Why haven't we heard of Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune? a GREAT

[angstlessk]

documentary film maker? Two so far that I know of:

The 1%..of which he is one:

Born Rich..have not watched yet, but I am sure it is good:

Young, good looking, rich..and yet questions his own status in life...check them out..and pass the word...get him as well known as Michael Moore, if we can!

[renate]

1. I've watched them both

They're available streaming on Netflix. Very interesting and highly recommended! I especially remember "Born Rich" because I watched it more recently; I was surprised by how much I liked Ivanka Trump (as well as Jamie Johnson, of course) and a boy whose name I can't remember, and it was kind of illuminating to see that many of these kids born with many silver spoons in their mouths really weren't all that happy--it's not just a cliche. Some of them were very nice and likeable, and some of them were icky... just like anybody else, I suppose.

[jwirr]

28. If I am not mistaken one of the Oscar Meyer heirs gave his money away and became a socail worker.

The kids often see the point.

[Aerows]

38. I'm inclined to think

That if you are born that rich and are unhappy, you are doing it wrong.

[TBF]

43. Really? Perhaps some of these folks

actually have a conscience.

[Aerows]

48. I wouldn't assume

as you did, that *I* personally have no conscience. If you are wealthy, and have the means to aid charities and foundations that can make life worth living and growing for people, that is happiness.

That's what I would do with money.

[TBF]

49. You're reading what you want into my words. nt

[annabanana]

2. Bookmarking . . very interesting. . . .n/t

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. This film Born Rich is one of the best arguments out there for a confiscatory

inheritance tax. The kids are not especially happy and the value that all that money represents becomes a sinkhole that harms the overall economy.

[cali]

5. what exactly is a confiscatory inheritance tax?

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. Something along the lines of 40% after $3M and progressing to 99.99% at $1B.

That ensues comfort for the heirs, but puts the majority of amassed wealth back into the overall society.

Buffett's heirs for example would share about $70M, I haven't calculated an amortization in years so this is an approximation, but the point is that society taking back the wealth that they create doesn't impoverish the principle's heirs, but keeps the society that creates the wealth healthy so it can continue. IOW, everybody is better off and the rich are not harmed.

[cali]

8. ah, thanks.

sounds about right to me.

[Mairead]

12. That's cursëd generous!

Why should the heirs have assured comfort?

[Egalitarian Thug]

17. There is no reason except that we tend to project our own wishes onto others.

IOW, people can be brought about to backing this as long as it is clear that the heirs will be fine. Take it all away and millions of us will jump on the "No Death Tax" bandwagon imagining that they want to leave their kids something so the rich should have the same right.

I know they fail to grasp that these are too completely different things, but these are the people that believe that the federal budget is just like their household checking account. And in the end, this would repatriate so much wealth that it would literally transform this nation, so who cares if rich kids are still rich kids.

[Mairead]

19. I bet people would go for it if the upper bound were $1M...or even $500K

since very few of us will ever have that much to leave our kids...even in the aggregate!

(I've been meaning to mention: you do know that Samuel Adams was a chicken-hawk, right?)

[Egalitarian Thug]

21. Real estate valuations require a pretty high dollar starting point or you get into

"real American" territory, i.e. farmers.

Once a story about a broke farmer with a real estate assets (the farm), whose family has to sell it off to pay the taxes gets some media attention, the deal falls apart. A million just isn't what it used to be, that's why I set the start point at three. Three million tax-free dollars quiets a lot of poverty pleading.

[Mairead]

40. Make an exception for farms, as long as they remain farms

Allow untaxed inheritance of a farm to the value of $3M -- but if the inheritor sells it or converts it, the proceeds/value are/is taxed as tho it hadn't been a farm.

[Egalitarian Thug]

23. As for Sam Adams being a Chickenhawk, please elaborate. n/t

[Mairead]

39. Not much more to say, really

He was a "let's you and them fight" guy, a genuine rabble-rouser and big talker who never got his hands dirty. He decided that army or militia service was not for him, but he didn't mind being in the legislature and making the laws.

