Those who would describe Occupy protests as a "hissy fit" by "a whole army of freeloaders" who "have no interest in just getting to work and doing their part" are missing the point.

I respectfully disagree with anyone who suggests that Occupy protesters are a bunch of misguided college slackers who don’t even know what the movement is about but are being duped or "handled" by unseen masters.

"Occupy Wall Street may not have a formal list of demands, but anyone who’s been paying attention understands the core problems that occupiers are protesting," says MoveOn.org.

Those problems: "that corporations have far too much power in our political system, that Wall Street banks crashed our economy but were never held accountable, and that the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans – 156 million people – combined."

Why pick on the super rich?

Before the tax cuts of 1981, we had more tax brackets and the richest Americans had to pay more taxes. Recovering some of that money would be one step toward a balanced budget. Paul Krugman, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics, recently wrote, "Seriously, the notion that denying health care to the near-poor is a serious deficit-reduction policy, but raising taxes on the very rich is not, is not something you can justify at all on the basis of the actual numbers. Anyone who says different is practicing, well, class warfare."

It has been suggested these people who are protesting really just need to get jobs. Never mind that finding a job isn’t so easy these days. The protesters are trying to be heard by a Congress that typically only listens to free speech if it comes with a campaign contribution.

Yes, many of the protesters are students. Myrna Perkins, director of financial aid at Barton Community College, reports national data shows a large number of Occupy protesters are also in default on student loans. That doesn’t mean the majority are smoking pot in their parents’ basements instead of looking for work; it means they have major debt at a time when 9 percent of our nation is unemployed.

There is some appeal, actually, to letting people fend for themselves – or die trying. In her novel "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand’s character John Galt proclaims, "I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."

"Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is," Krugman writes. "They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens."

As for the cost of cleaning up after Occupy protesters, it should be noted that in many cases, such as at Occupy Oakland, the protesters have cleaned up after themselves.

It’s true that it’s expensive to send out police officers and to deal with the actions thousands of protesters.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes, "Peaceful, non-violent protests, including encampment, can be inconvenient."

While corporations – or their masters – can express free speech with money, in the form of political contributions, the 99.9 percent don’t have the kind of money to influence politicians directly.

To paraphrase Reich, demonstrating to take our democracy back from big money is the essence of a free society.