"Capitalism: A Love Story", is the tongue-in-cheek title of Michael Moore's latest film that trashes the people who run our country. But honestly, he's tough to argue with - very tough.Larry King tried hard Wednesday night to catch Mr. Moore off his guard and paint him into a corner, but the goofy kid from Michigan was having nothing of it.
Larry took a shot with, "Are you saying the investor is more important than the employee?"
Moore, like a prime of his career, Mike Tyson, fired back with,
"Yes. The investor --and the investor, these days, they want the short-term, quick profit and they want it now. But in the long-term, here's what happened. When I was on this show 20 years ago, 20 years ago this week, I was here with "Roger and Me".
And General Motors, that year, made a profit of $4 billion. And yet they had just laid off another 30,000 people. Now, why would you lay people off when you're making a record profit of $4 billion?
I mean that was totally insane. But they thought, well, you know, we can make a
bigger profit. Maybe we can make $4.2 billion if we move those jobs to Mexico.
And so they're always, you know, we can make a little bit more money if we do
this. By firing those workers, Larry, they got rid of the very people who buy
their cars."
Moore's words sting harder than seeing a pink paper on your keyboard when you come back from lunch. They sting, because he's so damn right. Nobody can really argue with him, and the only reason he has the guts to say it is because he's already a millionaire from making documentary movies. It's not like some unemployed nobody is going to start ranting about how much our economic system sucks on a blog or something...ahem.
From what I gather about Moore's overall theme is that our economic system of capitalism has gotten very far away from democracy. He's saying that the majority, while under the illusion of having some control over what goes on, actually has none.
Now, I'm not sure if this is true in a political sense, because we still elect officials and that system seems to be relatively fair. However, I do know that the majority of organizations in which we work are so far from a democracy that we might as well have red flags flying high outside every office building. For profit organization are straight up dictatorships where a small group of elite officials run the whole thing while the rest fight like hell to break through the ceiling and rub elbows with the CEO and his son-in-law on the corporate jet. If you speak up about how the little guy is getting the shaft in an organization, just wait and see how long it takes to be shown the door. You have two options, you can stay and put up with the way things are run, or quit.
Moore says,
I guess the rebuttal to Moore's little rant is while there is clearly BS going on in large corporations nobody is forcing you to work for them. He grew up in Flint, Michigan where GM was only show in town. Factory workers in Flint had little choice about who was going to sign their paycheck. But in the rest of the country, darn near the majority of people work for small companies, and while smaller organizations can certainly show signs of beating up the little guy, the hierarchy can be much less brutal to navigate."It's set up like a pyramid, so that the richest 1% at the top have more
financial wealth than the 95% beneath them. But the trick here is to get
the 95% believing that if they work hard and slave away, they would get to the
top of the pyramid. Of course, as we know, only a few people can stand on top of
a pyramid."
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actually in capitalism , rich get richer and poor get poorer .
ReplyDeleteSo its nothing new , you can see all giants buy other small and medium size companies and saying that its rescission .
Disney buy marvelous , oracle buy sun , cisco buyin some this , dell buy that and still they are saying that we don't have money .
Its just a scam , they own you , this world or country not belong to you ( owned by group of people ) , you think what they want you to think through media , you eat what they want you to eat junk foods on every corner bla bla bla , old story nothing new .
Have a good day .
Regards,
M Asad Rasheed
Choose to join a union?
ReplyDeleteMichael Moore is clueless. While he rants and complains about Capitalism by pointing out its flaws, he conveniently fails to compare it to the alternatives. That is where Capitalism is clearly the best.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the wealth of individuals in a Capitalist country you could certainly whine about how much disparity there is between the wealthy and not wealthy (the 1%/95% argument). I will grant Moore that item even though I have not verified it myself. The reason I do not need to verify it is that it is meaningless. If you rate individuals under capitalism on a wealth scale you may find the wealthiest people at 9-10, the middle class at 4-6 and the poor at 2-4. However, under socialism (the form of government favored by Moore and his left-wing nutzo friends) the wealthiest people are 6-7, the middle class 3-4 and the poorest are 2-3. I will grant Moore that under socialism the gap between the wealthy and not wealth closed a bit at the expense of the wealthiest. This is what salivates the lefties - get the rich. The problem is that NO ONE IS BETTER OFF - in fact they are all WORSE OFF UNDER SOCIALISM.
Since Mr. Moore is so significantly concerned with Americans' well being I will offer him a solution. Instead of making America bashing documentaries while he makes millions, he should take his money and start a company to employ people and treat them the way he thinks they should be treated. Alternatively, he could give all his money away to help the "poor in America", who are among the richest poor people in the world. Otherwise, the whale from Michigan should shut the heck up!
