Capitalism: A Conservative Review.

Last in Line and I saw the new Michael Moore film last Saturday night. As with Moore's last film, Sicko, I thought a review was called for from the right side of the aisle and from the same astute scribe. Take it away, Last!

Last in line for Michael Moore's new movie. Keep in mind I’m no writer so random thoughts will be randomly thrown in among the paragraphs and I can’t talk about every subject covered in the movie because that would make this review too long.

One could easily make the observation that MM is irrelevant. GWB won by a wider margin in 2004 than he did in 2000, and that was 2 months after Fahrenheit 9/11 was released. The town hall meetings have had a much stronger impact on the health care debate in this nation than Sicko did and this new movie won't matter much either. The themes in this movie, while important, seemed dated to me…Sicko might have been more appropriate now (while Congress is debating the health-care bill).

One can’t help but notice the common schticks in Moores movies - one-sided stories, ironic stock footage, ominous music, exploitative interviews, awkward confrontations, personal testimonials, absurd/scary facts and figures, use of vintage documentary footage, and pranks that cheapen the message. The movie weaves a familiar Michael Moore story of David versus Goliath (and we all know that nobody ever roots for Goliath). To me, he paints America’s sins with too broad a brush. Pointing a relentless finger at “capitalism”, Moore sounds a little too much like anyone Markadelphia criticizes for getting a little too hot under the collar about “socialism”. In both cases, they’re not making an argument - they’re demonizing a word.

The opening credits roll over security-camera footage of bank robberies in progress. Moore associates the taking of property at gunpoint with free markets, not with taxation.

Next thing we learn is that America is Rome, too distracted by Nascar and Mixed Martial Arts to care that we’re being exploited by wall street. The people who are losing their homes because of the collapse of home prices didn’t do anything to deserve it - if they treated their houses like ATMs or didn’t understand that the A in ARM stands for Adjustable, it’s because greedy Wall Street CEOs and their minions tricked them into doing it. There were several personal testimonials showed here and I’m sorry but I need to know the context of the situation behind why these folks are losing their homes. As usual, Moore only tells part of the story. He doesn’t criticize the home owners who displayed their own greed in taking out unaffordable mortgages and tapping their home-equity every year to buy cars and flat-screen televisions. Sure he showed Countrywide ads about refinancing your home but nobody forces anybody to use their homes as an ATM every year.

Moore clings to a romanticized version of the American past where unions and 90% tax rates on millionaires made America totally awesome.

He interviews a guy from a company called Condo Vultures. This is the same stuff he pulled in Sicko – the Condo Vulture guy in this movie represents capitalism the same way the folks living off of skid row in Sicko represent the American health care system. When Moore goes over to Europe in Sicko, he only profiles white, upper middle class folks. Funny how that works, isn’t it? He also profiles a for-profit juvenile-detention center in Pennsylvania whose operators bribed two judges to give kids longer sentences, thus increasing revenues to the facility. This is a crime and aren’t the men involved are facing long prison sentences? It might come as a shock to some but political corruption predates capitalism and exists in every country on earth. While presenting both these stories, Moore is tackling the wrong subject. This isn't about Capitalism - this is about the lack of ethics and morals by some people who operate within the confines of a capitalistic system. That there are predators that will take advantage and exploit a situation for their own gain is not limited to capitalism. We all know that there are very bad excesses in capitalism - there always has been and there always will be. Capitalism will always be flawed by the prejudices inherent in all humans. Nobody I know who is pro-business thinks people should get away with breaking the law. Speaking for myself, I am pro-free markets. Health care could serve as a great example of what happens when free market forces are taken totally out of the equation. There is no way that nine-out-of-ten people in this country can afford an average hospital stay. This country decided that somebody else has to pay their hospital bills…insurance companies, medicare, medicaid, whoever. In an ideal world, the price in medical services would have to adjust to what people can afford, just as many other things in our economy do (in an ideal world).

Moore spends a lot of time profiling the Republic Window and Door workers in Chicago who refused to leave their factory. Completely left out of the movie was the fact that government (Daley, Blago, and Stroger Jr) had a strong role in Republic going out of business when Cook County raised its sales tax to 10.25%. Many people wrote in to local papers like the Daily Herald and stated that they started saving thousands of dollars on large purchases by doing their shopping outside of Cook County and purchasing windows and doors is a very large purchase. By the time the sit-in began, Cook County had posted a 13% drop in monthly revenue. Moore didn't touch the subject of how raising taxes, any taxes, hurts individuals with purchasing power, businesses being able to stay in their locations and make a profit, and a steady stream (not falling) of revenue for local governments. No company exists to provide jobs. A company exists to produce profit for the owners. Too many people function from a mindset that says the company had a primary responsibility to it's workers. The business owners didn't get together one day and say, "Let's create jobs for workers". They got together and said, "Let's create a business to produce profit for ourselves. In the process, we'll need to hire some people” and that’s why lots of people exchange the term "fair" for "my self-interest".

