By Seth Fiegerman, MainStreet

The Occupy Wall Street protesters were first ignored by the media and then maligned by certain outlets, but more recently a slew of reports and surveys have come out showing the movement may be on to something after all.

As difficult as it may be to nail down exactly what the protesters stand for, much of their attention is devoted to the growing indebtedness of average households, along with the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor, and ultimately the concern that the wealthy are exerting too much control over the political process.

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Growing income inequality. Few reports in recent memory packed quite as much of a bang in so few words as one from the Congressional Budget Office.

The report shows that between 1979 and 2007, the superrich -- people in the top 1% of wage earners -- saw their after-tax incomes nearly triple, while those in the bottom 20% saw their wages remain relatively flat during that nearly 30-year period. As if that weren't infuriating enough, the CBO's report showed that the top 20% of wage earners saw their share of the nation's overall income increase by 10 percentage points during that period, while the other 80% saw their share decline by 2 or 3 percentage points.

In just a few paragraphs, the CBO showed definitively that the rich are getting richer at the expense of everyone else.

Americans favor wealth redistribution. Given the increasing degree of income inequality, it should come as little surprise that most Americans would echo those protesters who argue the current distribution of wealth is unfair.

One recent survey from The New York Times found that two-thirds of Americans believe U.S. wealth distribution is unfair, with a whopping 86% of Democrats saying so and 67% of independents. Republicans were less likely to agree with this statement, but nearly half still feel the distribution is not fair.

That may not mean two-thirds of the country would be willing to march in the cold weather to change this fact, but it does seem to put the burden of proof on those who claim the status quo is just fine.

Even the wealthy want to pay more taxes. One might assume that those with the most to lose would be the ones to fight hardest against evening out the income disparities, but a survey from Spectrem Group suggests otherwise.

The survey found that the vast majority (68%) of people worth at least $1 million favor raising taxes on Americans who make more than $1 million. And 61% of those worth at least $5 million are in favor of doing so. In other words, even the wealthy are fine with raising taxes on the wealthy, and previous surveys have shown that most average Americans certainly are in favor of it. So that really just leaves legislators inside the Beltway as the real hurdle.

No one likes the government, and few trust it. Perhaps for this reason, there seems to be a growing disconnect between the American people and the federal government that reflects the same sense of distrust heard among the protesters.

The same CBS News/New York Times poll found that just 9% of Americans approve of the current Congress and that 89% say they don't trust government to do what's right. Likewise, 70% say Republicans in Congress are pursuing policies that favor the wealthy.

Of course, we recognize that for every survey out that there that says one thing, another says something completely different, but there is a growing wealth of evidence that the protesters have plenty of justification to be angry and, most importantly, that they are not alone.

More on MainStreet:

• States with the biggest income inequality
  
• The man behind Occupy Wall Street
  
• 5 Occupy Wall Street leaders