The Super-Rich and Us, TV review: Interesting and enraging in equal measure
There have been a few documentaries lately inviting us to envy the opulent lifestyles of the obscenely wealthy, but Peretti took a different tack
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Following on from The Men Who Made Us Fat and The Men Who Made Us Spend, Jacques Peretti's new three-part documentary series might as well have been called "The Men Who Made Themselves Rich and Stuff Everybody Else".
There have been a few documentaries lately inviting us to envy the opulent lifestyles of the obscenely wealthy, but Peretti took a different tack. His was a history of "trickle-down economics" (that is the theory that tax breaks for the rich benefit society as a whole).
Like the great Adam Curtis, Peretti knows his way around an archive clip. These were used to make links between the rise of the non-doms, institutionalised corruption at HMRC and social cleansing in the London housing market.
Judging by the amount of multi-millionaires who were willing to appear on the programme and patiently explain why being loaded makes them more valuable members of society, trickle down is still alive and well today. Interesting and enraging in equal measure.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments