The, The Director And Narrator Of The Film, By Jamie Johnson

“The One Percent” is a documentary that addressed wealth and social inequalities among the American population (Johnson, 2006). The film was created and narrated by Jamie Johnson. Jamie’s great grandfather was the founder of Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company. Therefore, Jamie’s father inherited a fortune that has given Jamie many privileges that are uncommon throughout the rest of the American population. Although Jamie has lived his entire life by reaping the benefits of his family’s inheritance, he has come to realize just how privileged he and his family truly is.

Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary The Queen of Versailles offers an entertaining and thought provoking look at what subjects a documentary can cover as the film follows billionaires David and Jacqueline Siegel and their family as they navigate the 2008 economic crisis and attempt to build a mansion inspired by Versailles. Though the premise of the film is fairly straightforward, on a deeper level the film touches upon such ideas as the unattainability of the “American Dream,” the correlation between wealth and happiness, and family perseverance in the face of adversity. However, one key theme of the film serves to discredit the outside assumption that wealthy individuals lead flawless happy lives, and are in someway elevated beyond typical humanity, not experiencing hardships in the same manner as middle class society. In reality, as the film demonstrates, the wealthy are as flawed and as deeply human as any other class, capable of experiencing hardships and unhappiness regardless of material wealth. To further explore how the film achieves its theme, one must first have a firm understanding of the documentary form and how certain events in the film highlight the theme, which is explored in the following paragraphs .

The video then goes on to identify who the one percent is, including celebrities and political figures. It even goes on to compare the amount of work done by the 1percent in comparison to those in the middle class. All of the data is presented in such a simple manner so that many can understand the issue of wealth inequality throughout the United States.

This reaction paper is based on a film by the name of “Lone Star.” The Director of this film is an independent director by the name of John Sayless. Lone Star is a contemporary film that was created in 1996. This film is a Western based film that. But it is set in the present day was created on the U.S./Mexico border. It describes a sheriff that is trying to get revenge of his father’s Buddy Dee death. In doing so he sorts out to solve a crime. The crime has to do with him and his father, Buddy Dee. The film also details the sheriff's love life and his relations to his high school history teacher. The teachers mother a restaurant owner was one of many people to jump the US border. Towards the end of the movie the Sheriff finds out the love of his life is not only his true love but his sister. He finds out that his father and the teacher’s mother had an affair in which the teacher was conceived. It was ironic because the sheriff had method to the teacher while having sex with her that it felt weird later to find out that they were brother and sister.

In today’s capitalist economy, where economic transactions and business in general is centered on self-interest, there is a natural tendency for some people to make more than others. That is the basis for the “American Dream,” where people, if they worked hard, could make money proportional to their effort. However, what happens when this natural occurrence grows disproportional in its allocation of wealth within a society? The resulting issue becomes income inequality. Where a small portion of the population, own the majority of the wealth and the majority of the population own only a fraction of what the rich own. This prominent issue has always been the subject of social tension

There is no doubt that wealth inequality in America has been escalating quickly; the portion of total income earned by the top one percent has doubled since the beginning of the 1970’s. The wealthy are the main beneficiaries

Furthermore, when analyzing the different classes, and the distributions of wealth and income in the United Sates; for instance, the upper, middle, and lower classes – it is an astronomical amount of wealth that the top 1 percent acquire. It is also noted by Johnson & Rhodes (2015), “that income and wage inequality have risen sharply over the last thirty years” (pg. 228). Equally important to this, is how the average change in income is divided in Americas quintiles and the widening gaps. For example, in Table 5.2, while the lowest fifth quintile increased from $11,128 to $11,361 – a difference of $233.00 from years 2006 to 2012; the highest quintile increased from $289,446 to $319,918 – an exponential increase of $30,472 (pg. 229). With income inequalities at this rate, it is difficult for the majority of the United States to experience upward social mobility. Pursuing this further, in a line stated by Johnson and Rhodes (2015), “The wealthiest Americans can live on the dividends from their investments without having to touch the principle or work for a salary” (pg. 230). From this, it is visible to see how society has compartmentalized different levels of functions to keep a so called balance for the greater