And after the war was over, when the poor farmers out in Western Mass took part in what we call "Shays's Rebellion" against being saddled with the financial cost of the war too (he'd helped to saddle them), he self-righteously urged that they be hanged for treason!

He was a real piece of work. Terrific orator and polemicist (as in your quote), but little else.

[Rittermeister]

52. Out of a nation of 3,000,000 or so, only 40,000 served in the Continental Army.

Lot of chickenhawks back in those days.

[Mairead]

62. Quite right. But very few of them constantly urged others to fight

while refusing to take risks themselves. Adams did technically take a risk, as did the other legislators, but it was evidently a very tiny one since none of them were ever hanged or even caught.

[Rittermeister]

53. $3m sounds vaguely reasonable

Of course, that could be because I stand to inherit $2,000,000 or so.

[Egalitarian Thug]

59. Well for the sake of humanity, do something good with it.

I meet and talk with the most useless pieces of human filth every day that inherited a small bundle and waste it, and themselves, every day. They believe that now they matter and try to play with the big boys who eat them as an appetizer on their way to lunch.

$2M gives you an opportunity to make a difference, don't fuck it up!

[Rittermeister]

60. Firstly, I probably won't see a dime of it for another twenty years.

But anyway, it's not like money really is of overwhelming concern. If I wanted to be wealthy, I'd do what my family wants and go to law school; instead, I plan to get my Ph.D and teach. Maybe I'll start a scholarship with some of it or something.

[hfojvt]

4. Ivanka Trump said something I thought was funny

I read sorta the same thing in Vance Packard's book about the super-rich.

Ivanka says "My grandfather had built more housing ..."

and I wonder if her grandfather actually built even ONE house.

He financed the building of houses, I am guessing, but he tells himself, or other people tell him (or talk about him) and say "he built houses" as if all the carpenters and cement workers and electricians and plumbers and architects and such are just along for the ride while Mr. Trump builds the houses that make the whole world have shelter.

Also, I thought Newhouse was interesting. He said that his family has at least $20 billion. Yet the Forbes 400 shows Samuel Newhouse as #43 on the list with a "mere" $6.6 billion. Aha, okay, there's Donald Newhouse as #55 with $5.9 billion

[HughBeaumont]

22. Ivanka = her dad's laissez-fail beliefs minus the Birferism.

[MindMover]

6. "The public will get what the public wants...."

Last edited Tue Jun 12, 2012, 04:28 PM - Edit history (1)

If you dumb down the public, the public will get what the public wants.....

Ask a dog what they want....?

and Milton is a nutjob....."it will collapse because government gets too big..."

[Schema Thing]

9. very good stuff. thanks for sharing.

[Schema Thing]

25. If you take a look at about the 56:00 minute mark,

you can see Milton Friedman call Ronald Reagan a socialist - in no uncertain terms.

[shcrane71]

10. It truly upsets rich people to ask them about their privilege.

That's what I found most fascinating about the films.

[tclambert]

14. To build great wealth, you have to be greedy and selfish.

A generous person gives a lot away. Not a good way to build wealth. To create a large fortune, you have to keep a lot for yourself, the very definition of selfishness and greed.

Anyone born to great wealth and growing up in a very wealthy household feels terrified by the idea of living like poor people (what we would call middle class). Having to work at a crummy job so you can scrape together monthly rent and car payments? "Mummy, father, do please loan me enough to start a business!"

[Egalitarian Thug]

18. Greed and selfishness will get you rich, but to get to this level requires serious criminality.

There is a huge difference between top 10% & top 1%, and there is an even bigger difference between top 1% & top .01%. So great a difference that very few can even comprehend the scale.

[TBF]

44. Well of course it does -

they know better than anyone what is involved in having great fortune. They are not blind or stupid and know that many others have much less. To be confronted with that is unsettling. I'm surprised they give as much info as they do to Jamie, and I'm sure his parents are hoping he gives up this "hobby" soon.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

61. IIRC, when he made his first documentary, some subjects...

... tried to stop his film and renege on the release waivers the kids signed. The parents didn't want their cover blown.

