The One Percent

There may be widespread fears of an impending recession running through the minds of most Americans, but there aren't among the country's richest citizens. Contrary to common assumption, many of the wealthiest Americans aren't worried about the weakening economy at all, they are actually excited about it.

To them, the crisis in the housing market, the recent slide in stock prices, and the general loss in purchasing power for millions of Americans have resulted in the thinning of the aristocratic ranks, or in other words, have decreased demand for the highest level of luxury living. Ironically, for the mega-rich, recession brings with it the ability to live well at a lower cost and with less of a hassle.

For the past eight years, I have been chronicling in documentary films the lives of the vastly rich and the role they play in the economy. As a member of the family that founded the Johnson and Johnson pharmaceutical company, I have been given unprecedented access to Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Forbeses, Gateses, Buffetts and Bloombergs. I have seen firsthand how many of these families run their businesses and I have watched them react to sudden shifts in the market and changing economic conditions. And now, with the threat of a recession looming on the horizon, I hear many of them saying-" Thank God, it's about time."

Paul Orfalea, for example, who is the founder of the Kinkos copy centers and a subject in my current film, The One Percent, used to like to tell me about a jet he owned called a Challenger. According to Paul it was the perfect plane for him, but he never got to use it because every time he tried to make arrangements to travel, he was told that the plane was actually chartered out to someone else. Originally Paul intended to make the plane available for charter only on occasion to help cover annual maintenance expenses, but he soon realized that there was so much demand for the plane and it was booked so far in advance that he was rarely able to fly in it himself. When I asked Paul what he thought the reason was behind the demand for his plane, he only had one culprit to blame -- the surging economy.

Another subject I recently interviewed blamed what he called mere "centa-millionaires" for the breakdown in exclusivity of his elitist world. For him, the overnight stars of the seven-year bull market not only overcrowded private air travel, but also drove up the price of high-end real estate. Buying a third home in the Hamptons became a burdensome experience for him. As far as he was concerned, there was just too much urgent demand, and although he could easily afford the asking prices, he found the heightened numbers personally offensive. He did assure me at the end of our conversation, however, that as soon as he sees the recession start to hit people, he'll be the first to buy.

While working on films about the vastly rich, I have seen countless displays of excessive privilege that serve as markers for the staggering inequality that plagues our country. Often times I have imagined that after recording scenes of wealthy prep-school students saying to less fortunate classmates, "Fuck you, I'm from New York. I could buy your family, piss off" that it couldn't get any worse. I believed that the distinction between The Two Americas that people commonly speak of was as pronounced as it could ever be.

But in recent days, watching the super-rich exuberantly anticipate a recession has forced me to realize that I was wrong to assume that the indicators of inequality wouldn't become more conspicuous. It appears that the opposite is true, that under the threat of hard times the mega-wealthy aren't feeling a greater responsibility to reflect upon the problems surrounding the growing wealth gap; they are, in fact, trying to fatten their wallets and further insulate their lifestyles.

I had hoped that foreboding economic circumstances would have caused the ultra-rich to think not just of themselves and increasing their own personal affluence. Unfortunately, however, too many of them lack concern and without this concern, the divisive imbalance will only worsen with recession.

Comments

[infinitelight]

Jamie - Your documentary was beautifully done. The man helping to drive you who said that he was from one of the wealthiest families on earth - not rich in money, but in love - I carry his words on a notecard as a reminder of the wise and good on this planet.

I lived in a variation of your world for a time growing up. It never made sense to me - the secrecy - and the imbalances. There is a sense of wanting to hide behind the wealth (I tried to wear the same clothes nearly every day so people wouldn't know) - and a sense of overwhelming gratitude for the path you're able to walk upon. When my family lost everything - I found myself on the other side. It was one of the greatest lessons and taught me that what you have within is what no one can ever take away.

I admire what you are doing and the path that you have chosen. I know how hard it is to ask questions of those who don't want to talk about wealth. Maybe they don't really understand why have what they do. Maybe they have the same fears we all do about who we are, and where we're going - but they have more shelter and space from the internal storm. Maybe they don't want to hear those whispers that hum in their souls but you press them to listen.

I have this theory that if we trace the imbalances energetically back to the beginning of everything... the source and the solution are the same. Idealism says we're all one - we are, at a cellular and spiritual level. But in this reality, the gap of inequality and injustice that divides us fractures our wholeness into distant memories of One.

Peace.

[john6626]

I appreciate your documentaries. It allows us to look into an exclusive world and see that it's plagued with the same problems found in the middle class. In "The One Percent", I was very disappointed to see how Mr. Buffet treated his granddaughter for exercising her freedom of speech. But, I see the same struggles in the people you interviewed that I recognize in myself and others. So I always remember what I have read from Buddhist teachings, happiness and contentment can't be measured by how much or how little we have, but rather in how little we want.

