Inequality for All (2013) on Netflix
PG20131h 29mDocumentary
Robert Reich, a former U.S. Labor Secretary, has argued about income inequality for decades. At Berkeley he traces how far the richest Americans have pulled away from everyone else.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb8.0/107,209 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Robert Reich, an economist who served as U.S. Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, has spoken on inequality for nearly three decades, and the account is framed by the Wealth and Poverty course he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. Graphs shaped like suspension bridges set the income gap of recent years beside the levels of 1928 and 2007. Reich calls 1947 to 1977 the Great Prosperity and traces the changes that followed, among them union-busting, tax cuts, deregulation and outsourcing. Erika and Robert Vaclav raise two daughters on Erika's $21.50-an-hour Costco wage after Robert lost his job as a Circuit City manager, and a Mormon family that turned pro-union after a Calpine geothermal plant laid them off also describes its circumstances. Nick Hanauer and Warren Buffett are interviewed.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Inequality for All (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Jacob Kornbluth and narrator Robert Reich disagreed most often over the film's biographical passages: Kornbluth believed they would help viewers connect emotionally with the material, while Reich felt they related too little to the main theme.
- Producers Sebastian Dungan and Jen Chaiken took on another film, Afternoon Delight, midway through making Inequality for All to diversify and raise their output; the overlap cut work hours on both, since they aimed both at the same Sundance Film Festival.
- To keep Inequality for All non-partisan, solutions to the problem were left out of the film altogether; viewers were sent instead to its official website, inequalityforall.com, which carried tips on what to do.
