Review of Inequality for All (2013) by Sarfaraz A — 15 Jan 2014

Inequality for All - documentary film directed by Jacob Kornbluth. It was screened at Sundance Film Festival - where it won U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Achievement in Filmmaking. Film's protagonist is economist professor at UC Berkeley and former Secretary of Labor (in the first administration of then U.S. President Bill Clinton), "Robert Reich 1946-".

Film opens with Robert arriving at UC Berkeley to give lecture to crowded auditorium full of students; on the subject of U.S. economy. Robert is short-height fella, he went to the University of Oxford on Rhodes scholarship - where he met and befriend Bill Clinton. Upon Clinton's election as U.S. president, he was selected to head U.S. Labor Dept. under Clinton administration.

Robert's subject is 'inequality' among different classes in the United States, where the rich get richer and poor get poorer - in other words he describes it more, as 'class-warfare'. He demonstrates the U.S. economy charts, figures and indexes, to vast majority of students, labors, colleagues and spectators - emphasizing at the point, where US economy took a rapid turn and skipped the very eyes of economists. Robert's data points that 70s and 90s proved declining periods in the US, when 1% kept fluctuating their salaries to record-high into millions, whereas 99% kept shrinking.

Robert explains salary difference in the years since 1970s and 2010s: such as, the meat-packer who would earn around $35,000 (yearly) in the 70s, now receives annual sum of $24,190. Robert interviews one of the entrepreneurs, an owner of pillow-manufacturing company, who earns more than million. He further says, that instead of spending bucks on lavish restaurants, he seldom opts average Vietnamese restaurant, wears average jeans - moreover, he is not sure about what happens to his money he keeps earning.

The documentary takes us on the tour, about how lobbyists are undermining the democracy for Wall Street guys - and how the money was spent like water during recent US presidential election, in which millions of funds and donations were funneled to candidates for their election-campaign. There are several interviews of struggling people in the United States - Robert further explains that the shattering of economy has sent some portion of the population to paranoia and in this regard - the vast majority of them try to throw the blame on others (documentary then shows Muslim diaspora being harassed by crowds, telling them to 'go back' - 'your Allah is not our God').

Robert tells his students that in the 1930s similar turnaround in economy took place like that of 2008, and similarly the people of United States took to streets to raise their voice - he elaborates that 40s, 50s, 60s decades boomed the US economy - then, loose-grip on people in suits resulted in the high-rise salary for 1% by 2010.

Documentary is well-explained and Robert brings hilarious moments to the documentary, with his own jokes about his short-height. It was funny that he done a goofy program with tv guy Chris O'Brian in which Chris plays detective with former US secretary of labor as his partner.

There are too many movies out there on 2008 economy-crisis, however, Inequality for All summarizes this altogether, with facts and figures, indexes, and charts - ultimately, becoming the easy in its approach to let average fella understand about, where did the things exactly go wrong?

NOTE:

When Robert put a question to students of UC Berkeley, 'Where your money of Iphone actually goes' - he gave them options 'China', 'US', 'Germany', 'Japan', 'South Korea'. And later he asked them to press button about a country they believe their money goes to - the result showed they believed 'China'.

The answer was 'Japan' 34% 'Germany' 17%, 'South Korea' 13%, 'United States' 6%, 'China' 3.6% and 'Other' 27%. Different iPhone parts reach China rest of these mentioned countries, later iPhones are assembled in China only.