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'Middle-Class As Depicted In The Film Inequality For All'

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Inequality for all, a documentary film released in 2013, is an exploration of increasing income inequality in American society over time. In the movie, professor Robert Reich was appeared as a main character who described the issue. The film showed many charts and graphs convincingly presenting the economic information about the inequality. There was a big gap in income distribution among the middle class and the top 1%. The findings showed that the richest 400 people have more money than the bottom 150 million American workers put together. The main reasons caused this problem were the globalization, the decline of unions, and technological development. The rise of income inequality has not only caused many social disadvantages for the middle-class …show more content…

A union or a labor union is an association that help workers bargain for wage increase and better working conditions. The appearance of a union is an advantage for the workers, but it becomes a real worry for the business owners because unions are the reason of increasing labor costs. According to the film, one of the factors that generated income inequality is the decline of unions. Several restrictions on labor laws and the effort of employers to reduce labor costs by eliminating unions caused the middle-class workers trouble. The middle-class wages seem to be unchanged, or even lower over time. While the employers make more benefits on their business, the working class more struggled with their limited income. Globalization is another reason for increasing income inequality in the America. Globalization shows the cultural and economic changes as a result of dramatically rise in international trade and exchange in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. To maximize benefits, the trade of materials between the United States and other countries has become popular. Likewise, to reduce labor costs, many corporations move their factories to other countries such as China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, etc. where the wage for labor is much cheaper compared to the wage that they pay for the workers in the Unites States. When people do not have many choices for job, they

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In the movie, Inequality for All, there are a lot of important facts and research about our American economy that has not been helpful for the middle class. It has been beneficial for the upper class on many different levels but it hurts the heart and soul of the American workforce which is again the middle class. Without the middle class there would be no upper class, the middle class is very essential to the American economy flowing smoothly. In this film, former United States secretary of labor Robert Reich travels across America looking for answers to what happened to our economy. Reich explains what America has been and become over the last one hundred years.

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In Robert Reich’s documentary “Inequality for All” he demonstrated a great balance of emotional and logical appeal, which resulted in getting his point across to the audience. Reich argued that America is a consumer-driven economy and for it to achieve the middleclass should have more purchasing power to keep the economy as strong as it once was. From the beginning of the documentary I began to trust him by examining that he has an honest and comedic personality. The part of the documentary that interest me the most was the comment that CEOs worry more how fat their pockets are rather than worry if they have enough employees and if those employees are paid correctly. Overall, I view Reich as someone who does not point fingers towards the

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Robert Reich a professor at Berkeley University and former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, makes a fluent and impassioned argument in his documentary “Inequality for All” that America’s widening income inequality between the top one percent and the middle class, not only threatens the middle class, but also the very foundation of democracy itself.

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