Interest in New Chomsky Documentary Has Grown So Large Even the NY Times Ran a Review and Praised It

[Jefferson23]

February 4, 2016

Full title: Interest in New Noam Chomsky Documentary Has Grown So Large That Even the NY Times Ran a Review—and Praised It!

In the new documentary Requiem for the American Dream, produced and directed by Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared P. Scott, Noam Chomsky argues that the collapse of American democratic ideals and the rise of the 1% means that the American dream is harder than ever to achieve. And unlike during the Great Depression, there seems to be no end in sight to this class struggle.

“The effect of the concentration of wealth is to yield concentration of power. [Therefore] the very fact of inequality has a corrosive, harmful effect on democracy," Chomsky states.

Chomsky was raised in an American middle-class immigrant family in the 1930s. Filmmakers use interviews with Chomsky and archival video from the 1950s onward to illustrate the golden age of American history, as Chomsky calls it. The average worker was able to buy a home, a car and live a life of relative comfort. Upward class mobility was not only aspirational, but achievable.

The widening wage gap, he claims, is "a result of over 30 years of a shift in social and economic policy, completely against the will of the population.” Today, young families are slightly wealthier than their parents were three decades ago, according to a recent BMO Economics Report. However, millennials need to pay more to get their foot in the door and are accumulating debt loads about 260% higher than their parents did at their age.

"It goes back to the founding of the country. If you read the debates at the Constitutional Convention, James Madison, the main framer, said the major concern of society has to be to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," Chomsky says.

http://www.alternet.org/video/no-end-site-growing-wealth-inequality-according-chomsky-new-film

[iAZZZo]

1. thank you for the post and link

from the alternet article

Today, young families are slightly wealthier than their parents were three decades ago, according to a recent BMO Economics Report. However, millennials need to pay more to get their foot in the door and are accumulating debt loads about 260% higher than their parents did at their age.

it's unclear cause it comes right after a quote from him as to whether this is paraphrased summary of him or interjection by the alternet's writer. will look forward to watching. again, thank you.

edit added: cudos to the nytimes for their exposition

[Jefferson23]

6. Welcome to DU :)

Yea, it is surprising NYT reviewed it and favorably.

[iAZZZo]

9. re: Welcome

thank you.

yes, i found it surprising too (as an aside, though not as surprising as "Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose announced that the Council was awarding the 2014 Arthur Ross prize for the best book on international relations to Princeton University professor Gary J. Bass for his book The Blood Telegram, which denounces Kissinger as a racist who connived at genocide in Pakistan. (The Council describes the jury, which included Stephen Walt and Robert Kagan, among others, as an independent one.) Kissinger, who is honorary chairman of the National Interest, and Richard Nixon, Bass says, employed a “farrago of distortions, half-truths, and outright lies about their policy toward the Bengali atrocities.” from http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-council-foreign-relations-honors-kissinger-critic-11860)

[KoKo]

2. Thank You....

Hopefully it will eventually get to my area of the country. Two of our Indie Theaters are gone and with only one left I will have fingers crossed.

[Jefferson23]

5. I know,it's a problem for many areas, hope you get to see it! n/t

[RoccoR5955]

3. Thanks for that.

I'll have to look for it at the local independent theaters in my area.

[Jefferson23]

8. You're most welcome, Rocco.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

4. it is so sad that we do not listen to our wise women and men

...

[Jefferson23]

7. +1. n/t