Stunning film
I watched this on Cinemax the other day and felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Mr. Johnson's film put into perspective topics which Americans have ignored for too long and (sadly) may have gone on to long to reverse.
Not only does this one percent of people in this country own over 40% of its wealth - it seems a number of them are working to gain even more.
Its not the poor of this country who are the cause of our problems (don't forget in the 80s - weren't we being told that unwed mothers on welfare were the cause of all of our nations economic ills?). Its the rich of this country who are removing money from the economic system. The very rich have had the unlimited resources to buy off our government to see that they don't pay taxes, leading to the erosion of not only so-called social services for the poor, but as we see now the decline in basic government provided services like road repair, police and fire protection, etc, etc. Remember all that security we were supposed to have in the wave of the 9/11 attacks? I notice in the last few years all of that is starting to dry up as well. All of this being done because this one percent (30,000 people?) simply can't live on just $50,000,000.00.
It makes it clear that the old Baron/Serf feudal relationships of days gone by are still thriving and alive in America. I wonder if there is any data on the number of people who are not rich yet still believe that they will be subject to large inheritance taxes. Or how about the number of people who might still believe that the best way to prop up the economy is to give more and more tax breaks to the rich so that they can have more money to pump into the system.
It was pretty funny that Milton Friedman abruptly ends the interview and calls Mr. Johnson a socialist. Mr. Johnson's questions are much deeper than that. No where does Mr. Johnson question that people should have the ability to make money (and well, a lot of it if they want). Jamie Johnson's questions rip apart the foundations of Mr. Friedman's stand on economics that have been accepted for decades.
Sadly, I suspect that the rich of this country have worked very hard to make sure this film isn't seen. I'm actually shocked that HBO/Cinemax, part of Time Warner took it on to show on its schedule, being that it is a multi-billion dollar corporation that probably exists somewhat on the ideas of the rich in this film.
Then again, I found the movie showing at 6:30am......thank goodness for DVRs