Mind the Gap

Year: 2013 
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 
Director: Bryan Bruce 

Why is the gap between the rich and the poor growing faster in New Zealand than in most other OECD countries? And why is inequality bad for all of us?
Award winning documentary maker Bryan Bruce files his special report on what’s gone wrong with our economy and what we can do about it.
Bruce spent 18 months researching and filming his documentary which screened on TV3. He got interviews with some of the world’s leading economists - like Muhammad Yunus who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his concept of micro-loans, Prof Robert Wade of the London School of Economcs, Cambridge professor and best selling author Dr Ha-Joon Chang, and Prof Richard Wilkenson whose book The Spirit Level triggered a world wide debate about the effects of inequality.
“What I learned,” Bruce says, “is that Neoliberal economic theory has failed to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number of people which, in my view, is what an economy should be all about.”
Bruce found some solutions to the widening gap in Italy and in Bangladesh, and they are in his documentary. However, he warns the real challenge is to decide what kind of country we want.
"Do we want to do something about the increasing gap between the rich and the poor? Because if we do, then we need to move away from the politics of self interest and turn the ME society back into the WE society by legislating for equality."

Awards