
Requiem for the American Dream
1
During the great depression,
which I'm old enough
to remember, there was...
And most of my family
were unemployed working class...
There wasn't... it was bad,
much worse
subjectively than today.
But there was an expectation
better.
There was a real sense
of hopefulness.
There isn't today.
Inequality is really
unprecedented.
If you look at total inequality,
it's like the worst periods
of American history.
But if you refine it more closely,
the inequality comes from
sector of the population,
a fraction of one percent.
There were periods like
the Gilded Age, in the '20s (Gilded Age,
the time between the Civil War and World War I)
and the roaring '90s and so on,
when a situation developed
rather similar to this.
Now, this period's extreme...
Because if you look
at the wealth distribution,
the inequality mostly
comes from super wealth.
Literally, the top
1/10th of a percent
are just super wealthy.
Not only is it extremely
unjust in itself...
Inequality has highly negative
consequences on the society
as a whole...
Because the very fact
of inequality has a corrosive,
harmful effect on democracy.
You open by talking about
the American dream.
Part of the American dream
is class mobility.
You're born poor, you own a car, you get rich.
It was possible for a worker to get a decent
job, buy a home...
Get a car, have his
children go to school.
It's all collapsed.
Imagine yourself in an outside
position, looking from Mars.
What do you see?
In the United States,
there are professed
values like democracy.
In a democracy, public opinion
is going to have some influence on policy.
And then, the government
carries out actions determined
by the population.
That's what democracy means.
It's important to understand
that privileged and powerful
sectors
and for very good reasons.
Democracy puts power
into the hands of
the general population
and takes it away from them.
It's kind of a principle
of concentration of wealth
and power.
Concentration of wealth
yields concentration of power...
Particularly so as the cost
of elections skyrockets,
which kind of forces
the political parties into the
pockets of major corporations.
And this political power quickly
translates into legislation
that increases
the concentration of wealth.
So fiscal policy like tax policy...
Deregulation...
Rules of corporate
governance and a whole
variety of measures...
Political measures, designed
to increase the concentration
of wealth and power,
which, in turn,
yields more political power
to do the same thing.
And that's what
we've been seeing.
So we have this kind of
vicious cycle in progress.
You know, actually,
it is so traditional that it was
described by Adam Smith in 1776.
You read the famous
"wealth of nations."
He says in England,
the principal architects
of policy
are the people
who own the society.
In his day, merchants
and manufacturers.
And they make sure
that their own interests
are very well cared for,
however grievous
the impact on the people
of England or others.
Now, it's not merchants
and manufacturers,
it's financial institutions
and multinational corporations.
The people who Adam Smith
called the "masters of mankind,"
and they're following to the vile
Maxim, "all for ourselves
They're just going to pursue
policies that benefit them
and harm everyone else.
And in the absence of a general
popular reaction, that's pretty
Translation
Translate and read this script in other languages:
Select another language:
- - Select -
- 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
- 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
- Español (Spanish)
- Esperanto (Esperanto)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Português (Portuguese)
- Deutsch (German)
- العربية (Arabic)
- Français (French)
- Русский (Russian)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- עברית (Hebrew)
- Gaeilge (Irish)
- Українська (Ukrainian)
- اردو (Urdu)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
- Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Italiano (Italian)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- ภาษาไทย (Thai)
- Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Polski (Polish)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Românește (Romanian)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Latinum (Latin)
- Svenska (Swedish)
- Dansk (Danish)
- Suomi (Finnish)
- فارسی (Persian)
- ייִדיש (Yiddish)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Norsk (Norwegian)
- English (English)
Citation
Use the citation below to add this screenplay to your bibliography:
"Requiem for the American Dream" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 19 Jan. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/requiem_for_the_american_dream_16797>.