This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Sadly Over-hyped

Fantastic!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I am not able to re-recite the economic views expressed in this film, and although a lot of things have changed globally since 2008, many of the corrupted activities cited in this film are still occurring. It both saddens me and enlivens me to be aware of the poverty cycle in our world because at some point, it seems hopeless and yet curiously easy to fix. I would love to continue sharing this great film because it's documentation is so important in educating people and maybe enough to motivate positive change in our lifetimes. Thank you for shedding some light with this film! Here's to a brighter tomorrow.

"In a world with so much wealth, in modern cities, and so many resources, how can we still have so much poverty where so many people must live on less than one dollar per day?"Poverty is an issue that is currently affecting billions of families and individuals. I came from a third world country where poverty is extremely common. I grew up witnessing neighbors struggling and parents losing their jobs and not being able to make enough money in order for their family to live with dignity. Mothers were forced to stay home and take care of the house, while fathers were the breadwinners of the family. In the documentary "The end of Poverty" the director, Phillipe Diaz, discusses poverty as an issue that is pervasive all across the globe. In his documentary, he focuses on the slums of Africa and the barrios of South America to elucidate poverty to the world. We are reminded that families are facing destitution and due to this children are forced to neglect school because they must help their families and cannot afford an education. Poverty has been affecting the world for over five hundred years. Conquistadores and colonizers roamed South America, Asia, and Africa, robbing lower class families of their land. For example, at the end of the colonial era in Kenya, one percent of the white population owned about fifty percent of the arable land. The conquistadors and colonizers imposed severe taxes on huts and forced lower class people into harsh labor. This can be closely connected to slavery. In today's world, poverty is still a penetrating issue, as third world countries are still plagued by inequitable debts, trade, and tax policies. Rich countries take advantage of third world countries, by ensuring and benefiting off of their underdevelopment. Landowners are still in possession of land that does not belong to them but in reality to the poor people. The poor continue to be perpetually oppressed throughout the world. Individuals are still forced to work in inhumane conditions, being treated immorally, and are not receiving appropriate salaries. It is estimated that 60 to 80 million people still continue to work in dystopia societies, as they are living in slave like worlds and depend heavily on the little money they earn to support their families. In Brazil, seventeen workers died from exhaustion and another 490 as a result of their slave-like employment, which entails sugar application. One of the workers explained the need to wake up at 1 am, in order to eat breakfast to begin working at 3:30 am. They spend hours cutting bundles and working insufferably hard to solely earn a paltry amount of 27.50 dollars per month. In less than four hours of making pizzas at work, I am able to make about the same amount of money, if not more, than these individuals who endure hard labor under the scorching sun. An article posted by CNN stated that forty percent of the food in the United States is thrown out, which is approximately 165 billion dollars squandered each year. Furthermore, about twelve percent of fresh fruit at supermarket goes to waste. It pains me to realize that so much food is discarded and wasted each year in this country, while people are dying of hunger every day and parents are risking their lives to put food on the table for their children. The documentary states that "less than 5% of the world population lives in United States, and we consume 25% of the world's resources, and creating 30% of the world pollution," which indicates that poverty is not about the lack of resources, but rather the distribution of resources.The documentary includes many experts such as, economists, authors, university professors, government ministers, Bolivia's vice president, and Brazilian activists. Phillipe Diaz succeeded in giving a voice to people affected by poverty and through allowing us, the viewers, to witness their daily struggles. I was extremely distressed when seeing individuals, wearing ripped clothes, discuss the grueling labor that they endure to earn less than a dollar and the starving children that yearn for an education. It is often the case that we forget our privilege and victimize our situations and ourselves. It is only when we watch documentaries, such as this one, do we understand the harsh reality that many individuals actually face. While watching this documentary, I experienced the very emotions that the director had intended for. In an interview with a kid from Kenya, he talked about having to give up on school because his parents could not afford to pay for the test to attend school. Mr. Diaz is implying that man created poverty; therefore man can end it, that it is the duty of the privileged to consider the struggles of the working poor and seek to alleviate them, by helping to create an egalitarian society.

I saw this film at the African Diaspora Film Festival a few weeks ago. I consider myself fairly well read, and abreast on world news, but "The End of Poverty?" was a real eye-opener for me. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest in the state of the world at large.The film pinpoints the origins of the modern separation between the rich and the poor, and goes in depth explaining the barriers that are in place to only keep this gap growing larger over time. Citing many examples in countries all over the world, we're given a global tour of the state of poverty over the past three centuries.It seems there have been complaints that not enough solutions to the question posed by the film have been offered up. I think the reason for this is fairly simple - there are no easy answers. There's no magic switch to be flipped to solve the problem, and even though theoretical answers are technically offered up by some of the experts interview throughout the documentary, I think the movie's intention was more to inform and start a dialogue than it was to propose a singular solution. Just my two cents.

