Young Michael accidentally starts a run on the family bank.
HJC Mary Poppins (1964): why banking is all about confidence
MONEYWORKS GOLD 7 REVIEW MOVIE
The most perfected form of it is found in The Matrix, the Wachowskis' 1999 sci-fi movie in which people don't even know they are being used as organic batteries to power their machine overlords. Marxists used to call it "false consciousness". These people think they are happy because they have come to accept – "internalise" is the fancy word here – the values of their oppressors. Some even oppose changes that would improve their lot: many European women, for example, opposed the introduction of female suffrage in the early 20th century. Moreover, many people who are oppressed, exploited or discriminated against, say that they are happy. But even ignoring the issue of whether happiness is something that can be measured, we can't really trust "happiness studies" because we cannot totally trust people's judgments on their own happiness.įirst of all, there are all kinds of "adaptive preferences", in which people reinterpret bad situations to make them more bearable: "sour grapes" – deciding that what you could not get is actually not as good as you had thought – is a classic example. There are at least two reasons: first, because money is only one of the things we want in our lives and second, because even when it comes to money, we often make poor decisions as consumers, influenced by advertising or driven by our desire to keep up with the Joneses.Īs a result, some economists have tried to measure wellbeing by asking people directly how happy they are. It is increasingly accepted that income, the economists' traditional measure of human welfare, is not a good indicator of wellbeing. But are they happy? Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BROS Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix. Paul Mason The Matrix (1999): you can't trust happiness For me, the utter brilliance of the movie is only possible because it creates this unreal cosmos around speculation, crime and the brainless rich. The movie was made by people who remembered the Depression, so for all its crazy humour it is also a sombre lesson in the futility of boom-time societies in which the sources of income are gambling, speculation and casual sex work, but never actual work for wages and production. Sweet Sue does not reprimand Sugar directly but has to get her underling, Beanstalk, to do it for her. In between there is the world of the train, which seems to have no workers aboard it, only the female band, where the hierarchical structures of mid-20th-century work and gender are lovingly replicated. Then Florida, in which elderly millionaires, before the Wall Street Crash, squander their money on leisure, yachts and chorus girls. Consider the world of the movie: Chicago, in which the main players are organised criminals and inept cops, and in which even talented musicians have to live on loans from their girlfriends and on the proceeds of gambling. But it is also a brilliant portrayal of what's wrong with rentier capitalism. It has cross-dressing and shtick so rapid that even after 10 viewings you are still finding new things funny. Some Like It Hot is rightly acclaimed as a brilliant, quirky comedy. Some Like It Hot: Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon expose rentier capitalism. Ha-Joon Chang Some Like It Hot (1959): the trouble with rentier capitalism Under pressure from impatient shareholders, many companies, especially in the US and the UK, have become far too short-term-oriented and stopped investing in machines and technologies that only offer long-term returns. In the quarter of a century since the film appeared, the balance has shifted too much in the direction of short-term shareholders, prompting criticisms of "quarterly capitalism". You cannot leave companies at the mercy of short-term-oriented financiers such as Gekko but without pressure from shareholders, it is difficult to restrain inefficiency. The movie depicts a fundamental dilemma at the heart of modern capitalism. Of course, his real intention is to asset-strip the company – sell off the valuable assets and close it down – rather than develop it. Douglas plays Gordon "Greed is Good" Gekko, a ruthless corporate raider who wins the support of the shareholders managing a takeover bid for a company by pointing out the inefficiencies of corporate bureaucracy – the company has 33 vice-presidents, doing God knows what.
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