Being saturated with the term "social inequality ", makes it easy to form and opinion from the media and feel confident that you are well versed on the subject. At least I did. After watching the film I have a greater respect and admiration for Mr. Reich. I thought he was a left winged liberal trying to manipulate the labor laws and attempt to over regulate the economy.Now I see how wrong I had been and how close we were to actually changing the social fabric of our economic system to build out from the middle class. Through investing more to individual education and developing a GROWING middle class that spends more and reining in runaway corporate greed with tax reforms are a few of the ideas that were talked about in the film.I am a champion for Mr. Reich after viewing this film. With the surplus and economic boom that we experienced through the Clinton administration the Politicians failed to have the courage or "Political Will ', to make the necessary fundamental changes to the economy that would have keep the U.S.'s middle class and jobs growing and the U.S. debt down. We missed our chance in 1990's. Now lets pray it hasn't swung to far that our elected officials or still looking out for the People they represent VS. the lobbyist who are looking to make them wealthy and the corporations they represent.When Environmental regulations stymie and corrupt job growth and middle class wages our political system has been purchased by the few fat cats. Remember Richard Nixon signed The Environmental Act into law.

Inequality for All. Robert Reich.Reich understands that inequality is a problem, and has gotten worse. He makes this case clearly.What he doesn't understand is the extent to which inequality is the result of political decisions, made by people, purposefully to amplify that inequality.Reich doesn't seem to see that his old boss Bill Clinton made inequality far worse, for Americans and others in the hemisphere and around the world, with his NAFTA and other trade treaties. (Obama is busy trying to do far worse yet, with his Trans-Pacific Partnership.) Reich pins the blame for inequality on "globalization" and "technology," making it sound as if it were the result of impersonal forces. To the contrary, it was political decisions to permit unbridled movement of money and goods, to reward corporations for racing to the bottom in wages, working conditions, worker rights, and environmental protections.Reich does a clear presentation of the fact that only during a few decades after World War II was inequality under control. He does say that one of the political changes since then has been regressive taxation. He does mention that union membership has declined since the heyday of the middle class—but doesn't go into the ways in which labor law has been eroded by courts, legislatures, the executive branch—and how it's been flouted by companies, with impunity. Reich says little about deregulation, and nothing about antitrust.Reich was the author in 1991 of a blithering book, The Work of Nations, where he opines that society's winners are those who "manipulate symbols." No, Bob. Society's winners are those who have obscene piles of wealth, usually inherited from the most ruthless operator in some market segment.If you want to know economics, read Joseph Stiglitz. He's the one who gets it. Watch his "Where Is the World Going, Mr. Stiglitz?" video for the answers that elude Reich: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1381134/ (and others: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1688889/)Stiglitz also features in the excellent documentary, "The Flaw," http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1787810/ about the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008, and the failure of "siphon wealth toward the already rich" policies that lead up to it.Another excellent presentation of some of the causes of poverty and inequality is "Speaking Freely Volume 2: Susan George," 52 minutes, 2007 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1245362/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl from Cinema Libre Studios http://cinemalibrestudio.com/all_dvd_titles.php). George explains how northern banks, aided by the International Monetary fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization, extract wealth from the poor in the global south.This Reich movie presents an important issue. No, it presents *the* important issue. (The 85 richest people in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion.) Reich knows that much. He's hazy on how it happened, and what has to be done to fix it.

I sat down and watched this doc hoping to hear something more than typical liberal talking points. However that hope was soon dashed. If you want a feel good liberal spin of the poor and inequality than this movie is for you. If you want an honest look about the truth of inequality in this country you will leave this doc empty handed. Robert Reich tries to tie in a slew of liberal talking points together all to blame inequality on republicans with an attempted smokescreen of blaming both parties. Toward the end he stems into the occupy and tea party stances of taking the money out of politics but fails to really point blame at the democrats themselves for being there to actually accept it instead of turning it down. Instead he just blames the rich. This is a straight forward bias approach to economics as one can see. The claim that the bill clinton era economy was a strong US economy is laughable as clinton's policies (the community reinvestment act expansion) were the very roots of the cause of the economic collapse. In general the movie is a classic piece of capitalism. Don't worry about solving problems and looking at the truth, just produce what sells. The truth is there is enough blame to go around. There are some ominous points made in the doc. One involving globalism. It is not hard to understand why globalism has brought down wages. More people willing to do a job, means you can find someone to do it for less. Yet he fails to see how women entering the work force had the same effect of keeping wages down by producing more human labor. Instead linking it to a need for women to go to work to increase income. One thing is certain, wages are stagnant and ceo and the rich are getting richer. But his solution is geared more toward a political class maintaining power than it is about actually solving these issues. Left off this video is important conversations about the FED, effects of taxation on the middle and how it prevents the middle class form raising up and growing. Also left off is any real conversation about why college tuition has skyrocketed inline with the amount of money the government is willing to loan students. Also left out is how corruption in higher education and government policies for things like licenses and certification are closing out large parts of the population to employment in every protectionism schemes. There is room for a real conversation on this subject, however this doc isn't it.

. . . on solutions for the "problem" of economic inequality he "proves" to his classroom at the University of California--Berkeley. With seemingly half of INEQUALITY FOR ALL filmed directly in his lecture hall, this film is more static than even Al Gore's Oscar-winning polemic against global warming. Reich's basic message is that the top 1% of earners have "gamed the system" since 1978, when the real wages of middle-class America flat-lined. He says this will be bad even for the wealthy in the long term, since consumerism now constitutes 70 percent of the U.S. economy. Evidently, he thinks rich people are as dumb as the dragon Smaug in THE HOBBIT, spending only a fraction of the money they've siphoned from the middle-class through automation and globalization, while hoarding the rest and indirectly raising living standards in the developing countries to which the American jobs of yesteryear have been outsourced. As the rich sit on their mounds of inert gold (see THE HOBBIT trailer), the middle-class now lacks the money to consume after playing the last three cards in their hands (i.e., having moms work, taking second jobs and more overtime, plus maxing out credit cards, home equity loans, and college debt). But the wealthy have hired the U.S. Supreme court, the Republican Party, and hundreds of skilled propagandists starting with Rush Limbaugh (who always pronounces Robert's surname "Reisssssssssch") to further stack the deck toward an ultimate goal of getting 99% of America's wealth into the golden mounds of the 1%. Well, let me point out the main fallacy in the Reich lecture. He never mentions guns, or Thomas Jefferson's slogan that the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots every 87 (="four score and seven") years. If Reich is so anti-Second Amendment, it is exceedingly strange that he doesn't realize the current 300 million-gun private arsenal of us citizens would be AT LEAST 600 million barrels strong today if only the middle-class had more money! Does he want more gold for the rich, or more guns for the poor? Even though Mr. Reich says his one-time childhood protector later went down South UNARMED and got tortured, shot dead, and buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi in 1964, he cannot wrap his mind around this main dilemma facing America today. (Please don't forget to support your local chapter of B.A.N.G.S.--Broke Americans Need Gun Stamps--if you want credible change!)