low percentage of his earnings?  What would be his incentive to work more hours and hire more employees?  He emphasizes that if this would happen he would close his business and that would hurt the workers he employs.  It is clear that a number of the protesters are clueless as to how a business operates. Peter is spot on when he talks about the government needing to get the heck out of the college loan business.  Government influence has raised the cost of tuition considerably over the past few decades.  

From Big Government:

Schiff is no ordinary observer. As the principal of the financial firm Euro Pacific Capital, he’s a full-fledged and unapologetic member of “the 1 Percent.” As an outspoken radio show host (listen online here) and commentator, he not only predicted the housing crash and financial crisis, he railed bank and auto-sector bailouts as they were happening. Schiff believes that capitalism offers the only hope for young, frustrated people to have a vibrant and prosperous future (get information on his latest book, How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, here). So he went to Occupy Wall Street to engage and debate the protesters.

Touring the Occupy Wall Street scene in New York with a sign that read “I Am the 1%, Let’s Talk,”Schiff spent more than three hours on the scene, explaining the difference between cronyism and capitalism, bailouts and balance sheets, and more.

“The regulation we want is the market,” said Schiff. “That’s what works.”

Schiff describes himself as “sympathetic” to the plight of the OWS protesters, but thinks their anger is misdirected at legitimate business interests and should be better at the White House, Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the crony capitalists they’ve bailed out.

Here is a great clip of Peter Schiff confronting the Occupy Wall Street Protesters.  I have also posted a couple shorter clips below the longer video.