I saw the 60 minute version aired on PBS on October 27, not the 80 minute version.
First the macro-rubbish: Rufo shows us scenes of industrial wastelands and he mentions automation but says nothing about globalization and financialization (ascendancy of finance capital). De-industrialization and job loss are results of capital's fixation on short-term shareholder value, and Rufo needs to address that rather than blame the victims.
Rufo intermittently engages in silly rants against bureaucrats. The problem in the United States is not bureaucracy, but the lack of public policies that other high-income countries use to mitigate job loss and displacement. Public policy disasters in the US include-
--Lack of universal health care, whether single-payer or German-style regulated insurance.
--Reagan-era policies that promoted globalization, accelerated de-industrialization, and cut social services;
--The pathetic patchwork of state policies that sometimes deprive people of even meager support such as Medicare expansion;
--The dismantling of public housing after years of neglect and deferred maintenance, with no effective affordable housing programs to take its place;
--The lack of a progressive income tax in many states, leading to state fiscal crises;
-- Property-taxes as a major source of school funding, leaving the poorest districts with the least resources to prepare students for the global economy;
--Republican cost-cutting measures at both state and federal levels, most recently displayed in the disgraceful scuttling of covid-19 relief;
--Mass incarceration and militarized policing in place of social services;
--Lack of an industrial policy with private-public partnerships for job training and apprenticeships.
Rufo's willful silence on these issues is the reason I cannot rate this movie higher than a 7.
At a micro-level, the movie offers sympathetic and vivid portraits of individuals and families-- and raises issues that the Left sidesteps-fragile families, lack of community solidarity, and unrealistic thinking. Family cohesion, two-parent households, and community solidarity cannot undo capital flight, but maybe they can contribute to effective responses. Solidarity, trust, family unity, discipline, coalition building, and realistic thinking are foundations for civic engagement and activism, as well as for individual mobility.
The Left and Neo-cons like Rufo could have a productive dialog about building stronger families and communities as well as a meaningful public policy agenda to address economic woes. I don't think that conversation is likely to happen.
In the meantime, I recommend political scientist Robert Putnam's Our Kids (2015) (or his New York Times article about Port Clinton, OH, August 3, 2013) for a more coherent take on mending the social fabric while developing the public policies we need.