The rich and powerful don’t want to pay any more taxes. In fact they think they should  pay less. And if it means that the streets fill with even more pain and suffering…and protesters… too bad. They’ll just build a bigger moat.

Do you believe that? I don’t. At least I don’t want to. Yet that’s what their lackeys in Washington would have us think. That all rich people are Scrooge McDuck or like mean Mr. Potter beating up on Jimmy Stewart.

But it’s hard to know who they are. The super rich don’t show themselves much. We only know that the likes of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would throw the 99 percent under a limo to protect the one percent. And that the Newt Gingrich/Mitt Romney chorus line likes the rich better than the rest of us.

There have been a few who dared to come out and say they’d be willing to donate a few more bucks to the common good. Investor Warren Buffet took a heroic stand this summer when he wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times urging lawmakers to raise taxes on millionaires so that they pay the same or higher rate as middle class people.

Microsoft king Bill Gates has said he’s “generally in favor of the idea that the rich pay somewhat more than everyone else.” Earlier this month a small group calling themselves Patriotic Millionaires went to Capitol Hill not with their hands out, but, amazingly, with their wallets open, offering to pay more taxes. And while we don’t hear much about it, they are apparently not alone. In fact, 68 percent of millionaires say they support a tax increase for those earning $1 million or more, according to a survey by the Spectrum Group.

But the Republican leadership says no, no, no, we must spare the rich. When the non-rich complain about the rich the Republicans say we’re all simply jealous. They insist the rich need even more tax loopholes. They make it sound like the rich are the downtrodden Americans.

Yet, by their silence we can only assume that the very richest of the rich are fine with their fat-cat image. And with the desperation of all the stray dogs.

That’s a nasty picture.  But if the rich don’t like their portrait why aren’t they standing up to change it? They don’t even have to do the Warren Buffet thing. Maybe they have a good explanation for why they can’t make it on their bazillions alone. I don’t hate the rich, but I would feel a lot kinder toward them if I knew they were willing to help balance this grotesque inequality so many of their brethren have exploited. They behave like they own this country. When in fact they owe this country.

As the wise Elizabeth Warren points out, “There is no one in this country who got rich on his own.”

Michael Moore is plenty rich. He made his personal fortune pointing out the inequities in our system and was recently called on by Piers Morgan to defend his wealth and his sympathies for Occupy Wall Street. Moore told Morgan that having money and caring about poor people is not mutually exclusive. No more than being white and marching with Martin Luther King or being straight and voting for gay marriage. It’d be nice to see a few more super rich celebrities show us who they’re marching with.

Can you imagine this? Rich people declaring, “I am wealthy and I do not approve of this image.” Rich people standing up to Republicans. Republicans standing up to Republicans. Heck, Obama could sell tickets to that and pay off the deficit.

The wealth gap between younger and older Americans is reported to be wider than ever. According to census bureau numbers young working families are worse off than older people. This would be expected if you consider that the longer you work the more your income goes up and the more you save for retirement. And when you’re starting out, you’re not making as much.

But funny thing about this is I don’t feel wealthy. And I sure don’t want young people thinking their elders are all sipping Glenlivet and perusing the cruise catalog.

I recognize the horrible squeeze on young people. I’m related to some. But older people have taken some of the same hits.

The numbers show the typical American household headed by a person 65 and older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35. That is, a median net worth of $3,662 for young families opposed to $170,494 for older ones.

The Pew Research Center analyzed the discrepancy this way. Young families are hurting because they’ve got mortgages on houses that aren’t worth as much as they paid for them and carry a load of student loans and credit card debt. The old are presumably doing better because we are thought to have paid off our houses and have investments. And on top of that we get Social Security.

And that’s when I thought uh-oh, this sounds like ammunition for generation warfare. And there it was.

Responding to the report, economist Harry Holzer from Georgetown University said, “It makes us wonder whether the extraordinary amount of resources we spend on retirees and their health care should be at least partially reallocated to those who are hurting worse than them.”

Oh Harry, I do agree. In part.  If you are eligible for Social Security and don’t need it or you can tell Medicare no thanks it would be a grand gesture to pass it on to a young family, maybe your own children and grandchildren.