[progressoid]

11. Reccomending and bookmarking.

THANKS!

[Lucky Luciano]

13. For later

[firehorse]

15. Just watched 1%, very good, thanks.

[KoKo]

16. Thanks...didn't know about this. Added to Netflix cue.

Sounds interesting...

[JDPriestly]

20. I watched close to half of the first film and loved it.

I would like to respond to Friedman's argument.

I agree that the entrepreneurs who make the first generation of wealth are motivated by the will to amass more and more and work hard because it is fun for them to see their assets overtake and way outpass their debts. In the process, the creative entrepreneurs, those who place products on the market that help people, deserve, in my opinion to enjoy what they do and should be encouraged to do more and more. They are engines of our economy.

But, they aren't the only engines of our economy. And they should be taxed at a much higher rate than they are because, the real engines that move their products and services and heat up an economy enabling progress are the customers.

In fact, clearly, without the demand of his customers, an entrepreneur fails.

Most really innovative entrepreneurs like the founder of Kinko's or Bill Gates need lots and lots of customers. And those customers have to have the wish or need to buy what the entrepreneur offers AND the money to buy or pay for the entrepreneur's products and services.

So, entrepreneurs need a healthy economy in which money is not only flowing to a small number of very rich people at the top, but also to the middle class, and yes, to those who are too poor to even be considered middle class.

The biggest problems arise, as the film maker suggests in the first scenes, when wealth is handed down from generation to generation.

Imagine a game of Monopoly. (I used to love that game.) Now imagine that you are playing against three other players -- four in all. When the game starts, one of the other players has already be awarded Broad Street and several other streets as well as hotels on the streets. What's more that player started with a bankroll 10 times the size of yours. In other words, the game starts out with one of the players having inherited enormous wealth -- like the wealthy people in the movie.

Very frankly, no matter how good or bad a player you are, if you are that player who inherited many of the properties on the board, your chance of "winning" in the end is many, many times greater than those of any other player. That advantage is magnified many times if the player who was rich to start with has a champion Monopoly player at his side (or maybe two or three) advising him on what moves to make and what to buy and sell and when.

If you are playing against that kid, you lose most if not all of the time. It's guaranteed from the outset. There is no game. And in fact, if you have ever been much, much better than your friends at a lot of games and if you win even when you try to lose, you will find that you are maybe admired, but not liked a lot. It's just the way it is.

Everybody wants to win at something. Everybody wants to win sometimes. And those who hog all the game pieces and don't let others win, can't expect to be liked. That's why games have rules. We want all the kids to be able to play as well as they can. If one kid is virtually declared the winner from the get-go, other kids have no chance to win and are unlikely to want to play at all.

And so, in our society, many, many kids with potential, creative kids who want to work hard are shut out of the process, unable to compete and become too discouraged to even try.

Occasionally, a kid wins out against all the odds. But most of the time, if you look into the details of that person's life, you find that the winners started with some huge advantage -- like money.

Of course, back to our monopoly game, if the dog walks under the tipsy card table that everyone is playing on, the board and all the pieces and maybe the cards too, get thrown around and some player who didn't get the initial advantage of the inheritance may be able to grab a few the cards for a couple of the valuable plots of land when no one is watching.

That is analogous of course to our economy when we have a boom followed by a horrendous crash. Think about what happened in the 1930s and 1940s.

But, of course, as we saw in the final days of the Bush II era, the oligarchy, the conceited upper class with its advisers and experts has learned how to buy the government and the Fed chair for good measure and just rob everybody on the board blind when the dog upsets the game board.

I favor inheritance taxes -- big ones -- on the major fortunes. And I favor trade restrictions that strongly protect lower level American jobs.

The idea of capitalism -- of rewarding creativity and hard work is great. But the idea of rewarding trust fund bums is awful.

And I am very grateful that the maker of the films who could himself have chosen a life of polo and sailing and luxury and hobnobbing with nobility has chosen to speak out on behalf of ordinary people. Thanks.

