Review of Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore)

Michael Moore starts out the movie by comparing the road that we are headed down with capitalism to the fall of the Roman Empire. He touches on some very touchy subjects, such as corporations profiting off of the death of workers, which were referred to as “peasants.” His major point of the movie is that capitalism fails to benefit the larger good; that corporate greed has made very few rich and dangling a carrot for everyone else saying, “this is what you can have if you work hard enough.”

One of the figures he showed was that the top 1% make more than the bottom 95% of workers. Since the days of Reagan, government has acted more like a corporation trying to maximize profits. In the movie, he also exposed documents of Citigroup, documents he claimed were how they planned to take over the world. In the documents it was shown that they only feared the fact that all of the people that weren’t rich had the ability to vote. Airline pilots were discussed and showed how company’s efforts to increase their bottom line affected real people. One of the pilots was living off of food stamps. These people are very necessary in our society, where pilots transfer mass amounts of people from place to place and are only earning around $20,000 a year with 4 times that amount in school loans. His effort of the movie is to try to rally people to push for a democracy that speaks for everyone, and not capitalism that breeds greed.

One of the major points of the movie that I really agreed with is the points that were made about a free economy and capitalism. I am studying for an economics minor, and learned all about Adam Smith and the invisible hand. However, last October and November, Government bailed out companies that should have been allowed to fail. Instead, these companies were granted large sums of bailout money, money taken directly from the taxpayers. So the very people that were hurt from the crisis and taken advantage of were once again hit up for their hard earned cash to support greed. This really touched home in the months following when bonuses of the companies were announced and the AIG resort getaway with top executives. The bill was rushed through the House of Representatives using fear tactics. Moore mentions this many times throughout the movie that the top 1% wealthy people in our nation use fear to keep us under their control to not revolt. I think this is a very valid point he made and made a great deal of sense.

Part of the movie that I didn’t agree with and didn’t think was necessary was the political plug at the end for Obama. I think that Moore made several excellent points in the movie, and putting that into the movie just gives people an excuse to write it off as radical left wing ideas. Yes I believe that people in general are becoming more conscious of the fact of corporate greed, but I do not think that one person such as Obama is going to change that around all by himself. The structure of America is in need of change, hopefully a change that Obama will bring.

Overall the movie was thought provoking, and something if you haven’t seen I would recommend seeing. There were several parts that really tugged at your heart with sympathy for people who were being taken advantage of solely for profit of large corporations, that don’t even need the added income. Greed became heavily engrained in American society over the past 5 years or so, even beyond that. But hopefully with the recession, that greed has been flushed down, and even though it will never entirely disappear, maybe it can be worked out that people will be given a more fair shot.

- Corey Van Lare