There have been a lot of negative stories portrayed about the Occupy WallStreet movement. These stories appear to be coming from infiltrators from the outside, trying to find the worst of the worst to show the protesters in a negative light.
The Tea Party claim does have some merit. The OWS movement is made up of mostly Millennials instead of Baby Boomers. There have never been any arrests of Tea Party protesters whereas hundreds of OWS protesters have been arrested. It has been pointed out by many that members of the Tea Party mostly have jobs, whereas members of the OWS movement do not.
Of course this is part of why the movement has gained so much steam. Many of these Millennials, who have been told since they were little that in order to be successful all they needed to do was stay in school, get good grades, and graduate from college, are now looking at grim prospects at getting a job after graduating from college. At the same time, they see the investment bankers, hedge fund managers, wall street traders, living it up with high salaries, even higher bonuses, and in many cases lower taxes.
Therein lies the largest difference between the Tea Party and the OWS movement. The Tea Party puts the blame mostly on big government and high taxes. Their proposal to solve the problems are to limit the size of government by reducing spending, and to lower taxes for everyone. The OWS movement puts the blame mostly on what they call 'corporate capitalism'. While they do not have a proposed set of solutions to combat the problem, a lot of the Wall Street Protesters seem believe that there needs to be some way to even the playing field. I have heard proposals such as reinstating Glass-Steagall, which prohibits consumer banks and investment banks from operating as one unit; instituting a tax on financial transactions, which would limit the profitability of computer mass trading; adding additional taxes to upper income earners, which the WallStreet Protest members argue would even the playing field. As you can see, many of the proposals from the OWS movement are quite the opposite of the Tea Party. They seem to want more government regulations and higher taxes.
The Tea Party and the OWS movement share many common goals. The reason why the two groups don't see eye to eye is that their proposals to fix the problems are very different. That is why the Tea Party has been out in force trying to make the OWS movement look bad and keep them on the sidelines. If Americans start to see that both movements see the same problems but have different ways to solve them, the Tea Party loses its luster as the grassroots movement that has all the solutions.


