“Inequality For All” Fails to Ask The Tougher Questions

“I’m sorry sir, we only have the 70% cacao dark chocolate at the moment.”

The movie theater concession salesman’s apologetic revelation of the theater’s dearth of 92% cacao dark chocolate bars (which seems like a dangerously high percentage of cacao anyways) is met with an upturned grimace of disapproval and a slight shake of the head.

“Hmm okay. Well, I guess the 70% will have to do.”

The man hands over his seven dollars and proceeds, while unwrapping his second-choice chocolate bar, into the beautifully ornate and darkened theater in Berkeley, California to watch the new documentary film directed by Jacob Kornbluth and starring Cal’s very own Robert Reich, Inequality For All.

The irony is as strong as a 92% cacao dark chocolate bar, don’t you think?

Bad puns aside, my experience at Friday’s (September 27^th) premier of Inequality For All was a mix of guilt, annoyance, inspiration, and clarity.

The actual film was well done and clearly spotlights how Robert Reich is a genuinely concerned, engaged and active citizen trying to understand and work towards a successful solution that will combat the unsustainable widening of wealth between the richest and the rest.

Aside from a couple rather nauseating spinning wheel informational graphics reminiscent of Disneyland’s Mad Tea Party ride, the film’s ultimate message was clear and convincing.

Drawing on interesting statistical evidence, Reich highlights parallels between the coinciding drop in middle class wages and benefits with the simultaneous rise in wages for top CEOs and financial sector executives (i.e. growing economic inequality) observed right before both the Great Depression and the current Great Recession.

Reich extrapolates that a strong economic landscape can be achieved by closing the outrageous income gap between the top 1% of earners and the middle class. A stronger middle class will consume more and thus drive the economy whereas a struggling middle class will consume less and stagnate capitalist enterprise.

Spending is good!?! This was great news to hear for my fellow audience members.

The average age was about 60 years old and I think it can be safely concluded, based on the conversation about recent escapades to France among the faux-bohemian clad women in front of me and the discussion of poor parking options in SF for the couple’s three cars sitting behind me, the average income of the audience was well above the norm.

Although Reich is an extremely inspiring, genuine, motivating, and influential man, I couldn’t help but feel, in combination with the rather disenchanting and phony audience members surrounding me, that we are focusing on the wrong things and going about change the wrong way.

In a necessarily awkward moment after the film when Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner took the theater’s floor, two women decided to shake up the room. The women pointed out how the film and audience were ignoring the complicated underlying societal driving forces of inequality including both racism and an overall, widespread disconnection of people with their larger community or, to put it bluntly, “white privilege.” The women were so “disgusted with the entire audience and experience” that they had to get up and leave the theater altogether.

The audience snorted in pompous disregard and passed wide-eyed looks of disapproval and shock.

This seemed like the perfect metaphor for today’s liberal approach to reform within our current political system. We are looking for that easy and uncontroversial fix that will “strengthen the economy” and “benefit all” without taking a step back and asking the complicated and messy questions.

For example, one question that Inequality For All fails to answer, or even ask, is: what fundamentally drives this continual trend of widening economic inequality?

Could it be, perhaps, the value system our society and economy thrives on? Namely, a value system of perceived individual well-being achieved purely through the accumulation of personal wealth and consumption of material goods. Can we truly solve the issue of inequality without first addressing the entrenched framework of thought that drives selfish material gain at the expense of both people and the environment?

The problem with over-complicating an issue is resulting inaction. But on the flip side, the problem with over-simplifying an issue is ineffective change or no change at all.

Perhaps it’s time to accept that we need to ask tougher questions and that we need to develop more fundamental and diverse solutions. Let’s stop falling back on the same few quick fixes and accept that real change cannot come from the “business as usual” same old, same old approach. If we leave the burden of invoking fundamental change in the hands of the 92% cacao dark chocolate eating audience members, we will get nowhere.