Is it a 'Wonderful Life' in today's world?

[Bgno64]

Smart Remarks:

Look at the economic arguments leveled by Potter in the film. You can hear echoes of those arguments every day on Rush Limbaugh's radio program.

George Bailey argues that being lenient in his lending standards makes for better citizens and better customers. His Building and Loan helped a few people move out of Potter's "slums."

But look at where Bailey's lax standards landed him — on the brink of ruin. It wasn't just Uncle Billy's misplacing a large sum of money, the Building and Loan was barely making it even before that. It was not a successful enterprise, if you measure "success" by profits.

For if it had been more profitable — surely it may have employed more people. Bailey himself might have made a bigger salary — which, our friends on the economic right tell us, would have had a "multiplier effect." Maybe Bailey could have afforded a maid, or might have hired carpenters — creating jobs! — to fix the leaky roof and the stair rail that were coming apart in his decrepit old home.

Or maybe he could have moved to a new home, boosting the home-sale industry.

Why, by our modern standards, George Bailey was an utter failure. Who cares how many people he helped? Who cares about the economic compassion he showed those whom Potter called the "riff-raff"; who cares how the "riff-raff's" lives were improved as a result?

What wealth trickled down from George Bailey or his lame little Building and Loan? How many jobs did he create?

But Mr. Potter created jobs, didn't he?

So it was Potter who was the real model citizen — or so our modern economic orthodoxy would have it. Were the movie remade today, it would portray Potter as the hero, Bailey as a Marxist chump. Because George Bailey, see, cared about society — whereas we know now, as Margaret Thatcher taught us, that there is no such thing as society.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Dunno

I've not heard a bell ring lately.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Phillip Stern ( who wrote the story):

>>>He was a historian and author of some 40 books and editor most known for his books on the Civil War[1] that a New York Times obituary called "authoritative" and "widely respected by scholars". As an editor, he worked at Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, and Alfred A. Knopf.[1] He compiled and annotated short story collections and the writings and letters of Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau.>>>> wiki

I was hoping to find evidence of a political subtext for "Wonderful Life".... in the form of political activism /affiliation but there doesn't seem to be anything significant in Stern's bio re. this.

(Interesting life nonetheless.) He does seem to be part of that second generation , hardscrabble, intellectuality precocious generation that appreciated and espoused egalitarian ideals pre WWII.

Apparently he stayed out of trouble, blacklist wise, in the 50s but Wonderful Life speaks for itself.

[Aristus]

3. George Bailey didn't have to have a successful business in order to have a multiplier effect.

He saved his brother from drowning. And his brother grew up to save the lives of his fellow sailors. And who knows what life-saving feats those rescued sailors may have gone on to do with the lives essentially saved by George Bailey?

Nope. The right wing will never, ever understand the message of IAWL.

[drynberg]

4. Yes, I agree.

Potter is mean, crooked and stingy.