[AmericanDreams]

Jamie,

Fantastic work on this documentary¦¦¦¦¦we have much work to do yet!

Your parents both seem to have instilled in you a sense of good social conscious and you posses the type of wealth that it takes to effect change for millions of people and alter their life in a positive way.
You have already turned a small documentary with a modest budget into a tool that will enable millions to ask "why"¦and from that single question change will roll like the tide!

We need change in America; we did years ago when the tea tax was raised to benefit the wealthy by putting an undo burden on lower and middle income families.
Many government agencies have morphed from their original charge to help the public to
now helping themselves to the public"s pocket books.

If we learn nothing from our past we are doomed to make the same mistakes and suffer grave consequences.

Please continue to use your abilities for good¦..there"s lots of work to do and your contribution to society is a reflection of your family"s moral fiber!

I am a member of broadcast media and am eager to help you on your next project.

Dave

[BeyondGoodAndEvil]

I love your documentaries. They are enlightening for those who don't get a chance to see how the 1% thinks and lives.

Many years ago I met someone who made hundreds of millions of dollars short selling during the market crash in 1987. The short sellers and speculators are going to clean up soon, and they are literally salivating at the thought of padding their already bulging bank accounts.

I would really be interested to see you do some digging into the financial schemes, accounting shenanigans, tax avoidance, and money market machinations of the 1% who own this country.

[PacificGatePost]

Mr. Johnson,

The result of the 1 percent"s narcissistic inattention to the concerns of millions of Americans feeling disenfranchised, is now materializing an unexpected outcome " the election of a President with little experience or track record, and most evidently, opaque motives¦. http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-social-phenomenon.html ¦.

The disconnected are seeking a return of "opportunity". Current economic events and the upcoming election have created an anomaly that will send an individual to the White House on a road paved with little more than fervent hope.

Keep up the insightful work. More than any others, the OnePercent should consider it essential viewing for thorough analysis.

James Raider

[EdwardUlyssesCate]

The actual excitement is because the 400 year old goal, specified in the 1889 book, The Great Red Dragon, is close to being accomplished. The beneficiaries of its agents, such as Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Forbeses, Gateses, Buffetts and Bloombergs may or may not share in that goal, as they don't always inform their agents of their intentions. Agents are exposed by having to put most of their money into foundations so that the real owners do not lose control when that agents pass on. Sure, they keep up the illusions, and family members get a share of the booty, but what good is billions of dollars of wealth when the wind carries the stench of a rotting city through their gated community. Like the title of a recent commentary at GreatRedDragon.com, "There Is No Place To Run." Jamie Johnson has demonstrated empathy and a conscience. This is good. So did his father when he made his film. To protect Jamie and the rest of his family, his father accepted the order to stop immediately. That demonstrates that someone else has the REAL power.

[TheOtherMaven]

How do you get line breaks between paragraphs? I have tried everything I can think of, even peeping at the page source code, and NOTHING works..
Will I HAVE to resort to leaving periods where I want line breaks?.
And will even that work?
/////
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Answer: NO IT WILL NOT.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Well, at the end of the day, recessions and elections aside, people that hold great wealth tend to kind of run the show, and that's how it is. Whether or not you choose to play their games is up to you, but baby, it's cold outside, and when you've got enough money, you can even hire people with machine guns and stuff to take care of 'the locals'. They like this game, and don't care much for borders or laws, because they're kind of used to being a law unto themselves. Most Powerful. Well, Uncle Dick is one such Most Powerful person, and his influence, and the influence of his cronies, have helped keep the country oil-dependent all these years, and hey, you got a nice little racket, why not run it? It's all good, right, what's a couple billion between friends? Hey, got a 'homeless' person here, security!

[keeplookin]

When Rome fell, due immediately to the inferior numbers and effectiveness of the remaining home troops, the only thing left for the top 1% left in Rome (and wherever the marauding bands chose to go), was to go sit out on their front porches, and wait to have their heads chopped off, which they were. There was literally nothing else to do - they had bled the nation and the culture white to assuage their own needs/desires, and it broke the entire society, and took ALL down with it. Today's top 1% are either flat-out evil, or merely historically-ignorant clods (clots?).

The inderpinnings of a society ARE a phenomenon, and they NEED to be there, otherwise the pinnings break for ALL.
But there I go THINKING again...

[ashleybaines]

There are no small businesses left in places like Aspen. When the last independent women's clothing store went out of business - the Aspen Times did a story on why. She could not compete with stores opened to LOSE MONEY.

