Inequality for All
Inequality for all is a 90-minute documentary telling about the descending wage-earning ability of the middle class people of America, which is explicated through a chain of lectures by Robert Reich, who is a onetime labor secretary of President Bill Clinton. His book launched in 2010, Aftershock, is the mainly the soul for the movie.(BloombergBusinessweek)
The movie tells a story describing how are the middle classes bound to have the least share in the economic pie. And that the American economy is based on the 70% of the middle classes who purchase goods and services, and if they don’t, it is likely that the economy wouldn’t be able to grow. In addition to this more of the nation’s wealth is taken away by the elite class of the country, as allowed by the government. While, moiety of the total assets of US is possessed only by 400 – and through this movie, Reich contends that this situation is not only a threat to the economy but democracy as well.
This film tries to combine together the proof that many people know about. And that is that the middle classes are continually struggling just to survive, the way that the top 1%, known as an elite class of society has observed its salaries rising exponentially. It is a theory explaining all things. Three centuries of rising income are charted after the Second World War, a period Reich calls "the outsized prosperity" and later studies what had happened in the late 1970s which have contributed to its closure. Though the economy didn't collapse but kept growing. However, wages did not.
Some time inequality is inescapable, Reich says, even invited. But it becomes a problem when the middle classes of America have very little share in the economic pie that it not only affects the lives of people but economy on the whole.
Reich’s thesis state that since the 1970’s deregulations of the markets have contributed to bringing the economy in a situation where economy boomed, the outcome was very less in terms of wealth. At that time more of women became a part of the workforce, making two wage earners in the house, the increase could be seen in working hours. While rising house rents had accredit people to borrow money.
Then later in 2007 the situation became unsteady. Income inequality started to grow people had less wealth with them.
The soul of this film is the tales of American families working hard for their survival, where the working hours were greater, and the wage was less. It was so emotional that some of the families said at premiere that they had cried while watching a movie.
Technology and globalization had played a big role in this situation. Government did too. It’s been centuries now that both under the Democrats and the Republicans the maximum tax rate didn’t go below 70%. This was making people worse off. Firstly the wages were low, working hours were high, required more effort of people and less wealth, and even on that the heavy taxes had made their lives difficult.
The inequality is basically imposed on the top. The charts are shown in the documentary proof that for years the CEO’s, earnings were crushing the earnings of the employees.
Since the year mid 1970’s, when the wages kept going down, the middle class has struggled more than they could, to keep their living standards high enough to fulfill all necessities of life without any stress. There were three strategies that the Reich has reported which was used by the families to struggle with the current situation: More and more women became a part of the workforce, people had worked more hours while doing part-time jobs simultaneously, and the landlords/house owners had consumed their houses like wallets.
While technology and globalization make a path for losing jobs, Reich says these factors were more crucial to lowering wage. The key factors in the film are the pressure of Wall Street to keep high earnings. The effective moment filmed in the documentary was when the working wife Nancy Rasmussen was seen weeping into the camera after her wage was cut a $12-an-hour, which shows clearly what this amount of money means to her.
The Reich had been asked our economy should resemble which other countries economy to which he surprisingly replied, the United States. The largest middle class of the U.S. has been seen in America, which has been benefitting the economy boosting it to large numbers. If t were to be focused upon the US economy would do wonders.(Los Angeles Times Articles)
Works Cited
Bloomberg BusinessWeek,. 'Review: Inequality For All, Robert Reich's Analysis Of Wealth Disparity.' N.p., 2014. Print.
Cadwalladr, Carole. 'Inequality For All – Another Inconvenient Truth?'.the Guardian. N.p., 2013. Web. 26 Nov. 2014.
Los Angeles Times Articles,. 'Review: Robert Reich's Economic Lessons In 'Inequality For All''. N.p., 2002. Web. 26 Nov. 2014.
