Income Inequality is the Bugaboo of Incompetents…

Ahh, yes. Income inequality.

The endless bugaboo of incompetents who have reached their peak and don’t realize that wealth is relative to where you are standing, not where the other guy may be “popping bottles” from.

From the same people who brought you every other screed about how wealthy people hide their money in history, comes The Laundromat, starring Meryl Streep ( “Meryl Streep-ing” it up in the trailer), Gary Oldman, and Antonio Banderas.

Meryl Streep stands in front of mailboxes, Meryl Streep-ing it up. Surely, she’ll be nominated for an Oscar.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich and Che) and written by Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum), the same team that brought you The Informant (with Matt Damon), and distributed by Netflix (really, would you expect anything else?), the film premieres next week at the Venice Film Festival.

I don’t want to hold you all back from the glory of exploring evil wealthy people’s bad habits in hiding their money, so here’s the trailer:

What the Hell is the Point of This?

Have you heard of the Panama Papers?

Well, according to the geniuses on the Interwebs, the Panama Papers are a set of leaked documents that reveal the private attorney-client information of more than 200,000+ offshore tax accounts.

Gary Oldman is doing better holding that martini than anything else you’re watching right now.

Leaked back in 2015 by an anonymous source (I’m looking at all of you in those V for Vendetta masks hanging out in your Mom’s basements now), the leaked papers detail the private financial and tax dealings of politicians, public officials, and wealthy individuals, going back to the 1970s.

They also reveal the dealings involving the law firm of Mossak Fonseca setting up shell corporations to hide the wealth of rich people through the creation of shell companies.

The reason they were leaked by “John Doe” is as follows:

In a May 6, 2016, statement, John Doe cited income inequality as the reason for his action, and said he leaked the documents “simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described”.

So, of course, this story attracted the attention of Steven Soderbergh, and Scott Z. Burns and well, they started working on the story of fraud, tax evasion, and international sanctions, in July of 2016.

The Point of Capitalism is to Get Rich and to Stay Rich

The problem with films like The Laundromat (or Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which did this better) is that the average schmoe who goes to work and goes home every day, doesn’t care about what a bunch of rich people do with their money, beyond staring at them like zoo animals on “reality” shows.

The zoo is large and full of terrors. Just ask Caitlyn. Or Lamar Odom.

It’s been that way for a while now. About 5,000 years or so.

The problem with social critiques like this by filmmakers, is that I bet Soderbergh, Streep, and all the others involved with the production of this film, are constantly looking for ways to hide their money, pay fewer taxes, and, in general, deprive their state, local, and federal governments, of the money that they earned through the work they do.

Tax money, redistributed from confiscatory taxes to the government, don’t make individual people richer.

In general, the government actually deprives people (and corporations and businesses) of their hard-earned wealth and private property, no matter how much or how little the amount of that property.

Gary Oldman is going to be phenomenally great as he always has been from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy to The Dark Knight.

And Meryl Streep is going to be Meryl Streep TM.

And Antonio Banderas is going to always be Puss in Boots to me.

Or Zorro.

But, watch The Laundromat with a grain of salt.

The “evils of income inequality” messaging here should be ignored in favor of watching talented people at work.

The Laundromat washes your dirty money — and every other rich person’s money who you know — on Netflix on October 18, 2019.