Thanks for all the comments. I'm not so sure that Moore and all the "lefties" are in favor of socialism as much as they are in favor of being descent human beings. Like not laying off worker when you're making big profits and not selling junk mortgages to people who can't afford them in the first place. Is that really that nutzo?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/25boston.html
ReplyDelete"The housekeepers generally earned $14 to $16 an hour with health benefits, while their replacements, union and Hyatt officials say, are being paid around $8 an hour without health benefits. Hyatt said it was “very disappointed” by Mr. Patrick’s boycott threat, saying it endangers the jobs of 600 Hyatt employees in the Boston area."
While the employees at the bottom, who are absolutely defenseless in legal matters because they cannot afford it, are fired and replaced with cheaper labor, the CEO of Hyatt makes a $6 million salary.
From my understanding, new maid helpers were brought in, trained, then these helpers replaced the employees. America has fought this fight before, and there was a word for this-- "scabs."
This is exactly what Moore is talking about. It is a fact that it happens.
Instead of a civil discussion on this, conservatives are immediate to call people "socialist," as 'Halting Foreclosures' so quickly exemplifies. Instead of arguing against the facts Moore elucidates, he starts rambling about socialism without any evidence.
The alternative to capitalism is not socialism. That's psychosis developed by cold war. After all, remember this country trained all children to hide under their plywood tables in school to prepare for a nuclear missile from the soviets. Plywood! And all the adults sucked it up. Then they dropped more bombs on vietnam/cambodia/laos than the combined ordnance of allied and axis powers of the wwII theatre on an area the size of Maryland & NJ when all those east asian natives ever wanted was self-reiiance from colonial rule of any kind. Yet, the so called 'best of the best' as they were called then could not figure that one out. Neither did the ordinary people.
ReplyDeleteThese things have made americans sort of robotons with predictable left and right responses, almost like a pavlov's dog. So, they have become obedient slaves to whatever capitalism wants. Whatever their church wants. Whatever their elected officials want. Even your kids need some checks and balances for all that you may love them.
Moore is part of the Information Revolution that is making certain data accessible to the ordinary people, what we already know with empirical evidences, that anyone can find about the nature of 'employees' being a cost not an asset, and stock values always go up when there is cost reduction and consolidation with Mergers & Acquisitions.
If you dumped as much credit as we have on this country - personal credit, banking & investment credit, and federal credit or deficit on a country like Ivory Coast in Africa, it too will show fancy 'wealth.' Those who claim this country is wealthy compared to Africa don't know the basics of the macro-economics that we use here.
John,
ReplyDeleteThe nutzo part is the idea you think we need to reinvent "the economic wheel". While our system of capitalism coupled with democracy is not perfect, I defy you to find an example, past or present, of another system that regularly produces wealth and upward mobility for people with the drive and determination to succeed. Maybe everyone does not become a Rockefeller (or a Kennedy), but almost everyone has the chance to make their condition better.
The point is that we do not really have capitalism. We have corporate welfare.
ReplyDeleteHELLO?
PLUS
ReplyDeletedon't get me started on humanity and democracy issues.
Mr. Moore is absolutely, dead-center correct.
Moore is very naive, he needs better investigators and better advisors. He is looking in the right direction but he often misses the important underlying facts and substitutes familiar platitudes for real revelation. Believe me the facts are shocking enough that most people can reach their own conclusions. Corporate Welfare is a decades old reality in this country and it undermines the spirit of Capitalism very much to the detriment of us all. Conservatives who are worried about so-called "Socialism" should look at thier own prize businesses to see how much they are profiting from special government gauranteed programs and favoritism generated by lobbyists. To list a few: Agriculture, Forestry, Energy, Oil, Medical, Education, Insurance and of course the biggest beneficiary of all, the Banking industry and I am not talking about the recent bailout funds of the last year or so. All you proud big business Galdiators should take a look at how far you have your hand stretched out grasping for the public's dollar before you start calling yourself an entreprenuer.
ReplyDeleteThe American public are sheep. The government has complete control over everything. The minute anyone disagrees with the government, they are termed militant and labeled as outcasts from the normal population.
ReplyDeleteTalk about the biggest lobbyist job in Washington - the wireless industry. Telecommunications Act of 1996 states, sec. 704 "iv) No State or local government or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the Commission's regulations concerning such emissions.
They can place how powered microwave towers anywhere they want. These are same executives that probably won't let their children stand in front of an operating Microwave cooking food.
"I guess the rebuttal to Moore's little rant is while there is clearly BS going on in large corporations nobody is forcing you to work for them."
ReplyDeleteIncreasingly, we ARE forced to work for them, because fewer and fewer corporations own more and more of the businesses in this country and so if virtually all the jobs available are in these large corporations or in their subsidiaries then the choice is work for one of these large corporations or don't work... not much of a choice, then, is it?
These issues reflect the fundamental challenges of our system. One problem is that when everything goes well, it is rational to share the wealth -- in an ideal working situation, all the employees will understand this is a two-way street: When things don't go so well, the "de-wealth" must also be shared. Of course, when that happens, most of us revert to "I'm in this for me, first."
