The One Percent: Way More Disgusting Than You Thought

If you're ever tempted to feel a twinge of sympathy for the despised One Percenters, Down With Tyranny has your cure.

Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune made a documentary in 2006... and it's really engaging and well-done. The first of eight YouTubes of it is above and that one will allow you to find the other seven. These people Jamie talks with don't want to sound crass but they sure like that whole trickle-down theory they get their bought-and-paid-for shills like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor to regurgitate for them.

It's worth watching this film, especially in light of the beginnings of an uprising against the dominance 1% that we're seeing today at the heart of the OccupyWallStreet movement. After he first did the film, the Wall Street Journal called Jamie The Rich Man's Michael Moore.

Brian McNally, the Johnson family's financial adviser, chastises Jamie on camera for his behavior.

"You're behaving like a little arrogant trustafarian," he tells him.

Milton Friedman, the famed economist, was equally impatient with Mr. Johnson's questioning. During his on-air interview-- among Mr. Friedman's last before he died-- he accuses Mr. Johnson of advocating socialism and abruptly ends their talk.

Mr. Johnson insists he's not opposed to wealth-- including his own. Wealth, he says, has given him a great education, freedom, chances to travel and, best of all, the resources to do films about wealth. He says that while his documentaries are profitable, they wouldn't pay for his lifestyle.

Yet with The One Percent, Mr. Johnson wanted to show how the rich have gone too far. Through interviews with economists, policy experts and environmentalists, Mr. Johnson argues that today's wealthy have become an increasingly isolated elite. He says rather than using their wealth for good, they have used it to restructure the economy, lower their taxes, cut social programs for the middle and lower classes, and amass ever more wealth.

Mr. Johnson says finding willing subjects for The One Percent was difficult, and not just because of his reputation. He sent out more than 100 letters to wealthy people asking for interviews and most said no or failed to reply. Even George Soros, the billionaire financier who often argues against inequality, refused.

"We have an aristocracy in this country that has convinced everybody else that they don't exist," Mr. Johnson says.

Later, DWT posts Johnson's first film:

Sunday night we watched Jamie Johnson's second movie, The One Percent, right? Two years earlier he made Born Rich, above, which got a couple of Emmy nominations. Worth watching? Absolutely! But I'm such a crybaby. You can't take me to a tear-jerky movie. When this one young heir in the film said the thought of losing his inheritance would be like losing a parent or a sibling I just started crying. I felt less badly for him when it turned out he tried suing Jamie for defamation. The judge threw the "case" out of court.

Aside from making films, Jamie writes a column on the 1% for Vanity Fair.