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George is technically the owner of the Building and Loan bank but he only makes $48/week which is $850 in today's money
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The bank is a co-op which means anyone who banks there is a part owner (syndicalism??)
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He spends his own personal money when the banks crash to make people whole. The bank also stops Potter from monopolizing the town and provides working people and immigrants the ability to own their own homes.
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He gets the chance to sell out to Potter but doesn't.
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The movie ends not with him getting rich, but the town coming together to save the B&L
The movie is about the power of collective action
Which is weird when you consider Jimmy Stewart was really good friends with Reagan and was for the blacklisting of communists in Hollywood.
Yeah Jimmy Stewart is an old California Republican. He is basically the Joe Biden of actors he was a compromise guy.
you just ruined my day oof
lots of actors were friendly with reagan from his days in the union but being for the blacklist is big bad
One of the greatest ironies in American history was that Reagan was the only president to get his start in politics as a trade unionist.
Capra very nearly got done by the HUAC though, and Stewart was just taking a check.
Yeah, it's not a bank, it's a building society. Something that was a spearhead of early Socialism and later a centrepiece of the Fabian Reformist movement.
The banks killed them by paying people to stuff the ranks and then voting to convert it to a bank, because they were clearly better deals.
Uncoincidentally, most credit unions were founded around the time of the New Deal/labor zenith
Counterpoint: the movie is libertarian for having 40yo looking ass people supposedly in high school.
Just finished watching this movie. It made me cry a lot. The pure showing of solidarity in that film is sure to make a grown man weep.
The actor was. The character never fought in a war or had any obvious traumatic experience.
Q: Was Stewart also on edge because he was still working through some of his PTSD?
A: Oh, absolutely. At this point, he had just started to eat again. He always had a high metabolism and always had trouble digesting food, and during the war it got worse and worse. He himself said that the only thing he subsisted on was peanut butter and ice cream. He just hadn't been able keep food down. Now he's starting to gain weight. But he's still having nightmares and the shakes and the sweats. He's got some hearing loss now, from the sound of the bombers on those seven-, eight-hour missions. So now you have an actor who, it's not easy for him to hear his cues.
I just watched it tonight and it was a lot better than I remember from when I was a little kiddo
The bank still runs on profit and capitalist relations; it is at best socdem.
IAWL was the single event that ushered in the age of social democracy.
