janiAffluenza

** 1) **** Title, director and release year? ** I am annotating movie “Affluenza” directed by Joe Dominguez and Scott Simon released in 1997. This movie does not say much about oil. Therefore, I will avoid discussion about oil.  ** 2) **** What is the central argument or narrative of the film? ** This movie tries to explain affluenza which is known as a state of permanent discontent. This kind of definition surprises me because I have never met a man in my life who in always fully content with his current situation. In that context, everyone in the world is suffering from affluenza. As wealth of the society increases, more advertisements are quite natural. Movie shows some common teenager characteristic that if you want to popular, you should have stuff. However, this is true for all parts of the world. Director mentions group of individuals who voluntarily decided to relinquish their material desires. ** 3) **** What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why? ** In 1996, one million Americans filed bankruptcy which is more than total Americans graduated from the college. I would rather relate this to inflationary credit expansion by federal reserve not to consumerism. Genuine Progress Indicator can be useful to measure volunteer activities in the society. It is good to do volunteer work in the society, but I am not in favor of government mandating that volunteer work. The most interesting part of this movie is voluntary simplicity. If a group of people is willing to enjoy their life with less consumption, it can be good for them, but this should not be a mandate.   ** 4) **** What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by? Why? ** The movie at 3:25 shows that we are consuming at the rate that will deplete the world resources very fast. This argument has been heard many times in past. Three resources are most important for human living standard: oil, steel and aluminum. USA has about 2.7 trillion barrels of oil in its oil shale. Aluminum is the third largest resource available in the land after oxygen and silicon, and core of the earth is made out of iron. I do not believe that we are running out of any of these three resources. The movie shows that today we have more stuff and better life than we used to have fifty years ago. We have air conditioners, dish washers, and bigger houses. What is wrong with having all those stuff? I suspect that this comes from Marxist ideology that if you have something better than others it is probably stolen. In any class professors teach, there are students with good grades and bad grades. Are good grades of students stolen too? At 10:00, an “affluenza expert” tries to explain that we have so much stuff therefore our lives are so much stressful. I wonder, if having stuff is so bad, why nobody in the world want to live in the magnificent socialists nations? They tend to skip socialist nations to go to prosperous capitalist nations whenever they get a chance. The movie at 14:00 suggests that teen agers often seek their identity in stuff. This is true for everyone. In every society in the world, a person is respected by what he has including poor nations. I have never seen a society in the world that respects virtue over stuff. This is a fact of life. Learn to live with that. Movie suggests that income gap in rich and poor people has been greatest in the USA. This myth has been thoroughly debunked by Thomas Sowell who says that people travel from one low income position to high income position during their life and very small number of people live in their poor position forever. This transition is more important than income gap. 1/5th of world’s people live in abject poverty and need more material goods. The movie fails to suggest that these conditions are created by government. These governments have strangled their people into tyranny of socialism that gave them this poverty. Those governments enacted policies that discouraged all kinds of production. I do not see anything wrong in having a good job and living in a nice house. Stop romanticizing with peasant life. If those poor starving people have to come out of poverty, they need corporations to produce stuff for them. One cannot fill his belly with communist manifesto or Gandhi’s charkha. According to Milton Friedman, “In the human history, there has never been a system that has been more effective in eliminating poverty than free market capitalism.” ** What kinds of corrective action are suggested by the film? If the film itself does not suggest corrective action, describe actions that you can imagine being effective. ** The movie suggests religious counseling to cure affluenza. However, I do not see the results here. When I was in India, I used to go to temple with my parents. Even visitors in the temples were identified with what they have not how good their lives are. I do not see religion as a solution to over spending. This movie suggests simple living as a solution to “disease of affluenza”. This crap has been tried before in India by Gandhi. Gandhi gave an ideology “Sarvodaya”. It was a mixture of communism and simplicity. Gandhi wanted everyone to make same amount of money and live simple life. After trying “Sarvadaya” for fifty years India finally abandoned it in 1991. Even today, India is a country with maximum number of starving people in the world; both numerically and per capita.
 * Meghal Jani Affluenza 4/26/2011 **