Kharista Nandakirana 18/426636/EK/21967 Requiem For The American Dream Brief Summary Requiem for the American Dream is a documentary film, using interviews with an American activist and professor noah Chomsky. First thing mentioned in this film is vicious cycle of concentration of wealth and power, he explained that political power translated into legislation that increases the concentration of wealth, where concentration of wealth yields concentration of power. The cycle was already described by Adam Amith in “The Wealth of Nations”. Later on this film, Chomsky talked about the “10 principles of concentration of wealth and power” that exposed power, wealth and corruption in the U.S. The first principal is reduce democracy, In the U.S There’s a struggle in the democratizing tendency where sectors of the population were usually apathetic and passive became more active and organized. The second principal is shape ideology, A call for business to use it resources to carry out an offensive to beat this growing democratizing wave. The third principal is redesign the economy also known as financialization the economy. Back then, banks were regulated and a regulatory system had been established. Financialization is part of what led to his vicious cycle of concentration of power and wealth. The fourth principal us shift the burden. American corporations shifted the burden of sustaining society into the rest of the population. The fifth principal is attack solidarity. U.S in 1950 was poorer than today, but it could handle free mass higher education. Nowadays, richer society claims it doesn’t have the resources. That’s the general attack on principles that are the basis of the health and prosperity of our society. The sixth principal is run the regulators, when the business being regulated running the regulators. Today, bank lobbyists are actually writing the laws of financial regulation… It gets to that extreme. The seventh principal is engineer elections. When concentration of wealth yields to concentration of political power, the cost of elections forces the political parties into the pockets of major corporations. The eight principal is keep the rable in line, is the right of free association which would the right to form unions. It’s considered so far out of the spectrum of American politics. That it has never been considered. The ninth principal is manufacture consent, The idea is to try to control everyone in this society to turn the whole society into perfect system. The perfect Kharista Nandakirana 18/426636/EK/21967 system would be a society based on a pair. The pair is us and the Internet, this would represents what the proper life would be. The tenth principal is Marginalize the Population. Martin Gilens said the relation between public attitudes and public policy which shows that 70% of the population has no way of influencing policy. The conclusion is If the society is based on control by private wealth, it will reflect the desire to maximize personal gain at the expense of others.
