Summary: The United States continues to be the wealthiest country in the world, yet one in eight Americans-approximately 37 million people-live below the poverty line. This program analytically and sympathetically discusses the effects and implications of poverty, examining factors such as illiteracy, insufficient job skills, substance abuse, and crime. The phenomenon of multigenerational poverty is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: This program explores the systemic differences between the individualistic capitalism of America and Britain, and the communitarian capitalism of Japan and Germany. It shows how both Japan and Germany embrace more collaborative relations between labor and management, government and business, and even among businesses than the more laissez-faire American system. Both Japan and Germany invest...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program explores the central values of Japan, Germany, and the U.S. and focuses on what drives each of these societies. America's hallmark is individualism, Japan's the preeminence of the group; in America, freedom and diversity are primary values; in Japan, conformity and a powerful sense of nationalism prevail. Germany stands between the two, asserting individualism but striving, more...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: As ancient trading broadened and became more complex, barter became inadequate. In this program, host Peter Jay; Andrew Meadows, curator of the British Museum; Exeter University's Richard Seaford; and archaeologist John Camp examine history's first surge of coinage, from the stamped nuggets of electrum used at Sardis to the dominance of the denarius throughout the far-flung Roman Empire. The...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program, hosted by Peter Jay, focuses on Europe's hunger for wealth as it relates to the exploitation of the New World and the First Industrial Revolution. Expert commentary on the Aztec civilization, Europe's bullion famine, England's cottage industries, and expanding markets in North America-combined with the prescient writings of Daniel DeFoe and Bernard de Mandeville-lay the groundwork...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Are the days of the traditional cash economy numbered? This program examines ground-breaking monetary systems designed to benefit disadvantaged segments of the population and build strength in the small business sector-not only in the United States, but also in Mexico, India, Poland, and Britain. Traveling to each country, the program showcases remarkable financial innovations-including the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: A 10-year high school reunion provides an chance to investigate opportunity cost, supply and demand's effect on wages, investing in human capital, and the costs and benefits of career decisions. In another segment, two workers, thinking hard about their futures, learn about incentives for investing in human capital and the economic risks involved, why people change jobs, and factors that...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As recession enfolded Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, the economic axis shifted to the Islamic world, where the concept of risk management was born. This program, hosted by Peter Jay, explores the Muslim commercial empire in Egypt, the reemergence of trade in northwestern Europe with the waning of the Dark Ages, and the rise of banking and sophisticated accounting methods among the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Few 20th-century economists have had the impact of John Maynard Keynes-the brilliant author of the Keynesian revolution-and his break-the-mold assertion that economies can achieve equilibrium without full employment. This program from the BBC archives, through interviews with Keynes and those who knew him, traces his life and ideas. Quentin Bell, J. K. Galbraith, and Ninette de Valois discuss...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: While poverty has traditionally been a problem only for the unemployed, a new demographic of Americans has emerged-the working poor. This program explores the disturbing realities that many people in low-wage jobs face every day-such as having to decide whether to pay the rent, buy groceries, or see a doctor. Viewers will learn how standards of living are often measured, how suburban areas have...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: How do people get what they want? The most primal aim of economics is to find answers to that blunt but telling question-something at which Steven D. Levitt has proved particularly adept. In this ABC News program, Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, coauthors of the best-selling book Freakonomics, reason out points of convergence between beauty pageant contestants and crack dealers, abortion and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: During the recent period of high employment and low inflation, the economic fortunes of the U.S. could hardly have been better. But as the rich got richer, the gap between rich and poor grew all the larger. Today's concerns over recession notwithstanding, has the gulf between the haves and the have-nots finally widened to the point of moral indefensibility? Have the nation's obligations to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: America enjoyed unprecedented growth in the 1990s, which firmly established the country as the world's leading economic power. Why? In this program, ABC News correspondent John Stossel reports on what special factors make the U.S. and Hong Kong, a tiny yet extremely dynamic geopolitical entity, so successful-and why similar success eludes India and other countries. Experts include Nobel...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, a treatise that would forever change our understanding of how work, value, and money are interrelated. This program details Smith's life and traces the impact of his work as Europe began the arduous transition from mercantilism to the laissez-faire philosophy of the Physiocrats. After Smith, labor was seen as the source of a country's wealth,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: For many Americans, the threat of sudden poverty has less to do with the nation's overall economy than it does with personal circumstances. This program discusses the hard facts of situational poverty with a focus on the four most common triggers: job loss, the fastest way to become impoverished; health issues, such as severe injury or long-term illness; the loss of a spouse through divorce or...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In the fullness of time, his failings have become obvious. Yet, even after the collapse of global Communism, Karl Marx stands undiminished as one of history’s most influential thinkers. This program chronicles Marx’s life and intellectual development, including the publication and impact of his major writings. Beginning with his birth and religiously confused childhood in Prussia, the video...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the 21st-century landscape of shopping malls and skyscrapers, capitalism appears irreligious-but beneath its secular veneer lie theological principles born in the 1500s. This program examines the rise of the Protestant work ethic and the religious foundations of Western industry; it also reveals a Protestant consciousness at the heart of social activism and the opposition to extreme...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: During the longest economic expansion in American history, many people had never had it so good. But for others, the boom only resulted in working longer hours at lower wages simply to keep up. This eye-opening program tells the story of the Neumanns and Stanleys, two working families in Milwaukee whose efforts to make ends meet in the new global economy reveal what life was like for millions...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Fueled by one scientific breakthrough after another, the Second Industrial Revolution supercharged both manufacturing and trade, but it also led to economic rivalries that indirectly resulted in two world wars. In this program, host Peter Jay, Henry Kissinger, historians Richard Overy and Chris Ellmers, and Miller Carnegie, great-grandson of Andrew Carnegie, analyze the importance of science...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Beginning with a concise overview of brain evolution in early hominids and what appears to be barter behavior in chimps, this program traces the rudiments of the human wealth orientation as it developed at Wadi Faynan, a prehistoric agrarian settlement; at the ancient town of Catal Hoyuk; and at Uruk, a major Sumerian trading city. Host Peter Jay; Cambridge University's Nicholas Postgate; Hans...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Just as there was once a time without wealth, might there come a time without poverty? In this program, host Peter Jay scrutinizes the attempts by Great Britain, Russia, the People's Republic of China, and Tanzania to stabilize and recharge their economies during the last half-century, while interviews with citizens who have lived through both good times and bad reveal the mixed results of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: All over the world, green enterprise is growing. This program focuses on the catalyst that is transforming Earth-friendly businesses into paying ventures: a thing that economists call externalities. In Mexico, coffee growers use collective bargaining to create a more secure market. In Tanzania, where malaria is rampant, a mosquito net manufacturer makes good by marketing social change. In...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In very human ways, this program shows the stakes of the global economic competition for individual Americans and for the nation. It also shows how major American companies are faring in their battles with Japanese and German competition. The program moves from a look at mass production, craft production, and lean production in the auto industry to races for "voice" computers and laptops, as...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The dawning of the 21st century was a milestone in the longest and strongest economic expansion in America's history. But as the nation's fortunes rose, the emphasis on wealth-building left many feeling psychologically overdrawn. Did consumerism fill that feeling of emptiness? And did an increasing GNP really make Americans any happier? This program explores the hidden emotional costs...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006