rewrite this title What Is Broken In America And How Do We Fix It? ‘Amerigo’s David McCourt Has Some Thoughts – SXSW

With his new docuseries Amerigo coming to PBS, Emmy-winning producer David McCourt wanted to examine a complicated question.

If his own grandfather “came to this country at 16 years old, uneducated, got a job as a janitor, raised my mother, bought a home, and died debt-free,” do these possibilities still exist for the average American today?

“And if [they’re] not possible,” he asks, “is that the country we want to live in?”

Examining what happened to the American Dream as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026, the film saw McCourt “cross the country, listen,” and allow Americans to express how they feel, “without a political agenda.”

What he heard, he said, was “eye-opening.”

To McCourt, the Irish-American entrepreneur, investor, author, and producer behind Granahan McCourt Capital, who is a self-professed “capitalist,” the problems America faces begin and end with the actions being taken by corporations, and the power they wield.

Typically, he noted, politicians have looked to corporate profits as a share of GDP as a way of measuring the state of the country. The facts when it comes to the GDP, he said, is that from World War II to 1970, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP increased from 6% to 18%. But rather than lowering prices for consumers in response to corporate success, sharing upside with their labor force, and giving back to the local community, corporations “shaved” the labor force down by 6% over the same period of time, leading everyday Americans down a patch toward a challenged financial situation.

“Comparing everything to GDP is really unhealthy,” he said, opining that the stock market doing well is “great if you own a million dollars of stock… If you’re a plumber, it doesn’t mean sh*t.”

These issues aren’t coming just to those in the working class, he argued, but rather “to everyone except those that are lucky enough to own equity in companies.” And cannot be addressed through taxation alone. Instead, a shift in mentality is what’s required.

“When a company becomes more profitable, it’s because you either charged the consumer more or the people working did a better job. And [the wealth] needs to be shared,” he said.

To go in the opposite direction is “not the best way to run a country, not the fairest way to run the country, not a moral way to run the country.”

It’s no wonder people feel their vote isn’t moving the country toward solutions in the best interest of the average person, he said, when “there are 22 registered lobbyists for every member of Congress” — and perhaps three times that number of unregistered lobbyists, who are steering the nation in a particular direction.

The people McCourt spoke to in traveling the country expressed the belief that “something was broken, but not all of America” — that there are reasons to feel “optimistic and hopeful,” even if something is undoubtedly wrong.

At the same time, the producer sensed the toll modern-day life is taking on workers who “have no time to even think” amid their efforts just to survive, and said it’s no wonder mental health issues have become more prevalent.

Underscoring another big issue in America, McCourt talked about the slashing of publicly-funded media, and how “dangerous” it is when it becomes difficult to truly know or trust where your information is coming from.

Then, there’s the looming specter of AI, which he said will take each problem he alluded to and “put [it] on steroids” if we don’t take the time to look at the issues and “understand 1773443421 what the root of the problems are.”

While these are just some of McCourt’s concerns, all of them must first and foremost be addressed, he argued, by getting a “fact-based” conversation started, as he is with his docuseries, about the kind of world we want to live in.

“The problem is so complicated. It’s like algebra,” he said. “My algebra teacher, when I told him I hated algebra, said, ‘You’re going to grow to love it because it’s the only thing where you can learn to look at an impossible problem and break it down into small pieces.”

The problems America faces are similar to an algebra problem in that they can be solved, but only by tackling them bit by bit, one at a time.

McCourt’s remarks came during a SXSW fireside chat with filmmaker George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau, The Banker) at Brazos Hall in Downtown Austin.

As part of his mission with Amerigo, McCourt noted that he’s established a website as a further means of creating the kind of conversation about societal issues that will lead in the direction of change.

“We’re asking a million people to tell us their hope for the America of the future, and we’re going to distribute those [videos] to 350 PBS stations around the country, and hopefully, we can get a consensus from a million people,” he said. “If we can get a million people to tell us what their hope is for the future, [maybe] we can back into what we need to do to build the infrastructure to get there. We’re hopeful that this initiative will help us get some consensus about what we need to do for the future.”