One particularly chilling sequence explores how woefully underpaid, overworked and therefore unreliable our nation's commercial airline pilots are. If you're currently afraid of flying this portion of the film won't do you any favors.

Moore talks about companies taking out life insurance policies on employees and cashing in on them when employees die. They are called Dead Peasant policies. If you feel they are just wrong, congress and the president can demand legislation banning them.

Moore admits that he once considered entering the priesthood because he admired the church’s commitment to helping the poor. Moore interviews several priests and bishops, some of whom share his view that capitalism is evil and none of whom think capitalism is good for poor people. At no time does anyone mention that some of the most impoverished places in the world do not have capitalist systems in place. It does make one think that maybe we should adopt a more "Christian" ethic of helping those less fortunate but then when you realize that the Christian Ethic isn’t an a la carte menu (allowing us to pick one item and not the others), you’ll then realize what a constitutional travesty that would be.

He spends a lot of time talking about unions and General Motors. I found it odd that he didn’t mention the bailout of the auto industry as he sure talked a lot about the bailout of the financial firms a lot. The union dream and the dream of a strong GM are over, and the reasons Moore cites are only part of the story. In 2008, GM and Toyota actually sold about the same number of vehicles. Toyota turned a $1.7 billion profit while GM lost around $9 billion. That doesn’t happen by accident. Until these automakers and their unions resolve the structural problems that creates this kind of unprofitability, the dream will remain just that – a dream. GM is basically a retirement home/health care facility with a auto plant as a side project. GM has a policy of 30 years there and you can retire and they seemed surprised when lots of people retired at 48 and drew on the pension and free health care for another 30 years.

Bernie Sanders makes a quip that Nurses salaries are too low. Nurses are very well paid at this point in time.

The commercial for the city of Cleveland was absolutely hilarious.

MM claimed that nobody saw the collapse coming. That’s wrong, Peter Schiff saw it –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

The film communicates that blood is on both Republican and Democratic hands when it comes to our nation's economic collapse. Chris Dodd and Tim Geithner come off almost as badly as Hank Paulson.

This concept of positive/negative rights colors Moore’s stories of foreclosures in Miami. The families facing eviction aren’t borrowers who failed to live up to their end of a contract. They are shown as Americans whose right to own a home is being violated (there is no such right but that doesn’t stop the folks in the community from harassing the process server who isn’t even an employee of the bank).

One problem with capitalism today could be globalism. We all compete but we don’t all play by the same rules. The transition to a global economy will be painful. Politicians are not going to tell you what you do not want to hear: that the days of getting paid $30/hr turning a bolt on an assembly line are over. Neither political party or labor union can stop that.

At the end of the film, Moore gives us what he thinks is the ultimate illustration of the failure of capitalism: shots of people on the rooftops in the flooded Ninth Ward of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. The flooding occurred due to levee failure as well as poor maintenance of the flood walls surrounding the city. Spending many mornings of my youth hunting on farms along the Mississippi River in Illinois, I can tell you who is in charge of levees – the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (a government agency) but hey – if you refuse to know the facts, refuse to get alternative viewpoints and buy into everything Moore says then capitalism must be at fault.

In conclusion, I consider the crash of the mortgage backed securities market as perfect operation of the free market and this recession we find ourselves in is not a failure of market economics. It is a reassertion of market economics after a decade in which we paid ourselves more than we were producing, and funded it all with complicated credit instruments. Moore is throwing stones in a glass house he often frequents. Just look at how far Moore, a one-time assembly-line worker turned journalist turned documentary film maker, has come. His journey alone exemplifies the social mobility made possible by the very economic system he rails against. Economic downturns and upswings are as natural as the tides. Human history proves this. The causes can be heaped on “greed” or “capitalism,” but unless Moore thinks that human nature will suddenly transform and we’ll all behave as saints now that the “right people” have now been elected, he’s being just a little bit cynical.

The system could definitely use some improvement but it does not need replacement.