'I.O.U.S.A.' -- some inconvenient financial truths
Posted
Oct 01 2008, 11:04 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
I got a massive headache at a screening of "I.O.U.S.A." on Monday night. As I left the theater I noticed that a lot of moviegoers looked a bit queasy. "They didn't tell me it was going to be a horror film," I joked to one woman. She nodded, and shuddered. Actually shuddered.
Not enough people are going to see this movie, I think, because it deals with a subject we're all really tired of hearing about: America's fiscal improvidence.
The 85-minute piece, a mix of Econ 101 and documentary film-making, needs an editor. Its narrative suffers from wasted scenes such as people walking down a hallway and uneaten salads being dumped by a Rotary Club luncheon waiter.
But if you can bear with the slow-as-sludge minutes used on student activists, average (i.e., know-nothing) Americans, road-trip footage, scenes from a Chinese factory, or Warren Buffett talking about the mythical islands of "Squanderville" and "Thriftville," you'll learn a lot about our collective financial crisis. More than you ever wanted to know, probably.
Waking us up
And that's precisely the point. Most of us are clueless about the national debt. There's always been one, we figure, and always will be one. But we never think about what it actually means. A number like $10 trillion isn't easy to comprehend unless you're an economist or a math wizard.
Film director Patrick Creadon focuses on the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour," a series of town meetings and speeches conducted across America by former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker and Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition. That organization was founded in 1992 by former Sen. Paul Tsongas, D-Mass., former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Peter Peterson. The coalition's purpose, according to its Web site, is to educate Americans about the "causes and consequences of federal budget deficits, the long-term challenges facing America's unsustainable entitlement programs, and how to build a sound economy for future generations."
This is the kind of rhetoric that makes eyes glaze, and then close. But these men are passionate about their subject, and their sense of urgency carries us along. At least it does until Creadon cuts away for pictures of college students trying to hand out pamphlets, or the Goodyear blimp floating over a Chinese waterway.
The basic message isn't just "Stop buying stuff you can't pay for, America -- and that goes double for your government!" It's also that an impossible burden is being dumped on the next generation. Walker likens it to spendthrift adults maxing out a credit card and handing it off to their grandchildren to pay.
The next generation didn't create this problem, and it's "morally wrong" to ask them to deal with it, Walker says.
There's blame enough for all
Americans are a lot like their government officials in that they spend more than they earn, the film notes. As a nation we've felt prosperous because we've had the newest of everything. But we've run up huge debts to get it and never thought about the total cost.
Walker calls this "a false sense of wealth." Many people don't have a dime in savings, and their paychecks are eaten up even before they're earned. It can't go on like this indefinitely, and the film paints some pretty sobering scenarios about what will happen if it does. How about having 42% of your salary going to income tax?
The film suggests getting involved and staying involved in local and national politics. We need to educate ourselves about what debt means, both to us and to future generations. And for Pete's sake, we need to live within our means and then save and/or invest some money.
When I was a newspaper reporter, we called certain articles "green-vegetable stories" -- you wrote them because they were good for readers. To mix metaphors, "I.O.U.S.A." is a green-vegetable movie with a lot of meat to it.
I didn't enjoy the film, but I'm glad I saw it. I hope you'll go see it, too. Take some aspirin with you, though. You'll probably need it.
