The documentary film for this assignment is “The Take”. It filmed by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, and took place in Argentina. Argentina was the most prosperous middle-class in Latin America; however, it changed when the Carlos Menem ruled the country in 1990s. Menem implemented many business- friendly policies that according to the rule book of International Monetary Fund (IMF), such as layoff and sold off most of public assets. All these things did not go as what he thought, and it lead to the economic collapse. Firstly, the currency started to drop in Argentina, and then multinational banks escorted a large amount of money out of the country. Next, the Argentina government had frozen all bank accounts in the country. In the results, the savings of ordinary people had locked off, while rich people got their money offshore. The most important thing was this circumstance made Argentina to have largest sovereign debt in the world history, and 50% of the populations were below the poverty line. Sum up, the prosperous and wealthy Argentina were no longer exist.

The economic downturn in Argentina affected every Argentinians. At first, people spent on what they earned, because their saving had been frozen in the banks. However, most of the citizens in Argentina were hard to find a job. The reason was factories were the places where most jobs came from, but many of them were bankruptcy. Therefore, people lost the main source of employment opportunities and income. Moreover, people need to rely on the compact earning to live, and most of them need to pay for their own living expense and debts. Thus, they could not buy any consumer products like perfume, makeup and clothes. For children, parents could not afford what their child liked, even a happy meal in McDonald. In addition, the income of some families could not cover both daily supplies and debts, so they chose not paying the debts and just let them build up. The economy collapse in Argentina was not only hurting the citizens economically, but also their hearts. Firstly, people worried about their life and future because of the uncertainty of the economics; they did not what to do and where they could get help. Adults were breadwinners in their family. They tried their best to find job every day, on the other hand, they need to comfort their families. Thus, the instability of society gave citizens lots of pressure on living. Argentina government was the instigator, and also a sufferer. It lost trust from its people. People did not believe government could give them a bright future or help them to get rid of this hard time. A country run without people’s support, it makes itself difficult to go forward. Trust is a thing that hard to win back, so Argentina government need to spend more time on building its confidence.

As mentioned before, factories are a primary work place for majority of Argentinians. There are many abandoned factories in Argentina, the factory workers came up with an idea that reopen these idle factories and under their control. So they could do the job that they familiar with and have income to support their family. Then more and more factory workers joined this movement and tried to re-start the factory. However, not every bankruptcy factory or business could be took over by the workers. The reason was workers need to have the good reasons and business plan in order to get the permission from the judge, so that they had right to rule the factory/business. And it was difficult to let the judge accept their plan for taking over the bankruptcy business. As the result, some factory workers asked the politicians to help them to pass the bill that agreed with their “expropriation”. In my opinion, I thought this proposed solution was a great idea. Firstly, this method would help people to earn money by themselves and did not rely on government support; moreover, it also decreased the unemployment rate in Argentina. Secondly, all these factory workers would do their skillful jobs and work with people who they knew. Next, some of the factories that under control by workers had charity programs, such as give their manufactured product to hospital and school for free. They also offered lower price to their products/services, thus the community would get benefits from these occupied business. In addition, all the factory workers were the decision makers in all these factories, and each factory had their own rules. For example, all the workers would get the same salary in some occupied factories. These methods were not only solving the problems fairly, but also improving the self management of all workers. To conclude, I liked this mode of operation, because it had many advantages on running a manufacturer. On the other hand, I disagreed with the way that workers took the factory/business from the former owners. I thought they should treat the former owners fairly, even though they left the factories and arrear workers’ salaries. All the machines and assets were belonging to the former owners, so the workers should pay for all the assets that they used in the factories. My idea was the factory workers should make an agreement with the former owners, and then use 10% of the revenue of each month to pay for the market value of all assets until they pay the full amount of them. This practice would let the workers to get the right to use all the assets in factories legally, and repay the former owners for using his/her assets. As a result, workers and the former owners would get their own benefits, and it would be fair to both parties.

Finally, thanks for the opportunity to watch this documentary; I learned a lot from it. Like, the consequence of misuse the globalized way to manage the country, how employees do to their boss when they had no choice, and people should not spend more than what they earn.