Robert Reich Documentary ‘Inequality For All’ Is A Compelling Class Lecture On The U.S. Economy
Documentaries about economic and social ills too often turn into glorified PowerPoint displays. For all its acclaim and worthiness, that essentially describes “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“Inequality for All,” a documentary featuring Clinton administration Labor Secretary and current University of California, Berkeley, professor Robert Reich, does a bit better, perhaps because Reich, unlike Al Gore, is eminently unstiff. He’s an engaging host for what otherwise might be, well, a PowerPoint display.
Directed by Jacob Kornbluth, the film follows Reich as he crisscrosses the country on the speaking circuit. Interspersed are clips and stills from his past, including stints in the Ford and Carter administrations, as well as snippets from his large “Wealth and Poverty” classroom lectures at Berkeley.
Reich’s thesis, complete with the requisite array of graphs and flow charts, is derived from his recent book, “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future.” He demonstrates, with breathtaking efficiency, that the 400 wealthiest people in America make more than the bottom 150 million people combined.
From this Reich derives much woe: serial financial crises, societal polarization and rage, and the diminishment of the middle class, whose wages, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated or dropped. (Paul Krugman in The New York Times recently reported that, again adjusted for inflation, the income of the top 1 percent rose 31 percent from 2009 to 2012, but the real income of the bottom 40 percent fell 6 percent.)
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/28/robert-reich-documentary-inequality-for-all-is-a-compelling-class-lecture-on-the-u-s-economy/
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