Not often I get chance to wade into politics or things of that nature on this blog but I went along to see Michael Moore’s new film “Capitalism – A Love Story” earlier this week and I thought I’d write a review about it as below. If you’ve seen the movie, let me know what you think… feel free to comment below.
Capitalism
Capitalism is the title of Michael Moore’s new movie and I went along to see it just recently. As always Moore has his own agenda to keep but this movie does have some thought provoking moments that keep the viewer interested and entertained. The movie starts by showing a family being evicted after a mortgage foreclosure. From there it moves on to attack companies such as Wal-Mart who took out over 350,000 separate life insurance policies on their ‘dead peasants” just so they can make a profit out of the employee should he or she die.
After that Moore addresses the salaries of pilots who we are led to believe only do it for the love of flying, and then he revisits the foreclosure issue by revealing that ironically 60% of the foreclosure notices come from Flint, Michigan so, therefore, there is a conspiracy to make the whole country a similar place to how Flint is today.
From there we move into an attack on corruption in Government as he accuses many public figures of getting favorable loans as VIP friends of Angelo Mozilo, former head of Countrywide before we get to the public bail out of Bank of America, GM, AIG, Chrysler etc and his quite ludicrous but comical attempts to recover some of the public money given out to these companies. Moore then goes further as he points out that it is the failed executives at Goldman Sachs who are now advising Government leaders and that there is effectively a “jobs for the boys” mentality leading the nation.
Moore then highlights the workers at Republic Doors & Windows, Chicago, as innocent victims who then organized a sit in when the factory closed and they weren’t paid what was owed to them. It took just six days for Bank of America and the company owners to come to a deal with them to pay them off and buy their silence.
Of course, much of this movie is rhetoric and designed to shock the audience. It’s also quite amusing in places and the comment “there is a reason why I can’t take out fire insurance on other people’s houses” deals pretty well with the life insurance issue but fails to ask the question why the families concerned didn’t take out such insurance themselves?
Moore clearly loves the idea of “fairness in the work place” and champions Alvarado Street Bakery as the business of the future where every employee comes together in a “true democracy” to vote on the direction of the company. His working for the common good theme continues as he talks about Dr. Jonas Salk who refused to patent his vaccine for polio, thus saving him from the sin of getting really rich and he praises the unselfish work of the police and the firemen who go out to work each day to help the common good as if to solidify his point that enough money is enough money and we should all do more for others.
Finally, Moore gets to Roosevelt’s 1944 second bill of rights. This was the proposed bill that would have allegedly guaranteed that every person in the United States would have a job with a living wage, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, a home, medical care, education and recreation. Grand ideals but unfortunately (for Moore) none of this came to fruition as Roosevelt passed away in 1945 and we can only wonder what might have been had it come to pass, even though Moore makes the point that after the 2nd World War the people of Europe and Japan got all of the items on the Roosevelt wish list.
I have to admit that I quite enjoyed the movie but the big problem for me was the lack of balance. Moore fails to bring in one single small or large business owner to tell their side of the story and about the struggles or successes they have in running their own business to create jobs and wealth. The film also fails to mention the current work of people like Buffett, Gates and many other great philanthropists (Carnegie, Rowntree, Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg) who have created wealth from literally nothing, not to mention capitalism, and then given huge sums of money away in an effort to help human beings all over the world, arguably doing more for society than all previous governments put together have ever done.
So Mr. Moore, you might have found a couple of clergymen to say that capitalism is the root of all evil and you may have made a watchable and somewhat thought provoking movie but the real irony in all of this is that without capitalism, this film wouldn’t have been made at all. It would also have been nice to see you address how capitalism has or hasn’t helped you create your own media empire and your own personal fortune.
Perhaps a better title for the movie should have been “Greed”. After all, it was the greed of the banks, the government, many people in business and lastly the people themselves that caused much of today’s problems and I’d strongly argue that it isn’t “capitalism” that has “failed” us…it’s only people who have done that.
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