"kids today have it easy" should, as an individual, have had it hard growing up.

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Just as people who didn't grow up poor should not talk about how hard it is. If you don't grow up poor then you have no idea what it is like. Knut did you grow up poor ?

"Knut did you grow up poor ?"

Nope. My dad didn't have much growing up after the war, but that's another matter. But I am not claiming for myself the right to go "kids today have it easy". 

I'm just saying that when people talk about military service or "having it easy" there's implicit in that a suggestion that the speaker went through military service, the speaker "had it hard". The argument as it is used in this context can only derive its authority from personal experience.

It is possible to simply discuss the statistics and say "the average child today has more advantages and opportunities and fewer obstacles and obligations than the average child 20 years ago". Or say "there are many aspects of military service that can be character building and beneficial to young people."  And that's fine. One doesn't need to have had a certain experience with an issue in order to discuss it.

But once it gets emotional and one talks about normative behavior "you should behave like this" or "you don't know how easy your life is" then personal experience does come into it.

Bottom line: Miller telling OWS kids in accusatory tones to enlist is just him being a hypocrite. He never served, he doesn't get to take that tone and tell others to. And of the pundits on Fox news saying virtually the same thing, how many actually served?

We may not have had x-boxes and such growing up, and money was sometimes tight, but we were never poor. I'm in no position to say "ooh, you have it too easy, now". Because quite frankly kids today have a world my generation and generations before that were trying very hard to bring about. As a kid, I dreamt about some day getting something as cool as an X-box. (Although personally I stopped playing computer games when my Commodore 64 broke down.)

I didn't dream about an Ipad because quite frankly even sci-fi didn't dream of an Ipad at the time. 

In the end, I'm really not as concerned with all the little failings of various members of the OWS movement as I am with what they're trying to achieve. Which appears to be for Wall Street and big business to be held accountable and to carry a larger portion of the burden. And for various reforms to improve government services (not to just spend more money, but to improve the quality of services provided)

But I am not claiming for myself the right to go "kids today have it easy".

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Fair enough. I grew up destitute. Not Poor. So I can. I get annoyed when people who have no idea what poverty is like talk like they do. Hell some people talk like poverty is some kind of virtue.

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 Which appears to be for Wall Street and big business to be held accountable and to carry a larger portion of the burden.

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I personally won't take them seriously until they go after the politicians too.That's where the problem is. The OWS people need to camp out in front of The Capital and White House too. It's been said that the Corporation's are buying politicians. That is absolutely true. However you can't buy what isn't for sell. Corperate greed is bad, but no worse than the power hungry greed of every elected official in Washington.

How does occupy wall street have anything to do with the war on terrorism?

I'm okay with any protests.  It's the American way.  But no violence/law breaking.  Martin Luther King Jr. knew how to protest.

OWS seems more informed and less vile than the Tea Party stuff.  At least so far....