Capitalism A Love Story

In the documentary film “Capitalism a love story” Michael Moore demonstrates the failure of Capitalism as an economic system in America. The movie explores what capitalism is, who benefits and who get hurt by it. The film clearly shows how capitalism was hijacked by special interests and how it decimated the middle class, making it so much smaller while at the same time enlarging the poor underclass. It can be seen how at the same time that Wall Street and the banks grew, society’s devastation was soon to follow. It is clear in the film that the poorest, uneducated, and hardworking middle class are the most likely people to be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous corporations such as the home loan industry, and many others business out there. The removal of government regulations was the beginning of the problem. Special interest groups sent their agents to Washington to change the politician’s heads so that they could stop the regulations that were in their way. Without the regulations those rich corporations would become even wealthier.

Michael Moore shows us how profit makers and special interests can control the seats of the government. He demonstrated this through many examples throughout the film. A first example that Michael Moore shows us at the beginning, he gives us a glimpse about the content of his movie by showing robberies taking place. With his Michael tries to show us how the Wall Street/Banking system rigged the capitalistic system for their own ends. He shows us how people get foreclosed out of their homes and he then gives us hints as to how the real estate industry, the home loan lenders and banks who engineered the process to defraud the American people. Ideally one will believe that when a corporation or a business lender lends you money it is absolutely moral that the lender is lending the money in return for making a profit, which I believe is a win-win situation for both lender and the borrower. Because the borrower will gain access to what he or she wants and the lender in return will make profits on the money borrowed.

However this is not exactly the case of what is happened in America which is what Michael moors is showing us. Greedy lenders corrupted the system with the help of corrupt politicians. Government changed the laws to allow them to legally steal from the people. It can be clearly seen how a leading banker commands the President of The United States as if he was his subordinate. The evil corrupt people had the government open the treasury doors for them to steal at will, they on purpose wrote contracts that only others with a higher education would be able to understand, that left many if not most people in danger to be abused, these people were not aware that they could easily loose it all and they did. I believe this was the government’s failure to protect its own people, instead the government was protecting the rich and that makes me ask myself a question! If there is apparently nobody to protect us, who are the people supposed to turn to for protection if the government is not there for them?

We see how President Reagan began to tear down the regulations that were protecting people such as the Air Traffic Controllers, we see how they lost their pension plans, how their salaries were slashed at the same time that their hours were increased. This was completely unethical and it shows us how greedy capitalists will seek any opportunity to take advantage of people. We see this clearly in Moore’s film when he presented the couple who got 30 days’ notice to leave their property, and the bank was behind it even though the bank had used unethical methods to give them the loan, the bank sent the police officers to force them out of their home.

This was very sad, immoral and unethical and the government should implement strong regulations that protect and defend these people. The decisions that are made by the wealthiest usually affect negatively every one, and it is making our lives very difficult. We need to be able to educate ourselves to really see what is going on around us because this will help us see the truth and protect ourselves again these greedy profit makers, I believe education is the solution.

Another unethical and immoral example of wrong doing that Michael presents in the film is the “key man“ and the “dead peasant” corporate policies. They key Peasant policy is when a corporation is allowed to seek profit on an employee’s death. The death peasant policy is when the company actually the money of their workers after the employee died. This should be revolting and illegal, companies take out insurance policies on their own employees and I would have to say that there is something wrong with that concept. Companies would prefer that their die because it is very profitable form them, they can always hire more and hope that they die soon, a question comes up, if they are so greedy, what is to stop them from planning a person’s death, this is inhuman and completely immoral and unacceptable.

This is another example of the government working for the big business, there shouldn’t be insurance for such things in this world, corporations profiting in this way from some ones death should not be allowed, this should be a personal matter left only for loved ones in the family if they choose to do this, death should not be a corporation’s business. This is completely wrong, upsetting, and demeaning to the family, It is evidence that corruption and pitiless government, corporations and business treat humans as products to make profits and not worthy of respect. Michael Moore showed many examples and situations in the documentary where corporations and many companies take out life insurance policies on employees and name themselves the beneficiary. One example of this is when a husband of the women who died of brain cancer and the company where her husband worked received over one million dollars after she passed away. We see clearly that these corporations do not care or even think about the family.

They rather see their employees dead than alive. Yet another example that we see in the documentary is the Walmart female worker who died, the company collected $80,000 dollars while her husband was stuck with medical and funeral costs, Walmart did not even give a single dime to her husband, the profit that Walmart made was considered pure profit and her husband felt betrayed and completely disappointed by Walmart’s unethical behavior. What is even more immoral is for the companies to have such insurance without the employees having knowledge of this fact, or consent to it, and to even imagine that the money that these companies collect is tax deductible is unthinkable and unspeakable. I could only feel the pain inflicted on the good people by the greedy companies. One more example of unethical and criminal abuse of Capitalism that Michael presents in the film is the “child juvenile” Detention Center; In this case a corrupt Judge and Lawyer with the help of others plan how to take advantage of the system.

The plan is to put young offenders in their own detention facility and bill the tax payers for the services, it is shown how the judge makes decisions to detain the offenders without sometimes even looking at the cases, especially when he later increases the incarceration times for no good reason. I am glad to see that they were caught and went to jail themselves. There are so many examples but after a few it is very clear that a solution must be found, I believe that the solution can only come from the involvement of the people, unfortunately the criminals have thought about that also and have taken steps to make it more difficult for people to assemble to demonstrate or to even vote, the police harasses peaceful protesters as has been seen in the gassing of University Students in their own campuses, we have seen even the Supreme Court pass laws that hide donors to political parties, special interest groups rule the country if not the world by means of money donations to the politicians, the better television adds cost more money to produce, and the public with their busy lives hardly have the time or energy to pay attention so they will be easily misled with disinformation if not straight out lies, the perpetrators know that even if they are caught lying the consequences will be light or none at all, the result being more aggressive and immoral leaders.

It is well known that if a petty thief steals 500 dollars from a convenience store he will get a stiffer penalty than a white collar criminal defrauding senior citizens in the hundreds of millions. These examples show us that even if Capitalism sounds good in theory it may not be so good in practice because I think it is easy for some people to do corrupt things if they have the chance. Corporations spend very much money to influence the policy and law makers in government, from the small town mayor to the President of the United States, so Capitalism is very scary and I think the only way for a person to protect himself or herself is to be educated. I consider the election of President Obama a strong statement of the people, that statement is that the people will not tolerate such abuse any more, Mr. Obama has put in place regulations on Wall Street and the banks and medical insurance industry, as well he asked that the tax payer’s money that was lent to them to get out of trouble in the economic crash that they caused has to be paid back.

I hope that the American people do not forget this experience and always keep an eye on corruption and do not forget to vote. I think Michael Moore says that since this is the socio-economic system that we have, we must be vigilant and always try to make it better, but above all we must hold those perpetrators accountable to show an example to others who may be thinking of taking advantage of the weak. Yes, I think this is a big battle of the people against the government, but what choice do the people have. We must be strong and do our best to bring up our children with the best morality and working ethic possible. We must keep the vision of a perfect country, where words like dignity, ethics, morality, honesty and decency are special goals for us to reach.