The 1% defend themselves in this infuriating Bloomberg article…

“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO [Jamie Dimon] told an audience member who asked about hostility toward bankers. “Sometimes there’s a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole.”

Of course the criticisms of the 1% are over-broad and inaccurate sometimes; no protest movement is perfect.

But if the 1% are so successful, and it’s all the result of their own intelligence and hard work, they should be mature enough to overlook those flaws and consider the fundamental message of Occupy Wall Street: Income inequality in America is threatening the future of the country.

When you look at the numbers, that’s a very substantive and serious argument. You may not agree with it, but it’s a real issue, and it deserves to be listened to with respect.