Capitalism in “ Pursuit Of Happyness“ Film

Capitalism brings many impacts to wards Chris Gardner the main character in the movie that I watched which is “ Pursuit of Happyness “. People are said to work harder due to financial incentives. From the movie, Chris passed the interview and made a great impression to his interviewers. As an unpaid intern, he had to struggle and undergo a vicious competition to get a paid position. Even though his education level was not high, he never gave up easily and finally got the job.

Capitalism causes inequality of income. The gap between the rich and the poor has increased over the years. The rich became even richer while the poor had to struggle to survive. This can be shown in the part when Chris first saw Jay Twistle, the manager for Dean Witter, a stockbroking company. The part that Jay drove a red Lamborghini to work showed that he was rich while Chris had to struggle to sell all his machines to help support the family.

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Capitalists focuses only on maximizing their profit which causes the low income family unable to bear the high costs. Chris had to find for a new job with a stable income while his wife took double shifts as a hotel maid so that they could bear the costs of their daily life. Wanting a better life, Chris’s wife left him and went to New York City.

One of scenes in the movie was closely related to the concept of separation of land which is portrayed through the scene where Chris was unable to pay his rent and was drove away by the owner.

They had to spend a night in a toilet at a metro station as they have no where to go. They then had to queue in long lines just to get a spot in homeless shelters.

As a labour, Chris had to get a new job with a more stable income. At first, he invested all his money to buy portable bone density scanners which he thought could make his life better. Instead he found a hard time selling off the machines. Later he met Jay which gave him the chance to be an intern at a stockbroking company. After all his hard work, he then successfully got the job and his life became better than before.

As for capital, Chris’s capital was the bone density scanners . As shown in the movie, Chris had put in all his family savings on the machines as he could earn more than what he paid for them. Both Chris and his wife looked very happy the day they bought the machines. Life became hard for them when they did not have the chance to sell out any of the scanners. Chris worked hard to promote the machines to hospitals and clinics hoping that it could be sold. He was rejected many times at first but after many attempts, he manged to sell all his machines.

Works cited

1. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
2. Stiglitz, J. E. (2012). The price of inequality: How today's divided society endangers our future. W. W. Norton & Company.
3. Marx, K. (1867). Capital: A critique of political economy. New York: Penguin Classics.
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5. Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Harvard University Press.
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