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Viewer Score

60
Viewer score based on 3 votes.

Critic Score

70
Critics' score based on 18 reviews.
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Your Reviews

This film does a very good job at scaring people. Some of the figures and projections are bonechilling. However, it largely overstates the problem. We've handled deficits before. We ran an enormous de... ficit during the WW-II era (over 100% of GDP), so the current deficit (around 3% of GDP) is not a "fiscal cancer" as the IOUSA team would have you believe. More importantly though, the film missed an opportunity to offer a real solution to the deficit problem -- health care. If our country's health care system were as efficient as the systems in other industrialized countries, and if programs like Medicare/Medicaid could take advantage of these lower costs, our deficit problem would virtually disappear. The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a nice graphic that demonstrates this well: http://www.cepr.net/calculators/i- ousadeficit/calc_iousa_deficit.htm Full Review

November 12, 2008
mws5x

what are you talking about, you are agreeing with what they are saying throughout the movieall of what you say is correlating to this movie and is what should be done with the country

August 25, 2008
rba2486
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Critic Reviews

If they handed out an Academy Award for Most Gripping Graphs and Charts, this film would take it.Full Review

Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

There's no quick fix for a culture "addicted to debt," as one wag puts it in the film. But watching I.O.U.S.A. is a good place to start.Full Review

Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer

It accomplishes an amazing thing. It explains the national debt, the foreign trade deficit, the decrease in personal savings, how the prime interest rate works, and the weakness of our leaders.Full Review

Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times

Highly informative documentary reps a heady mix of charts, graphs and talking heads... superb packaging and timely subject matter.Full Review

Justin Chang
Variety

This smartly assembled wake-up call concerning the nation's lousy spending habits proves to be as unexpectedly spirited as it is dispiriting.Full Review

Michael Rechtshaffen
The Hollywood Reporter
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