On Tuesday’s NPR Morning Edition, actor Ben Affleck was selling his new movie about corporate layoffs, Company Men, and anchorman Steve Inskeep carefully led the actor onto a soapbox to lecture about the immorality of American capitalism and financiers who do nothing but “move money back and forth”:
INSKEEP: There’s a line in Company Men that’s staying with me. Tommy Lee Jones is at a corporate conference table. Someone else at the conference table is discussing their plans to lay off a bunch of workers. And nearly all the workers being laid off are older, which could be construed as being wrong or illegal. Someone at the table says: “Oh, no. This is going to pass legal scrutiny.” And Jones responds: “I always thought we aimed for a little higher standard than that.”
AFFLECK: That speaks so perfectly to people’s feelings about our country. It’s like it’s just about getting by, or people can like let people go if they can get away with it, that there’s no deeper sense of right or wrong. The banks shouldn’t — people shouldn’t make such a giant profit off just moving money back and forth. And CEOs’ pay shouldn’t be 200 times the average worker. It used to be nine times.
Grouch: I have nothing against Ben Affleck for making $37M a year or a $154K a day or $321 per second on very little talent. More power to him. Wish I was so lucky. On the other hand, how can he live with himself knowing he makes 400 times more than the average Hollywood stagehand. I think it would only be fair if he spread the wealth around, and insist on every movie he makes that he gets paid exactly 9 times what the lowest paid stagehand makes. What do you think? Wouldn't that be just and moral? What's so special about talking and looking stupid in front of the camera anyway?
I think it would be just. Maybe somebody should ask him how he thinks movies get financed. Maybe somebody should ask him how venture capital works or who takes it on the chin when a movie bombs.
ReplyDeleteTalking and looking stupid in front of the camera can make you a lot of money. We all should try. The only problem is no one is interested in us. LOL People love to count someone else's money. So, instead counting his own dollars, Ben counts bankers'.
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