Down and Out in America (1986)

Down and Out in America is a 1986 Academy Award-winning documentary film that critiques Reaganomics by showing examples of poverty in the United States. It won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, tying with Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got.

Three sectors of American society hit by recession in the mid-1980s: heartland farms, factory workers out of a job, and the new homeless. In Minnesota, 250 family farms are being repossesed each week; men and women talk about their farms, the nature of their bank loans, the onslaught of corporate farming, and their sorrow and despair. In cities where 3,500 jobs per day go overseas, unemployed workers contemplate their options. The newly homeless talk about the jobs they've lost, "Justice Ville" in Los Angeles (bulldozed by court order), and squatting in New York's abandoned buildings. A family living in a welfare hotel tells their story.