By the way, the one thing that bothered me in the movie is the bad rap for the game of croquet. We played as children although we were very, very far from rich, maybe not really even middle class. It's a lot of fun. But you have to a flat piece of land preferably with some grass on it. You definitely do not need to play croquet in white outfits. No way. Scruffy shorts are the best. I wish that game would become popular again.

Interesting article about Jamie Johnson and his family. The story of the case against Ms. Piasecka-Johnson over her inheritance is famous.

[Egalitarian Thug]

24. Don't know about Kinko's, but you should dump Bill Gates as your example.

He is the rich kid in your Monopoly game and even had the rules changed to legalize his cheating even with the built in advantage.

[JDPriestly]

29. You are probably right.

[Egalitarian Thug]

31. "Born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" describes the heir to the First Interstate banking

fortune and scion of the largest law firm in the pacific northwest just as accurately as it does that idiot jackass that inspired the phrase.

Another kick of the thread.

[CBHagman]

32. And here is where I mention that Bill Gates Sr. is an advocate for keeping the estate tax.

From 2007:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/6856.html

In the end, estate tax opponents will complain that preventing people from passing on 100 percent of their wealth to their heirs is “just not fair.” But we greatly diverge on this philosophical point. The estate tax — our nation’s only levy on accumulated wealth — is the fairest and most important tax we have.

It puts a brake on the concentration of wealth and power, generates substantial revenue from those most able to pay and encourages billions of dollars in charitable giving each year. The estate tax is not only fair but an essential component of our nation’s economic dynamism.

Without our society’s substantial investments in taxpayer-funded research, technology, education and infrastructure, the wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans would not be so robust.

The estate tax is an appropriate mechanism for those with great wealth to pay back the society that created a fertile ground for prosperity


Other links:

http://wealthforcommongood.org/oneida-daily-dispatch-estate-tax-breathes-life-into-economy/

[Egalitarian Thug]

33. I know. We completely agree, I just have the advantage of being able to see it objectively.

[JDPriestly]

51. Interesting chart. And family farmers could avoid the tax if they used

succession planning seems to me. Things like incorporating and selling stock in the corporation to the younger generation? Would that lower the taxes? I'm not an expert on that but it would seem to me to be worth exploring for a family farmer.

[Starry Messenger]

27. Just watched the first one, wow!

Thank you for posting these.

[annabanana]

30. Just finished watching the first one.

It was fascinating, watching Jamie's Dad stop himself from saying what he really felt, right towards the end. The company execs must have REALLY pounded him.

(1:13:27 - "Yes, we didn't pay that. . .forget it, this isn't going anywhere)

[JDPriestly]

34. I came back to this thread and, so far, I have watched all of the first film.

This young man did a great job handling a topic that must have been very difficult.

It's really great, because you can feel the fear of the extremely rich -- fear of losing what they have -- fear of appearing foolish in front of their peers -- fear of being social outcasts.

So, what I admire the most about the young man that made the film other than that he made a really great film is that he found the courage to overcome the social pressure he was under. He did it calmly without a lot of anger or impatience.

This is a film I highly recommend. It focuses on the humanity that is common to both the very wealthy and the very poor people who are in the movie.

Great job. I hope more people see this.

I'm looking forward to seeing the second film. I think that this young man asks the really probing questions and I hope he has a great career in movie-making. Maybe he and Michael Moore could work together, corroborate, on a film. They have such different style that I think it would be a bit tough but would result in a really good film.

[KoKo]

37. +1...Your review is is good synopsis of what I felt...just having finished watching it.

I have the other on DVD from Netflix to watch when it comes in. Should be interesting, also, if this one is any indication.

[YankmeCrankme]

41. Intriguing video, this was done 5 years ago, wonder what he thinks now

I realize he was pretty young when he did this, but I wish he would have responded to Milton Friedman's assertion that things would have been worse if he's policies had not been implemented with a comment that the 30 years prior to the 1980's when we had higher taxes, more business regulations and stronger unions the wealth increase of the 99% was more in line with the top 1% and much greater than it has been in the last 30 years.

