Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: Face it, you'll never be rich

Why do Americans still believe in the rags-to-riches
fairy tale? In this final extract from his explosive new
book, Michael Moore explains why the corporate bosses
will never let the American dream become a reality
Michael Moore
Tuesday October 7, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4768706-103680,00.html
Perhaps the biggest success in the war on terror has
been its ability to distract the nation from the
corporate war on us. In the two years since the attacks
of 9/11, American businesses have been on a punch-drunk
rampage that has left millions of average Americans with
their savings gone and their pensions looted, their
hopes for a comfortable future for their families
diminished or extinguished. The business bandits (and
their government accomplices) who have wrecked our
economy have tried to blame it on the terrorists, they
have tried to blame it on Clinton, and they have tried
to blame it on us.
But, in fact, the wholesale destruction of our economic
future is based solely on the greed of the corporate
mojahedin.
The takeover has happened right under our noses. We've
been force-fed some mighty powerful "drugs" to keep us
quiet while we're being mugged by this lawless gang of
CEOs. One of these drugs is called fear and the other is
called Horatio Alger.
The fear drug works like this: you are repeatedly told
that bad, scary people are going to kill you, so place
all your trust in us, your corporate leaders, and we
will protect you. But since we know what's best, don't
question us if we want you to foot the bill for our tax
cut, or if we decide to slash your health benefits or
jack up the cost of buying a home. And if you don't shut
up and toe the line and work your ass off, we will sack
you - and then just try to find a new job in this
economy, punk!
The other drug is nicer. It is first prescribed to us as
children in the form of a fairy tale - but a fairy tale
that can actually come true! It is the Horatio Alger
myth. Alger was one of the most popular American writers
of the late 1800s. His stories featured characters from
impoverished backgrounds who, through pluck and
determination and hard work, were able to make huge
successes of themselves in this land of boundless
opportunity. The message was that anyone can make it in
America, and make it big.
We are addicted to this happy rags-to-riches myth in
this country. People in other industrialised democracies
are content to make a good enough living to pay their
bills and raise their families. Few have a cutthroat
desire to strike it rich. They live in reality, where
there are only going to be a few rich people, and you
are not going to be one of them. So get used to it.
Of course, rich people in those countries are very
careful not to upset the balance. Even though there are
greedy bastards among them, they do have some limits
placed on them. In the manufacturing sector, for
example, British CEOs make 24 times as much as their
average workers - the widest gap in Europe. German CEOs
only make 15 times more than their employees, while
Swedish CEOs get 13 times as much. But here in the US,
the average CEO makes 411 times the salaries of their
blue-collar workers. Wealthy Europeans pay up to 65% in
taxes, and they know better than to bitch too loud about
it or the people will make them fork over even more.
In the US, we are afraid to sock it to them. We hate to
put our CEOs in prison when they break the law. We are
more than happy to cut their taxes even as ours go up!
We don't want to do anything that could harm us on that
day we end up millionaires. It's so believable because
we have seen it come true. In every community there's at
least one person prancing around as the rags-to-riches
poster child, conveying the not-so-subtle message: "SEE!
I MADE IT! YOU CAN, TOO!!"
It is this seductive myth that led so many millions of
working people to become investors in the stock market
during the 90s. They saw how rich the rich got in the
80s and thought, "Hey, this could happen to me!"
The wealthy did everything they could to en courage this
attitude. Understand that in 1980 only 20% of Americans
owned a share of stock. Wall Street was the rich man's
game and it was off-limits to the average Joe and Jane.
Near the end of the 1980s, though, the rich were pretty
much tapped out with their excess profits and could not
figure out how to make the market keep growing. I don't
know if it was the brainstorm of one genius at a
brokerage firm or the smooth conspiracy of all the well-
heeled, but the game became, "Hey, let's convince the
middle class to give us their money and we can get even
richer!"
Suddenly, it seemed like everyone I knew jumped on the
stock market bandwagon. They let their unions invest all
their pension money in stocks. Story after story ran in
the media about how everyday working people were going
to be able to retire as near-millionaires! It was like a
fever that infected everyone. Workers immediately cashed
their pay cheques and called their broker to buy more
stocks. Their broker!
There were ups and downs, but mostly ups, lots of ups,
and you could hear yourself saying, "My stock's up 120%!
My worth has tripled!" You eased the pain of daily
living by imagining the retirement villa you would buy
some day or the sports car you could buy tomorrow if you
wanted to cash out now. No, don't cash out! It's only
going to go higher! Stay in for the long haul! Easy
