Robert Reich's Inequality For All

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Robert Reich, the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and the former Secretary of Labor under Clinton administration, in his movie “Inequality For All”, discuss the shrinking of American middle class and widening gap between rich and poor people. He stresses that economic inequality is one of major problems in the United States today. So, why is it so important to all Americans, and to me personally? We all associate ourselves with one or the other social class, either we consciously think about it or not. And I’m quite confident, that most of us, here at Harper College, label ourselves as middle class. Now, in order to dive into further discussion, let’s try to define American middle class. In his movie, R. Reich states, that there is no official definition of middle class. He states that the median salary in the US is around 50,000 dollars (data used in movie is from year 2012). According to R. Reich – fifty percent above and fifty percent below the median income can be thought of as a middle class …show more content…

What I’m implying to is technological innovations. R. Reich asks his students where do they think their money go when they purchase an iPhone. Students think that 70 percent go to the US, while in reality only 6 percent end up here. With technology came another behemoth term – globalization. It’s not necessary a bad thing, but also not good either. With new technologies and advanced globalization, we see a lot of jobs being outsourced from the United States. At the same time, we also see a lot of goods being made in other countries. Goods, which used to be made right here, in the US. Both of these trends lead to American people losing jobs. At the same time the CEO’s of these companies see an increase in profit and personal income due to decreased manufacturing

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