This documentary explores poverty as it exists today, and takes us through a historical account of how it came to be, as it is today(it does not go into the larger discussion of there having been different status levels and each having specific benefits(or limitations) as long as there have been even barely organized communities - this would require its own feature-length piece), across the world, not only in the US. It does so with personal interviews with economists with the perspective and who've studied the subject, and the individual workers and their families, who are living with the consequences of the irresponsible and callous actions of corporate leaders, banks and politicians. This engages with a healthy mix of facts and accounts(to keep it from getting dry or letting it become too theoretical, we have to remember that there are actual people suffering, and many of them, no less), and it keeps a nice pace throughout. It's well-edited. This really gets you wanting to solve the problem, and few will keep holding on to the opposing opinion after watching this. There is disturbing content in this. I recommend this to everyone. 7/10

The longer I live the more I value history.I am less distracted with the tiny incidents of current events when I understand the historic context.Our current reality is the result of thousands of chains of events that stretch back in time.I have come to especially value videos that tell the stories that go back hundreds of years.This offers a summary of major events over the globe during the centuries.I do not agree with all that is said here but many major parts of the mural of history are presented well.

This is one of those documentary films you simply must see. Instead of trying to shock you or force you to do a specific action, it leaves the viewer to make the decision. It is not about poverty as a whole, and it doesn't try to solve the problem entirely. Instead it is about poverty in Third World Countries. The film uses nothing but facts and logic to make clear that it is caused by Europe and the US, who first took the lives of many, then took the resources, then used religion and forced economy ("fair" trade & such) to make sure those countries will never recover and forever be in debt. It is very good that something makes you realize what our (well, at least recent) leaders had been doing without us knowing. Maybe we are just stupid, letting this happen, I don't know.

Louis Proyect's objection to Barry Freed's scathing critique of this movie is that it mentions primitive accumulation, and that this is a Marxist theory. Fair enough. However, one of the problems with the film is that it never STOPS being about primitive accumulation. The filmmakers indulge themselves in a kind of 21st century, post-modern romantic nationalism, which blames, the words of one of them tonight where I saw the film, the "overconsumption" of the First World--every single member of the First World, even the starving children in Harlem and Bed Stuy and Appalachia?!--for the problem of poverty in the Third World.Freed is correct to argue that this doesn't give us much in the way of practical solutions, and nothing approaching the Marxist strategy of workers revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. Indeed one of the experts interviewed poo poos the very idea of communism, as Freed points out. It's just unthinkable, he says or implies.Freed's review however, is only half right--the first half. The second half indulges in the curious notion that once the workers take over, all the scarcities, the Limits to Growth, the finiteness of energy resources, and environmental problems we see today under capitalist industry will somehow magically disappear in a puff of (genie?) smoke, and that anyone who questions the rather questionable idea that technology under workers control will solve all our present problems with overuse of resources, global warming, and pollution--well such sceptics are nothing but "Malthusians." Somebody in the audience during the Q&A period expressed this point of view as well. Marxists really sell themselves short and come off like muddle headed ignoramuses when they talk like this. This isn't science--this is wishful thinking.