This first lecture gave us a close look into the unequal share of wealth and the factors that determine the wealth of individuals in the American society. One of the first factors that affect immensely the inequality in America is the obsessiveness of wanting to classify people and make them mark a box for their gender, race and class. Where men and whites have more privileges than any other person and are not only paid higher, but would most likely spend less time in prison for committing the same crime as an African American. The United states is so unequal that the top 1% of the population has 38.1% of the wealth and the bottom 40% which is a little less than half of the people living in America only have 0.2% of the wealth. And as if that statistic alone was not scary enough, we learn in this

In the video, Wealth Inequality in America, there were many things that caught my attention the second time around that i had not understood the first time listening to it. When they had surveyed 5,000 people I was not surprised to see that the ideal for most Americans would be a somewhat even distribution of wealth among the various groups. What I was most shocked about was what most American think about the distribution of wealth is not even close to what the reality has to hold. The fact that lowest 20 - 30 percent don't even register as sharing in the wealth of America as they are behind the poverty line. They are living of “pocket change”. The top 1 percent didn't even shock me as much as how the middle class did.

Regional dialects were seen to be used by those from a lower class and being less intelligent. However, regional dialects were given points for sounding warm, trustworthy, friendly and honest. These positive connotations are usually for rural, beautiful landscapes. To find this, he got the same actor to read a passage but in different accents and listeners had to score them.

The documentary film “Park Avenue: Money, Power, and the American Dream” directed by Alex Gibney is about the wealth gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. The documentary compares the access to opportunities of residents of Park Avenue both on the Upper East Side and in the South Bronx. The documentary includes interviews with a series of people: a doorman at 740 Park Avenue, journalist Jane Mayer, Yale University Professor Jacob Hacker, Berkeley Professor Paul Piff, and Republican advisor Bruce Bartlett. The documentary makes a compelling case that inequality exposes democracy and that the victims of inequality include not only those who find themselves in the rapidly expanding underclass, but the American dream itself.

When I read two essays, I honestly having a hard time consider to be the main thesis of each of the essays. The authors kept writing back and forth that lead me to confuse about the essays. In Maggie Paley's "Terry Southern: The Art of Screenwriting, by Interview", the author interviewed the screenwriter about his experiences. I believe the thesis will be: Terry Southern is a person who have an interesting past, wrote alot of plays, and had alot of experiences in the plays. I honestly can't find the right thesis because the author wrote everything unorganized, but I can see that he wrote alot of plays and told her that writing a book is different from writing a screenplay. He tolfd that he love movies and it is easy from him to write a screenplay.

Capitalism has been the central force behind the growth of the United States’ progressive economy. Within such advanced economic system the chances of economic disparity are significantly high. In fact, over the past three decades there has being a steady increase in unequal wealth distribution among the economic classes. To sustain the current unequal wealth distribution among the classes of the American population, there are numerous factors that influence and shape this trend. For some members of the population it is alarmingly disturbing to know that recent statistics have shown that, “In the US [alone] the wealthiest 1% of its population owns more than the bottom 95 %” (Gutman). As for the difference in economic wealth, it resulted

The typical millionaires portrayed in the book were not the jet setting, high profile, luxury car driving executive that most would equate with affluence. In fact, the typical millionaire is a 57 year old male, self-employed, with an average income of $247,000. They are fairly well educated, wear inexpensive suits, and drive late model American made cars. On average, these millionaires live in modest homes and work in occupations such as: contractors, auctioneers, farmers, owners of mobile home parks, and stamp and coin dealers. These individuals are organized, live within a budget, and spend considerable time and energy investing. These individuals are also self-described tight wads. In lieu of receiving money directly for their time, the authors offered to donate money in the interviewee’s name to a favorite charity. The reply of most of the millionaires was “I am my own favorite charity,” and kept the money for themselves.

In the article “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Joseph Stiglitz, a noble prize winning economist, argues that the upper 1% controls about 40% of all wealth in America. This top 1% has taken about a quarter of all income in America, and has seen their income rise about 18% in the past decade. This has made the inequality between classes in the US expand. Eventually, this inequality gap will even hurt the top 1%, because the other 99% will either fight for a bigger piece or just stop working all together. The top 1% can buy anything they need, but their fate realizes on the other 99% to work hard and not fight back. If the 99% stopped working, there would be a simple way to gain back money… that would be to raise taxes on the rich. However, the rich get rich by capital gains, which have a low tax policy. So overall, the upper percent can eventually learn, but a majority of the time it is too little too late.