They see the rich bankers etc (the 1% as they call them) making a mess of things (that recession thing) and everyone else (the 99% as some of them are claiming to be) is paying for their mistakes (through bailouts funded by taxes or with their jobs). They think "When I make a mistake and hurt my company I pay for it (possibly by getting fired), when the bankers make a mistake they seem to get richer and I pay for it" and get a feeling something is wrong with that.
They see the government with not enough money to pay for things and big american companies which are actually registered in the cayman islands but which officially operate in a small office in Ireland which make billions but don't seem to pay very much tax, and think while it's technically legal it isn't really honest.
People seem to be expecting the "average joe"s (as we'll call them) to come up with the solutions to the problems they are complaining about. I suspect the solutions to everything they are unhappy about require a significant amount of specific domain knowledge from many domains. For "average joe" to answer "what do you want to be done about these problems" he would probably have to have doctorates in economics and finance, business management, politics, history, fraud, maths, common sense and mechanical or electronic engineering (because a doctorate in finance or business doesn't give one much credibility). It's like asking a patient how to fix whatever is making his stomach hurt - even the dumbest patient can tell something is wrong, but you'll need a doctor to tell you that the solution is high energy photons focussed on the cancer in the patient's liver.
I think that they know something is wrong. That people expect them to write on their placards what they want done about what is wrong as people usually do in a protest, or provide a sound byte on a news program of what needs to be done in two sentences.
I think that they are unhappy with a great many things. That there isn't room on their placards to write all the solutions to all the problems, and that there isn't room to write the solution to just one problem. Their problems are probably the type that get addressed with 1500 page reports by government committees which then get ignored or lost in your political system resulting in no change or change that misses the point and leaves you worse off. Further more I don't think the protesters know how to fix what they are complaining about (perhaps if they knew exactly how the rich people were doing suspicious things to make money then they would be doing them too).
I could probably turn the question around - if you're asking "what change do they want" then (choosing a specific problem in this case tax evasion by large companies) answer me this:
Suppose a large american company - let's make up a name, how about Google - is making lots of money but doesn't seem to be paying much tax which seems suspicious. How would you fix it?
Don't say "Make them pay tax", surely the solution must be expressible in the area on a placard or in two sentences and obvious to anyone who hasn't studied the tax systems and tax laws of many countries
