Question

Occupy Wall Street was a national (and later global) organized protest against the greed, bank profits, and financial corruption that led to the 2008–2009 recession. The group popularized slogans like “We are the 99%,” meaning it represented the majority against the wealth of the top 1%. Does the fact that the protests had little to no effect on legislative changes support or contradict the chapter?

Short answer

Supports.

Step-by-step solution

Step1. Introduction

Given information to us is a case study of protests during the 2008-09 Worldwide Recession. Occupy Wall Street was a national (and later global) organized protest against the greed, bank profits, and financial corruption that led to the 2008–2009 recession. The group popularized slogans like “We are the 99%,” meaning it represented the majority against the wealth of the top 1%.

Step2. Explanation

The chapter of Public Economy is based on the idea that benefits of policies are restricted to certain groups and sections of the societies, while it is the rest of the society/economy that pay and bear the cost of providing these benefits.
The incident mentioned testifies this too.

As the slogan said, 1% of the population benefitted out of the policies taken up during the 2008-09, it was the rest 99% who incurred the cost. This lead to, in fact the disorganized protestors, soon joined by protestors across the world to protest against the greed, bank profits, and financial corruption that led to the 2008–2009 recession.