ReplyDeleteNo matter what the free-marketers say, capitalism needs some moderating controls to function effectively: The US for example, is only one of a very few nations in the world without an effective universal public health care system -- and much money is wasted on marketing, administration, and unnecessary treatments as a result. Does that mean all private care/insurance needs to be abolished for the very rich who can afford it? Of course not. And a good public health system will foster entrepreneurship and innovation because people "trapped" in jobs they hate will be able to move to something better if they know the person in their family who depends on them to provide health care can still be covered.
I agreed with much of what is said here, I can't take Mike Moore too seriously. Your article has started a fire at www.remodelcrazy.com/forum
ReplyDeleteCome on over and fight us some time.
Paul Lesieur Remodel Crazy
I can only speak from my own experiences and how capitalism has worked for me. As a child my father went bankrupt trying to raise cattle and alfalfa on a small ranch. After the bankruptcy, my sister, two brothers, mother, father and I moved to a larger town 8 hours south of where he attempted ranching. My dad picked up odd jobs as a carpenter and we rented a small house where I shared a very small room with both of my brothers. We had nothing but debt, my father and mother did not have a college education, but we stayed together and worked hard. Fast forward 23 years, I am a college educated construction management major who put myself through college by working odd jobs including a delivery boy at Pizza Hut. I am currently the part owner of a $60,000,000 a year General Engineering Contracting Company which I own with my father and brothers. We employ 120 people who we treat as if they were family. We pay above scale (prevailing wages) we provide profit sharing, 401K retirement and best of all we are self-insured. Essentially we pay for all the medical costs of our employees up to a certain single incident level of $50,000, above that we have outside insurance. We have realized a small saving from our previous Blue-Shield insurance, but not enough for me to think the insurance companies our gouging us. It simply costs a lot of money to pay for all the medical needs that our employees require and that we are fortunate enough to have access to in the United States. I live in a great house on 1 acre with my wife and 3 kids and life is good. I have just one question, in what other country under what other economic and political system could someone who started out with so little gain so much in such a short period of time?
ReplyDeleteWhere is it posted on that site?
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this John. I would love to feel that posting a page of my political commentary would make some difference or open some eyes to our reality. However, we all view our world through distorted lenses shading everything right/left and liberal/conservative etc. Very few can actually just agree on a few simple truths and go from there. That being the case these arguments are pointless. People can't even agree on healthcare which is tantamount to our entire existence. There is none so blind as those who refuse to see.
ReplyDeleteMichel Moore has no clue. He is the greedy capitalist profiting from current political situation. Of course we are not perfect, but what we have is the best there is.
ReplyDeleteI love this quote: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money [to spend]." Margaret Thatcher
Another quote: "When one observes the nightmare of the desperate efforts made by hundreds of thousands of people struggling to escape from the socialized countries of Europe, to escape over barbed-wire fences, under machine-gun fire—one can no longer believe that socialism, in any of its forms, is motivated by benevolence and by the desire to achieve men’s welfare." Ayn Rand
Being from the former USSR, I know that socialism destroys people, it does in in every country infected by it.
Some people demand equality forgetting that there is no equality in nature. The bottom line is that lion eats gazelle, owl eats mice, and it will never be the other way around.
ReplyDeleteI want us to be the lion, not the gazelle.
Here is another quote for you:
……….If there were such a thing as a passion for equality (not equality de jure, but de facto), it would be obvious to its exponents that there are only two ways to achieve it: either by raising all men to the mountaintop-or by razing the mountains.
The first method is impossible because it is the faculty of volition that determines a man's stature and actions; but the nearest approach to it was demonstrated by the United States and capitalism, which protected the freedom, the rewards and the incentives for every individual’s achievement, each to the extent of his ability and ambition, thus raising the intellectual, moral and economic state of the whole society.
The second method is impossible because, if mankind were leveled down to the common denominator of its least competent members, it would not be able to survive (and its best would not choose to survive on such terms).
Yet it is the second method that the altruist-egalitarians are pursuing. The greater the evidence of their policy's consequences, i.e., the greater the spread of misery, of injustice, of vicious inequality throughout the world, the more frantic their pursuit-which is one demonstration of the fact that there is no such thing as a benevolent passion for equality and that the claim to it is only a rationalization to cover a passionate hatred of the good for being the good……………………
Ayn Rand, “Return of the Primitive”
Hey, haven't you ever noticed the corruption in Socialist, Communist, Dictatorship etc. countries? Those masses suffer much more than we do!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's not the fault of democracy or capitalism, it's the human condition!!!!
The USA is a welfare state--not a democracy--to quote Huey P. Newton, "If you ain't part of the solution, you're part of the problem!" Moore is most certainly part of the problem!
ReplyDelete