"GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain needs to do his homework on the underlying facts that triggered the Occupy Wall Street movement.

"Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself," Cain said.

The gripe of the protesters is not that they have failed, but that they have been deprived of any chance to succeed.

In 2009, the top 1 percent of U.S. households owned 35.6 percent of the nation's private wealth. That's more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent. Our capitalist system provides fabulous benefits to society and individuals, and the accumulation of wealth is central to those benefits. For several decades, however, the percentage of the population able to accumulate capital has dwindled. The rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer.

Because the acquisition of capital is essential to financial success in our economic  system, this trend is preventing an ever larger percentage of the population from having an opportunity to pursue the rewards of capitalism.

Rather than dismissing protesters who recognize a serious problem that is getting worse, Cain and our elected officials should be studying the problem and seeking solutions.