A vfew of the super wealthy elite from the inside

[sdv]

Jamie Johnson, a 27-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, made this movie about the super wealthy. He used his position to get some interesting interviews and insights.

http://Jamie Johnson, a 27-year-old ...utical fortune

Jamie also made the movie Born Rich, but I think this movie, The one per cent, although still very amateur, is more insightful.

[Heartsong]

trouble with link.

[spiritguide]

Need link fixed....does not work.

[A Simple Human]

The One Percent (2006)

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmlX3fLQrEc

The One Percent is an 80-minute documentary which focuses on the growing "wealth gap" in America, as seen through the eyes of filmmaker Jamie Johnson, a 27-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune. Johnson, who cut his film teeth at NYU and made the Emmy®-nominated 2003 HBO documentary Born Rich, here sets his sights on exploring the political, moral and emotional rationale that enables a tiny percentage of Americans - the one percent - to control nearly half the wealth of the entire United States. The film Includes interviews with Nicole Buffett, Bill Gates Sr., Adnan Khashoggi, Milton Friedman, Robert Reich, Ralph Nader and other luminaries.

[spiritguide]

Got a link for the documentary ...... http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/born-rich/

Interesting

[Flash]

I don't know how to put it, but I got a sudden higher admiration for Bill Gates' father.

I remember looking at a Rose's interview of Bill Gate with his father, and as Gates' father was speaking, Bill was looking at him and you could see love coming out of his eyes for his dad. I was very surprised because such expression rarely transpire from TV cameras during an interview (and Rose does not have the best while filming imo), eyes expressions are usually are dull down, mostly that the camera was not targetting Bills' eyes. He had to have tremendous love for his dad for this to show up in a small studio, when the camera is having the dad in its main frame.

Some people here will probably say that is it, I do not understand how terrible the Gates are within the PTB and I will answer maybe, however, what I have seen that day in Bill's eye does not lie. He loves very dearly at least one person. Now I understand a bit better why.

The other point I would like to make is that it is frightening to see how detached the rich are getting from the rest of the world. Frightening because they now have a life and death power on people. I have seen the arrogant side of some of these inheritance kids, ....truly frightening.

I had a friend who was teaching cross cultural psychology in one of the best universities. She gave a test to this very rich crowd of young people, on the guilt feeling related to their wealth versus the poors, the 99%. In the past she told me, studies showed that very rich people would have guilt about being so rich and this would make them give away and create wealth for the poorers as well. She was amazed at the actual results (this was in 2001). Most of the very rich students had no guilt at all anylonger, lots of justification with God or natural selection, but no guilt. She told me this was a very bad sign for society at large, that the new generations of the richest would become detached and not give anymore, they were kind of lacking in consciousness. She was quite right I think.

By the way, guilt is not needed when love for its fellow human is there, it does the job, but for this, hearts need to open up, which is not often the habits of the rich. IMO

[sdv]

Thanks for fixing the link, and apologies for the spelling error in the thread title.

I found the following interesting:

How the super wealthy are so focused on increasing their wealth and providing for the next five generations (gosh would it not be great if they had the same attitude to the environment and the rest of society).
How perhaps being able to have anything you want and do anything you want becomes a goal in itself (one man talks about going to the Moon, and chews gum throughout the interview!)
How the government is bribed through campaign donations to manipulate laws and the market to favour the rich getting richer.

I am not sure that I agree with estate (inheritance) taxes as it has always come across to me as government looting. However, I do think that income from investments should be taxed at a higher rate than income from labour and service. By doing the opposite we have put the value of money above the value of labour and service, and thus above human beings.

The decline of morals seems to have infiltrated all societies, and perhaps not only the rich. Here in my country some of the poor are violent and destructive and have no value for human life or the environment, and some of the wealthy will lie, cheat and steal (especially from social programmes) and exploit to increase personal wealth. Fifteen years ago most of my work was with NGOs and their sole aim was to do good (research, debates, education). Now, there are hardly any NGOs left in my industry.