Can't resist sharing with you this early review of "Inequality for All" from Katrina van den Heuvel in today's Washington Post:
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“Chilling.”
That’s how one reviewer describes the experience of watching Harvey
Weinstein’s latest film. Only the movie in question isn’t “Erased,”
Weinstein’s pulse-pounding thriller about an ex-CIA agent on the run.
Nor is it “Only God Forgives,” in which Ryan Gosling finds himself
caught up in a gritty underground world of Thai drug smuggling,
prostitution, rape, and murder.
The movie is, in fact, a
documentary, but one more disturbing than international criminal
conspiracies and more devastating than any “Sharknado.” It’s about
income inequality. As Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich intones in
the film, “Of all developed nations, the United States has the most
unequal distribution of income, and we’re surging towards even greater
inequality.”
“Inequality for All,” directed by Jacob Kornbluth
and set to be released nationwide on Sept. 27, comes at a critical
moment for America. Sept. 15 marks the five-year anniversary of the
collapse of Lehman Brothers — fueled by a toxic combination of
deregulation, subprime lending and credit-default swaps — that
precipitated the 2008 global economic crisis and laid bare the rot at
the heart of our economic system. It was largely this orgy of greed that
led the first Occupy Wall Street protesters to Zuccotti Park on Sept.
17, two years ago next week.
In the half-decade since Wall
Street’s self-induced crash, the country has hovered between outrage
(that the perpetrators walked off scot-free and bonus-laden) and apathy
(that anything will ever break the iron bond between Congress and the
financial industry).
Until now, hopefully. Following the
diminutive Reich on his “statistics-driven and impassioned” crusade,
“Inequality for All” throws into sharp relief the numbers and stories we
hear. Combining footage from Reich’s electrifying Berkeley lectures
with interviews, news clips and rich graphics, the film weaves a
compelling narrative about how and why, since the late 1970s, income
inequality has risen to crisis levels.
The facts are breathtaking.
In 1978, according to Reich, a “typical male worker” made $48,302, while
the typical top 1 percenter earned $393,682, more than eight times as
much. In 2010, even as overall gross domestic product and productivity
increased, the average male worker’s wage fell to $33,751. Meanwhile,
the average top 1 percent earner was making more than $1.1 million — 32
times the average earner.
Reich cleverly illustrates how the
graph of American inequality over the past century looks like a
suspension bridge — peaking in the 1920s, leveling out because of
strong, progressive policymaking in the 1950s and 1960s, and spiking
again from the Reagan years through the present. We see the consequences
in middle-class families that have fallen off that bridge and are
struggling to stay afloat.
The film’s most refreshing figure
may be Nick Hanauer, a millionaire pillow company CEO who made a fortune
as an early investor in Amazon.com. Hanauer acknowledges that he earns
1,000 times the average American but that he will never generate a
proportionate amount of economic activity — because he will never need
1,000 Audis or 1,000 pairs of jeans. As he puts it, “Even the richest
people only sleep on one or two pillows.”
That’s why this
mind-boggling income gap isn’t just bad for families — it’s terrible for
the whole economy. Research shows that the increasing chasm between the
top 1 percent and everybody else has slowed our nation’s economic
growth.
Reich breaks down the passel of complex factors — from
the rise of globalization to the decline of union membership, from
stagnant middle-class wages to reduced tax rates for the richest, from
deregulation to de-funding education, from Wall Street lobbyists to
their friends on the Supreme Court — that have converged to squeeze the
middle class dry. With his signature heart and humor, he breaks through
the cynicism fomented by an intransigent political class, offering some
measure of hope to a worn-out electorate.
Indeed, what makes
“Inequality for All” unique even among social-issue documentaries is
that it aims not just to educate and entertain but also to empower.
Kornbluth and his team are launching a grass-roots mobilization effort,
complete with a team of field organizers, to coincide with the film’s
release. Labor unions, campus groups and a range of progressive
organizations will host viewing parties to connect moviegoers with
opportunities to fight income inequality. For example, student groups
might hold watch parties and then organize participants to focus on
college affordability issues, while unions might galvanize people to
advocate for a higher minimum wage.
In short, this is a motion
picture designed to put people in motion. From an interactive Web site
to a teacher toolkit to a “Save the Middle Class National Tour” that
will launch in January on the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty,
“Inequality for All” intends to engage ordinary people to advocate for
pro-middle-class policies in all 50 state capitals.
Reich
concludes his Berkeley course on wealth and poverty by stressing the
power of his students — and all citizens — to make change. Free and fair
markets don’t just happen; governments, elected by voters, set the
rules by which they work. For all of Washington’s gridlock, then, it is
still up to the American people to stand up and fight to make the market
work better — not just for some, but for all.
Democracy is not a spectator sport, this film reminds us. And in this case, neither is movie-going.
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