You could really sense the unease, especially when that that financial consultant explained himself and afterwards said something like, "gee, hope that didn't come out to harsh." and preceded to dig himself deeper with his explanation over why it is good to cut social programs to reduce taxes on the rich.

Plus, at the end you could see the defeat and sadness in his dad's eyes over the story of how J&J took him to task over his film. It seemed to have taught him while you should help individuals less fortunate when you can, you aren't going to change the world for the multitudes.

[JDPriestly]

50. Yes. I had great difficulty writing my post.

On the one hand the film was great, and I hope that this young man has not been tempted by the benefits and luxury that his wealth can afford him. It would not surprise me if he has buckled.

The reason I had difficulty writing my post is that I felt the terrible disappointment that the filmmaker's father expressed not just in his words, his camera-shyness, but in his weak demeanor. He seemed utterly defeated. So sad. He reminded me of someone who has lost a loved one, a job and his home.

I have worked with homeless people, and Johnson's Dad was almost as depressed as some of them and as unrealistic.

Johnson's father must have suffered terribly from the sacrifice of the life he wanted for the life and responsibilities he got. That enormous wealth seemed to just bear down on him, to crush him. Maybe there is more to his story than I could see in the movie. But I just picked up on his sadness.

Our system does not just squash the dreams and destroy the freedom of the poor. That's what I took away from that first film.

I think I will watch the second film soon.

[northoftheborder]

35. Thank you for presenting these for our perusual...

I've watched the first one, and bookmarked for the other. Very interesting and valuable. glad to know they can be watched through Netflix. Thanks so much. Very enlightening about Buffett.... he's not exactly as he presents himself.....

[KoKo]

36. Kick...Just watched the 1% on Neflix Instant...and have ordered the DVD for the second one...

which isn't instant watch.

It's interesting to watch. Robert Reich, Milton Friedman, Ralph Nader, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates Dad and many others in this.

[OKNancy]

42. I really, really wanted to buy one of Ivanka Trump's handbags...

It was half price because it had a minor defect.... and it was just a great bag.
I felt so guilty so I looked up a little about her and her politics and her husband's too.
Well, her husband is a HUGE Democrat. So, that was enough of an excuse for me, so I bought the bag. LOL
His name is Jared Kushner if anyone wants to look him up - here is his wiki page ( I know, I know) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Kushner

[TBF]

45. I've had time to watch 1/2 of the first and bookmarked

for later. Fascinating work here - I hope Jamie keeps at it. I don't think most of the country has any idea how the one percent (and especially the top 1/10th or so of the top 1%) live and how that wealth is protected.

Taxation and redistribution is the way to take care of this - and at every philanthropic dinner I attend (I'm not top 1% but definitely closing in on that level) someone gives a speech in which they talk about "freedom, opportunity blah blah not redistribution of wealth". They are terrified that it can be taken away from them, and quite honestly some of it should. I may start making my own movies at some point, and I am nowhere near the level of Jamie.

[Scuba]

46. Just finished watching the first, certainly worth the time. The coverage of Katrina is best...

... I've seen. It also tells a poingent story about wealth disparity while exploding a few myths. Makes an excellent case for jacking up the inheritance tax. K&R.

[Poll_Blind]

47. K&R!

PB

[Raffi Ella]

54. K&R

I've seen 'Born Rich' but not 'The One Percent'. Thanks.

[Dorian Gray]

55. Born Rich

was fascinating. I haven't seen the 1 Percent yet. I'd like to.

[Zalatix]

56. This is why I make a distinction between the Rich/1% and the Plutocracy.

This guy ain't a Plutocrat, he advocates for the 99%.

[Luciferous]

57. Watching The One Percent on Netflix right now- thanks for sharing!

[JDPriestly]

58. I notice that Johnson has a 1% blog on Vanity Fair.

Here is the link.

http://www.vanityfair.com/archive/the-one-percent

I haven't had a chance to read any of his articles yet, but I am looking froward to it.