1 Social Science 125 H Film Review Essay

American society: Inequality and inefficiency behind ruling class’s prosperity America is a capitalistic society in which powerful corporations are able to assert great economic and political influences. Based on GDP statistics published by IMF and AggData (2009), American top ten mega corporations ’ GDP outputs in 2008 are ranked 8th worldwide if they are collectively taken as an individual country. Despite the great wealth of American society and the prominence of its ruling class, the American economy simultaneously produces significant inequalities between rich and poor caused by resource constraint, and inefficiencies caused by market and collective action failures that undermine the sustainability of American economic and social growth. This essay, therefore, will describe and analyze these problems based on reviews of four films about American prosperity and address those problems by proposing that government and non-elites in the society can eventually make a greater and more beneficial impact to combat the inequalities and inefficiency. Together, these four films demonstrate how resource constraints faced by normal citizens, concept of class as opportunity hoarding, concentration of economic power of giant corporations controlled by elites, and market failures contribute to inequality an