Movie Review: “Inequality for All” Best Documentary of the Year So Far #inequalityforall

I could write a very long review about the new documentary on income inequality, but the absolute best thing for anyone to do is see it.

What Works: This film lays out the economic case for exactly how staggering income inequality in the U.S. has become, and exactly why that’s the most disastrous thing that could happen to the U.S. economy. Everything I have been saying in almost any Working Class Economist post is all there, how industrialized countries can’t survive without a middle-class majority, how consumers drive the economy and not the rich, the difference between a virtuous cycle and a vicious cycle, about how one rich person can never spend as much as 1000 middle-class people, the influence of the wealthy in politics, and even how income inequality is eventually bad for the very rich since it depresses demand for their products. [The economy is like a web, and you can’t lay off 100 workers to save money on your product forever, because that’s a 100 fewer workers that are there to buy your product too.] It’s all there into a beautifully assembled package of facts, and my biggest fear is that conservatives, and “moderates” will avoid seeing it at all because they think it’s “propaganda.” Reich draws real parallels between the late 1920’s—-sky high income inequality which sunk the U.S. economy into the Great Depression—-and 2007, the year of sky-high income inequality right before the Great Recession. The thing is that the Great Depression eventually led to a popular movement to decrease income inequality, but this time really hasn’t, and the wealthiest 400 Americans now own more wealth than the “bottom” 150 million or half the country.

What Doesn’t Work: I know I’m biased, but I really think as a documentary it gets its point across terrifically. If I had one quibble, I would say that it might be a mistake to focus so much on Reich himself (they show his backstory, his old interviews, even a buddy cop parody of him with Conan O’Brien). I know right-wingers looking for literally ANY excuse to be against this movie will say that it’s just Reich desperately trying to become a celebrity even though his bonafides on this issue are unparalleled.

What I Would Have Done Differently: GO SEE THIS MOVIE. I can’t make it any clearer than that.