That a documentary about economics could be so personally emotional and affecting is remarkable. And to learn from Reich in this film, as his students at Berkeley do, is a treat and a privilege.
Reich and documentary director Jacob Kornbluth turn out to be the ideal collaborators to tell the story of what that gap is, why it happened and why it's important, all in a totally engaging way.
A brief history of how the wealth of our nation is ending up in the hands of fewer and fewer people and how we came to believe in corporations over customers as the job creators.
This a pretty informative film that I would recommend for both fans of Reich and those who are unaware of his work alike. The only downside is that the movie may not be as informative for those that follow Reich closely. It's still worth watching if only to support the spread of what some might call the economics of decency. I have to question the Ratoo's of the world who seem to have a hard time discerning who it is that is living in the reality based community. My best guess is that he may be one of those hyper-partisans who goes around giving 0 to the films he ideologically opposes, possibly for pay, but I imagine the forces that are afraid that widely based prosperity may start to come back can rabble rouse enough folks into doing it for free.
The job is not to convince us of something many Americans don’t want to believe, but to address something we all know is happening and nail down just how bad it really is. Judging from the pit left in a viewer’s stomach, it does the job pretty well.
The testimonials from a few of these people, with the realization they speak for tens of thousands, reinforces Inequality for All's sobering message while at the same time undercutting Reich's optimism.
Inequality for All creates a framework in which all this heavy material is easily digestible, and refashions Reich, the policy wonk, into an inspirational figure who argues that “history is on the side of positive social change.”
Robert Reich's message to America, much like director Jacob Kornbluth's uncomplicated film, is so simple and straightforward (you might even say obvious) that, without nitpicking, it can appear flawless.
I saw this movie with 3 friends. We had expected it to be informative, but a bit of a downer. What we did find was a surprise. It was very informative, historical, inspirational and a great lesson in basic global economics. Robert Reich does a wonderful job in this film presenting all of this with hard data from reliable sources. This is a must see film for everyone in the 99% and the 1%.
Rattoo may have thought this film was propaganda, but it's hard to argue with the many facts that Reich presents. When 400 people in the US control as much wealth as the 150,000,000 poorest US residents, we have an issue of inequality that's at least worth discussing. And Reich makes it clear how government has contributed to inequality by tilting the field in favor of the well-off.
My main criticism is that Reich showed a lot of correlation and inferred causality from it. In some cases he made a case for causality, but in too many cases he did not. Still it's a film worth seeing; you can form your own opinion whether inequality in the US represents a problem or not and, if so, what we should do about it.