Yesterday I watched the documentary Requiem for the American Dream, which was translated into "Requiem for the American Dream" in Chinese. This documentary lasted 4 years and filmed ten views of the famous linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky on American economy and politics today.
Wise men. The person who stands at the top of human spiritual wealth. With his keen insight, Noam Chomsky tells us like Pao Ding Jie Niu: How did the United States become like this?
Simply put: the concentration of wealth creates concentration of power.
The wealth of the world is concentrated in the hands of a few people, so power is also concentrated in the hands of a few people. He said this is not unfamiliar, because Adam Smith had already put forward this point of view in his wealth of nations.
Noam Chomsky put forward 10 principles that lead to today's results:
1. Reduce democracy
Democracy can be said to be the cornerstone of modern Western society. But democracy has a bug. When the rich and the poor are uneven, democracy will gather the poor to take over the rich. This was proposed in both Aristotle and the founding of the United States. Those in power certainly do not want the regime to be turbulent, so there are two ways to solve this bug. One is to minimize the gap between the rich and the poor so that there will not be a large number of poor people. The second is to weaken democracy. Unfortunately, what the United States has adopted is to weaken democracy. So, what can be seen is the source of the populism that is happening in the world today.
2. Shape ideology
3. Redesign the economy
Since 1970, the share of US manufacturing in the gross national product has declined, while the financial industry has gradually increased. Up to now, the financial industry accounts for more than 40%, so Noam Chomsky said they play with money rather than make money. This exacerbated the divide between the rich and the poor. Especially after the financial crisis, the government used taxpayers' money to plug loopholes because it was under the control of financial institutions. As a result, the wealthy people had no shortage of money. The poor have less and less money. In the past, when the financial industry accounted for a small proportion, there were many institutions and treaties that controlled the financial industry. Due to the expansion of the financial industry, regulation has become looser. This has resulted in global flow of capital but not labor. The definition of a free market is capital free move and labor free move but now the fact is workers cannot move. Former Fed Chairman Greenspan said that what he did was to improve "job insecurity". As work became more and more unstable, workers cannot move. The possibility of us forming an alliance and being able to move is almost reduced to zero. In this way, under the circumstances of low wages and low treatment, the middle and lower classes in the United States are so "obedient." This is one of the reasons why people's grievances are so deep now.
4. Shift the burden
In the 1960s and 1970s, the taxes of the wealthy in the United States were very high. But starting with the Reagan administration, the taxes of the rich are getting lower and lower. Where does the country's taxation come from, from the poor. In this way, the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider and wider.
5.
Attack solidarity (attach solidarity) Socialism is a very sensitive word in the United States, as can be seen from the election attack on Sanders. In the United States, socialism is simply equivalent to communism, and communism is absolutely necessary. In order to weaken the development of socialism in the United States, all state-led behaviors are unreasonable, such as public education, public medical care, nursing homes, etc. These not only make the young generation now have to bear expensive tuition fees, but also make people less treat others. More compassion. Originally, paying taxes was to build these systems, but then people would ask, why should I pay taxes to support other elderly people. The damage to the entire national system is quite serious.
6. Control management (run the regulators)
The business is regulated is running the regulators. The managed company is actually in the management. That is to say, the managed commercial company, etc., either bought it through some means or entered it by itself, or participated in the process of formulating regulations. Since the regulations are made by these people, of course the regulations will benefit them. So this exacerbates their business risks, because once they fail, the government will always pay to help them, such as some companies in 08 too big to fail.
7. engineer elections
8. keep the rabble in line
less than 7% of workers in the United States have unions.
9. Manufacture consent
is bombarded by advertising media, and the information that young people now receive comes from the TV network. They do not go to the library during their free time, so they cannot make rational judgments.
10.
It goes without saying to marginalize the population .
From the above ten points, we can see the root cause of the popularity of populism in the United States. So, what should a democratic society do? How to go?
This documentary does not talk about it. Even speaking, it doesn't work in the United States. Large consortia still control the formulation of national policies. The US hegemony policy will not change, so it will continue to burn money. By the way, there is also Chomsky on youtube talking about American hegemonism and saying that the United States is the largest terrorist in the world. This is also true. It is just said from the mouth of an American, is it absurd? But fortunately, the United States is at least free of speech here. No one arrested him just because he said this. On the contrary, everyone respected his criticism very much. A country with a sense of mind should tolerate these voices and let it continue to speak. Of course, a promising country should examine and correct its own mistakes from criticism. Obviously, the United States has not done it, and no country in the world may be able to do it. We can only hope that a great leader can do it in the future.
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