Michael Moore has made a name for himself as the king of ambush journalism. He snags interviews with corporate bigwigs and policy makers by pretending to be interested in benign issues, then switches to hot-button topics once he’s in the room. With aggressive questioning that catches interviewees off guard and skillful editing that twists their comments around, he paints an ugly picture of corporate and conservative America – a picture that is malevolently deceptive. Moore’s disingenuous tactics are so blatant that even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences refuses to list his films as documentaries.
In “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Moore is up to his old tricks. The film begins with what appears to be a hostage standoff. Four adults are locked inside a house, filming the arrival of several police cars and speaking to one another about the inevitability of what’s about to happen. What is it? A suicide pact? The persecution of a religious cult? As police begin knocking down the doors, the householders call out, “We have no weapons. We will not resist. But we will not open the door.”
But what is the crisis? An eviction because of a mortgage foreclosure.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m saddened by the number of people who have lost their homes in this financial crisis. I’m sorry if they were duped into borrowing more than they could afford to repay. But according to Moore’s own film, it was Fed chairman Alan Greenspan who urged homeowners to “tap into your home equity” as a way of stimulating the economy, and it was Clinton-era lawmakers who passed the Community Reinvestment Act requiring banks to grant mortgages to low income homebuyers. Don’t blame capitalism for government policy.
In another segment, Moore presents the horrifying stories of several teenagers who were sent to a juvenile detention center for seemingly minor infractions. They· were all sentenced by the same judge, who appears to have been receiving kickbacks from the owner of the facility. (I say “seemingly” and “appears to have” because I can never trust Moore to tell a true story.) The more children this judge sent to the facility, the more money he received. Many of these teens remained virtually incarcerated for months, according to the film.
Moore blames this travesty on capitalism because the community had turned to a privatized detention system rather than maintaining a government run facility. But let’s put the blame where it belongs. If it happened, this was not a failure of capitalism; it was a failure of one particular judge to act honestly and appropriately.
Moore complains that capitalists are greedy, but greed is a condition of human nature, not of capitalism per se – or of socialism, for that matter. Most people try to be honest, but some steal from their own mothers. Greed can and often does lead to criminal behavior. But it’s easier – much, much easier – to control, arrest, or simply avoid wicked capitalists than it is to get rid of wicked politicians and dictators.
To be fair, Moore doesn’t limit his blame to Bush and the Republicans this time; Clinton, Chris Dodd, Greenspan, and even Obama appear to be in on the take as Moore reports on last year’s financial meltdown. But Moore’s target is capitalism – and these are politicians. If capitalists are buying them, it’s because the politicians put themselves up for sale.
Moore decries the profit motive as “morally evil,” but what motivation would he prefer? Whips? Chains? How about pleasure? Moore interviews several pilots who love to fly airplanes, but they still aren’t happy. They want more money.
This leads us to another of Moore’s anecdotes: the plight of employees at Republic Windows and Doors who were all let go when the company went bankrupt. Would Moore insist that every company be kept in business, even when no one wants to buy its products? But in this case, the failure was caused by the union that represented the workers, who in essence priced themselves out of the market. Interestingly, Moore was right there on the spot, filming disgruntled employees as they broke into the factory and began a sit-in. Did he just happen to be passing by with a camera crew? Did he reenact the bolt-cutting? Or did he incite the sit in? Quite a convenient coincidence.
At one point Moore asks one of the former employees why they didn’t just form a cooperative and run the company themselves. One woman responds, “Because we don’t have any money – we aren’t capitalists.” There’s the rub: it actually takes capital to start a business! But anyone can be a capitalist. All you have to do is spend less than you earn, and invest the difference.
Moore unwittingly demonstrates that possibility when he shows what happened at a bakery where employees bought the company and turned it into a cooperative. Today they all work harder and enjoy their jobs more. They feel empowered. They saved their money, invested it in a business, and now they’re making a handy profit. Wait a minute – isn’t that capitalism?
How would Moore fix the economy? As you might have predicted, he suggests raising taxes. That’s a good way to prevent capital formation. But Moore believes that taxes are somehow a tonic for whatever ails you. “When the highest tax rates were 90% he intones cheerily, “America enjoyed the greatest expansion in history, and families could get by on one income” – implying that a 900k tax rate today could solve our problems.
But the tax code was different in the ’50s. Congress awarded liberal tax breaks and exemptions for “good behavior.” High-income earners could give 90% of their marginal income to the government in taxes, or they could invest 100% of it in a business and reap the profits. Which would you do? What started out as a tax loophole turned into one of the greatest infusions of investment capital our country has ever known. No wonder the economy throve. Capitalism truly was a love story.
But Moore has no desire to inform his viewers, or enlighten them with a genuine explanation of how capitalism works. He’s a carnival barker who merely loves to rake the muck at the end of the pony show, a technology-savvy magician who knows how to manipulate the smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately, this circus has been to town too many times, and it isn’t very entertaining anymore. I kept looking at my watch, wondering when it was going to end. It was like listening to Andy Rooney for two straight hours.
Moore says this is his last movie. Let’s hope he’s telling the truth about that.