Street, here I come!
But it was a sham. It was all a ruse concocted by the
corporate powers-that-be who never had any intention of
letting you into their club. They just needed your money
to take them to that next level, the one that insulates
them from ever having to actually work for a living.
They knew the big boom of the 90s couldn't last, so they
needed your money to artificially inflate the value of
their companies so their stocks would reach such a
phantasmal price that, when it was time to cash out,
they would be set for life, no matter how bad the
economy got.
And that's what happened. While the average sucker was
listening to all the blowhards on CNBC tell him that he
should buy even more stock, the ultra-rich were quietly
getting out of the market, selling off the stocks of
their own company first. In September 2002, Fortune
magazine released a staggering list of these corporate
crooks who made off like bandits while their company's
stock prices had dropped 75% or more between 1999 and
2002.
At the top of the list of these evildoers was Qwest
Communications. At its peak, Qwest shares traded at
nearly $40. Three years later the same shares were worth
$1. Over that period, Qwest's director, Phil Anschutz,
and its former CEO, Joe Nacchio, and the other officers
made off with $2.26bn simply by selling out before the
price hit rock bottom.
Meanwhile, the average investor stayed in, listening to
all the rotten advice. And the market kept going down,
down, down. More than four trillion dollars was lost in
the stock market. Another trillion dollars in pension
funds and university endowments is now no longer there.
So, here's my question: after fleecing the American
public and destroying the American dream for most
working people, how is it that, instead of being drawn
and quartered and hung at dawn at the city gates, the
rich got a big wet kiss from Congress in the form of a
record tax break, and no one says a word? How can that
be?
I think it's because we're still addicted to the Horatio
Alger fantasy drug. Despite all the damage and all the
evidence to the contrary, the average American still
wants to hang on to this belief that maybe, just maybe,
he or she (mostly he) just might make it big after all.
So don't attack the rich man, because one day that rich
man may be me!
Listen, friends, you have to face the truth: you are
never going to be rich. The chance of that happening is
about one in a million. Not only are you never going to
be rich, but you are going to have to live the rest of
your life busting your butt just to pay the cable bill
and the music and art classes for your kid at the public
school where they used to be free.
And it is only going to get worse. Forget about a
pension, forget about social security, forget about your
kids taking care of you when you get old because they
are barely going to have the money to take care of
themselves.
If you are still clinging to the belief that not all of
Corporate America is that bad, consider this example of
what our good captains of industry have been up to of
late.
Are you aware that your company may have taken out a
life insurance policy on you? Oh, how nice of them, you
say? Yeah, here's how nice it is.
During the past 20 years, companies including Disney,
Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Dow Chemical, JP Morgan Chase
and Wal-Mart have been secretly taking out life
insurance policies on their low- and mid-level employees
and then naming themselves - the corporation - as the
beneficiary! That's right: When you die, the company -
not your survivors - gets to cash in. If you die on the
job, all the better, as most life-insurance policies are
geared to pay out more when someone dies young. And if
you live to a ripe old age, even long after you've left
the company, the company still gets to collect on your
death. And regardless of when you croak, the company is
able to borrow against the policy and deduct the
interest from its corporate taxes.
Many of these companies have set up a system for the
money to go to pay for executive bonuses, cars, homes or
trips to the Caribbean. Your death goes to helping make
your boss a very happy man sitting in his Jacuzzi on St
Bart's.
And what does Corporate America privately call this
special form of life insurance?
Dead Peasants Insurance.
That's right. "Dead Peasants". Because that's what you
are to them - peasants. And you are sometimes worth more
to them dead than alive.
· These edited extracts are taken from Dude, Where's My
Country? by Michael Moore, published today by Allen
Lane, price £16.99.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
-- 
"That's part of your problem: you haven't seen enough movies.
 All of life's riddles are answered in the movies." (Grand Canyon)
AP uin:283264
www.iaciners.org
UFV:
Al primo soffio di vento (Franco Piavoli, ITA, 2002)
Equilibrium
Mio Cognato
La Lingua Del Santo
Amelie
Wasabi
Il Ritorno Di Cagliostro
Les Triplettes de Belleville
, 1979, col

 will never let the American dream become a reality
        Bello.  Se fossimo in Italia, si potrebbe aggiungere un
paragrafo sulle banche che rivendono ai loro clienti junk bonds come
Cirio e l'Argentina, per non tenersi loro la fregatura... Dei miei
parenti ancora piangono.
        EGL

 Cirio e l'Argentina, per non tenersi loro la fregatura...
A quello sulle banche aggiungerei un paio di capitoli...
Ciao "Ernesto", ben ritrovato.

 Ciao "Ernesto", ben ritrovato.
        Grazie Persy, come va?
        EGL