Yes, you heard right. Corporations open stores in places like Aspen, Vail, and Santa Fe and Telluride - to lose money AND provide a tax free getaway for their board members and employees.

There are no more breakfast restaurants left in Aspen for the same reason...commercial real estate prices are so high now [because firms do not have to make a profit] that breakfast just doesn't bring in enough money to pay the rent.

All those Santa Fe Galleries? -- they keep dilettante wives FAAR FAAR away from Long Island in their second home paid for by YOU AND ME.

So long as she loses money in Santa Fe for the larger business somewhere else [the Mall in Santa Fe is a case in point - losing money for Insurance companies and Goldman Sachs for the last 15 years].

So Santa Fe real estate prices are through the ceiling because there is no market at work. The MARKET is driven by people wanting second homes...so they open a gallery, or other business that is intended to LOSE MONEY for a profitable business elsewhere.

This isn't capitalism... it's cannibalism by the rich.

I've spent my lifetime in places like this. Telluride is the same. Some of the locals positioned themselves to be successful in the small downtown area... but the Mountain Village? -- all designer shops losing money so the big boys can have a tax free haven in the Rockies.

Anybody who was in local government in Aspen or Telluride knows this stuff. The place is crawlin with floor length minks who are there ONLY because their company loses money there for the larger company that needs the 'write offs'... this is sick.

[Sundialsvc4]

Not a bad "how dare they!" story, Jamie, but I must say that it contains way too much sophistry. I wouldn't be so sure that even the uber-riche will not be affected; the last time we had a Great Depression they certainly were. Furthermore, in those days they had Real Gold... figuratively or literally speaking.

There was a nation full of genuine economic activity that was momentarily separated from genuine economic demand. This flow was disrupted for several years by the effect of rampant speculation, but both a positive and a negative electrical pole were still energized and still close-by to one another. When belligerent European powers provided the right conduit for that pent-up force, it won a war by means of production because it possessed the means to do so.

The trouble today, for the riche and the poore alike, is that the positive pole of that battery is now half a world away, and in another government's hands, and we have done just about everything in our power to thoroughly frighten and piss-off those governments.

I predict that the American economy will suffer quite severely in the next years partly due to the fact that economic privation is the equivalent of a major military victory against a nation which possesses far too much conventional firepower to take-on in a conventional fight. America has become a nation bristling with guns and body-armor ... and no pants. How and where do you strike such an enemy?

Exactly. (Ahem.)

Perhaps then that enemy will turn inward upon itself, clean up its own act, eject and prosecute its leaders. And maybe, just maybe, become once again what it once was, and earn once again its highly esteemed place in the world community.

Maybe.

[mbaty]

Why worry? I'll just eat cake.

[research]

Just like before the depression, there is plenty of money in the system.

And just like a deadly blood clot, it is concentrated in the top .1% or so.

The answer is to tax the rich.

[hiprogloho]

Speaking of the one percent, if in a perfect world their right wing handlers had an honest campaign message for 2008, this would be it:

Drink The Coolaid: Vote Republican

The Grand Old Party promises to ship more jobs overseas, crowd our cities with illegal migrant slaves and burn the US candle of freedom at both ends so the top 1% can reap the $ benefits of selling the US to China, Mexico and Israel.

Congress's Club GOPed has a steady supply of horny perverts to molest your kids while the black gold industry poisons the air with global warming so melting pot havenots can cook with the bad weather to compliment lack of assimilation.

As a rule, we'll continue to bully a complicit fascist media into selling you the fear card and fill monopolized right wing agenda airwaves with lots of fake news spin, celebrity psychodrama and an evil pop culture of violence and death.

Since we don't make anything in America anymore, we'll still export phoney war to rape global resources and keep the 3rd world at bay. Meanwhile, we'll leave our borders open for sacking to show we didn't just invent the "war on terror".

If you get sick, healthcare is by your side. Our Big Pharma friends make toxic quick fix drugs for nagging health problems easily treated by a better diet and more exercise that cause half a dozen deadly side effects. See our commercials.

Lastly, after 2 terms of sending your sons to the grave in Iraq we got a senile leader also ready for the grave. 70 something war whore John McCain who would rather be Bush No. 3 than check into a rest home, go to bed and take his meds.

As a Huff Post truth troll with opinions unbought and unsold who tells it like it is, I'm a relentless zealot of logic, reason, common sense, nature, science and political reality. And both my conscience and humanity approves this message.

[laocoon]

When a depression hits where does it leave the top 1%? I think it just puts them in a better position to get bargain prices on more property. Mr. A's wealth goes from 50 billion to 25 billion but now he 1000 times wealthier than the average person instead of just 500 times wealthier. is he better or worse off. I think much better. Wealth is all about one thing and that is control of the other earthlings.