Phillipe Diaz's "The End of Poverty?" pretends to take up the cause of the world's oppressed. According to the short plot summary (written by producer Beth Portello) which appears on the main IMDb page for this film, it was "Inspired by the works of 19th century economist Henry George, who examined the causes of industrial depressions." The fact that the film methodically ignores the contributions of the far more influential and widely celebrated 19th century investigator of industrial depressions and poverty, Karl Marx, is but one indication of this film's intellectually shoddy and ultimately dishonest character."The End of Poverty?" is structured as a series of three intermixed components, which goes on for nearly all of a seemingly endless 106 minutes: (1) interviews with impoverished people in the "Third World," which, here, is synonymous with the "South"; (2) interviews with historians, economists and political thinkers (mostly from the "First World") who sketch out some of the history of European colonialism and its effects on the colonized peoples and (3) full-screen, white-on-black statistical statements like "X percent of the world's people consume Y percent of the world's energy" etc. Along the way, some of the commentators point out that the rise of capitalism was based on — and a large share of its profits continues to be based on — the ruthless exploitation of the colonial world. Although the talking heads often use the circumspect word "system," references to "capitalism" appear more frequently as the film progresses. Thus, the viewer might reasonably expect the film to culminate with a call for the end (overthrow?) of the system which causes all this misery: capitalism. Don't hold your breath!The film's portrait of the world's wretched is peculiarly skewed. Most of the interviews with poor people and footage of pitiful living conditions are from South America, notably Bolivia. The time allotted to Africa is a distant second and focuses on Kenya, with a much smaller Tanzanian component. There is precious little footage from — or mention of — Asia. Most of the interviewed poor are or were connected to the land in some way. Industrial workers are essentially ignored. Causes of poverty such as war and ethnic victimization are similarly overlooked. "Does poverty exist even within the over-consuming 'North' as well?" one might ask. As far as "The End of Poverty?" is concerned, the latter is invisible. Other viewers might be forgiven for wondering about the effects on poverty of the overthrow of capitalism in the Soviet Union, China and Cuba (the "Second World"?). Again, silence reigns. Thus, as a study of the world's misery, the film is impressively inadequate.As the film enters its final stage, there is a half-hearted invocation of the long-forgotten U.S. economic philosopher, Henry George. In his 1879 "Progress and Poverty," George proposed that poverty could be eliminated(!) by the abolition of ground rent and of all taxes save one: a tax on land. Not only was this panacea unoriginal (it had been advocated for more than 50 years by the followers of classical British economist David Ricardo), it was wacky. Karl Marx thought that George's theory was "the more unpardonable in him because he ought to have put the question to himself in just the opposite way: How did it happen that in the United States, where . . . in comparison with civilised Europe, the land was accessible to the great mass of the people, . . . capitalist economy and the corresponding enslavement of the working class have developed more rapidly and shamelessly than in any other country!" For Marx, adherents of George's view ". . . try to bamboozle . . . the world into believing that if ground rent were transformed into a state tax, all the evils of capitalist production would disappear of themselves. The whole thing is therefore simply an attempt . . . to save capitalist domination and indeed to establish it afresh on an even wider basis than its present one." (See Marx's letter to F. A. Sorge, June 20, 1881.) The film does not make so bold as to try to resurrect George's single-tax panacea. Instead, it offers an updated version: the "Commons" paradigm. Supporters of this liberal nostrum believe that the solution for the world's poor is to remove all of the land from private ownership and to hold it in common. Unsurprisingly, they do not explain how to achieve this little miracle.In the film's last few minutes, some of the commentators raise the specter of the supposed limitations (as judged by what standard — present-day capitalist production?) of the world's resources and the excessive and unequal consumption of those resources by the "North." The real aim of Diaz & Co. here is to guilt-trip gullible people in the industrialized countries into adopting moralistic "use less energy" schemes, as if conscience-stricken lowering of consumption in the "First World" will magically increase consumption in the "Third." The accelerating global descent into depression, triggered by the unprecedentedly massive "mortgage securities" fraud perpetrated by the U.S.'s financial sector, will, no doubt, achieve Diaz's aim of lowering consumption in the "North." Does he actually believe this will benefit the world's poor?For Diaz & Co., the "North" is an undifferentiated entity. Its working class, whose exploitation remains necessary for the survival of the capitalist system and which regularly loses some of its ranks into the maelstrom of poverty, does not figure in their calculations. And this is the most pernicious omission of their retreaded Malthusian ideology. For it is ONLY the working class of the developed countries — once it becomes conscious of its historic class interests — which has the SOCIAL POWER to reorganize production on a rationally-planned, world-wide, for-need basis, in order to lift itself AND the colonial masses out of the chain of misery. Because "The End of Poverty?" conceals this vital knowledge from anyone who is interested in ending poverty, it is, finally, an obstacle to achieving that goal.Barry Freed