But while I know some retirees who are living quite well, I doubt the majority of  oldsters are feeling fat on Social Security.  According to the Social Security Administration most retirees count on those monthly checks for a major  chunk of their income. And people over 65 represent the fastest growth in bankruptcy filings.

As for sharing the wealth that’s pretty much the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But the occupiers’ beef is not with greedy grannies. It’s with the one percent with all the dough. That’s why you see signs that say “Education is a Right” next to ones insisting “Save Medicare not Billionaires.”

I don’t know many older people who are leading a madcap life – okay, a few – but I do worry the image handily serves those wanting to gut retirement programs . We old ones are pretty mad at the system, too. Older people can remember when they were in their 30s and struggling and hoping that by the time they were in their 60s they would be feeling a lot more secure.

Older people are part of the dwindling middle class., too. We’ve seen our savings and investments shredded. We too have been hit by the housing bubble.  If we have any extra we may be paying for our adult kids’ health insurance or paying on those students loans and even caring for elderly parents.

I know plenty in their 60s and early 70s who say,  “I’m going to be working until I die.”

In fact the wage gap study noted that older Americans are holding onto to their jobs longer than ever while young people are facing the highest unemployment since World War II.

So, if we’re so wealthy why are we still working?

I like what Michael Levitin said early on about Occupy Wall Street’s reason for being.  “We are showing up and speaking to each other. It’s first about participation.”

He’s right. People are not staying home and feeling lousy, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. They’re showing up and talking and it feels pretty good.

I know Michael.  His mother is a friend.  He went to high school nearby. He’s a free lance journalist, a well-educated young man, accustomed to unsteady employment in an endangered profession. He was enroute to Europe when he stopped over in New York and went to Zuccotti Park to check out the gathering. He ended up becoming an editor for the Occupy Wall Street Journal. We’re all proud of him and delighted that he snagged such a great journalism job. And in print, of all things.

Now in its second month, the occupation is being pressured to declare itself. What do you want? How would you fix it? It’s sort of a put-up or shut-up challenge.

Ah, let’s see now. What wisdom have we heard from on high lately? All the king’s horses and all the king’s men – including a bunch of those one percent people – haven’t been able to put this country back together again. In fact, they’ve pretty much let Americans down. But they want to know what big idea the protesters have.

It’s pretty clear what the big shots want -  more money and more power. And how they would fix things? They wouldn’t.

What do the occupiers want? So far most still want a place to get together, a park near Wall Street or in front of city hall. That worries some people. How long will they be there? What will they do next? But others find it thrilling to finally have a common listening post.

I was away for the first country-wide occupation in mid-October. My husband and daughter sent videos of the one they attended in Santa Rosa, the sixth largest Occupy event in the nation that weekend.  I flashed them a virtual peace sign.

But recently I stood with a small group at the town square in my town of  Sebastopol on a rainy Saturday. They were trading ideas on forming Occupy Sebastopol. There were students, hikers, teachers, retirees, some city council members, business owners, poets and long haired hippies. They looked just like our town.

It was decided to establish a presence at the square but not interfere with the farmers market which dominates that space very Sunday. Overnight, like mushrooms, half a dozen tents sprung up in a corner of the square and that morning the market went on as usual. All in one place – your late tomatoes, your squash, your protest signs.

I complimented the market’s director on achieving peaceful co-existence and she said, “This way I get to occupy and work at the same time.” An apple seller was excited about young people asking for a better shot at the future. “We had our turn,” she said. “Now it’s theirs.”

The occupy movement is making a lot of people more hopeful than they’ve been in a long time. For all our lives we’ve heard that Americans are better off than everybody else in the world. But a recent survey showed what we knew in our stomachs. Things have been way off.

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote about a German study by the Bertelsmann Shiftung Foundation in a piece titled America’s Exploding Pipe Dream. The survey showed that compared to other countries the U.S. has a social justice rating that is practically rock bottom. We have greater income inequality than most countries. Our overall poverty prevention rating is lousy. We have dismal child poverty rates and are not so good about taking care of senior citizens.

Can Occupy fix any of that? I don’t know, but like my friend Al said, “In the immortal words of Stephen Stills, “Something’s happening here.”

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