Filmmaker Michael Moore on Capitalism: A Love Story

There has been no system that comes close to creating the level of prosperity, comfort and freedom to the common man than capitalism. History is full of attempts to create something better through intentional action or deliberate planning, and there are hundreds of millions of innocent souls in their graves to show for it.

That there are still people (some are actually well intentioned people) who believe themselves to have the virtue, intellect and wisdom to tell us how we should all live is staggering. Even more staggering is how many people seem willing to surrender their freedom, economic or otherwise, to these self appointed saviors and their experiments. How many more people have to live in desperate circumstances because of this moralizing and coercion? How many more innocent people must be toyed with and treated like lab rats? I prefer the imperfections of capitalism and the implied voluntary cooperation involved in making it work over having my freedom to decide how I will live, work, earn, spend and save by those who know nothing about me or the others they desire to lead through government coercion.

Do I believe that capitalism is the be all and end all? I don't know, but history tells us that it is has produced better results than any other system. The disparity in wages between the highest earners and the lowest earners may be great, but please name the society where this has not occurred? Was there no disparity in wages in the Soviet Union? Cuba? Venezuela? China? The facts show that there is as large if not larger disparity in these so called "equal, just" societies, than in the United States - it's just that there are far fewer at the top in those societies (all in the government) and those at the bottom have ZERO chance to make it to the top. Most people in the top wage earning group in the United States were at some time in the lowest.

Most people in the United States move through the income quintiles throughout their lives. There are few "perpetually poor."

Here are a few people Michael Moore must not know.....

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we’ll be there to watch. I think he’s Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, Rush?



"We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say 'This is one of our bad days,' and pull the trigger," St. Petersburg Democratic Club Newspaper Ad in The Grabber, referring to Donald Rumsfeld.

Monday, 7th June 2004
MANCHESTER music legend Morrissey sparked controversy when he announced Ronald Reagan's death live on stage during a concert - and then declared he wished it was George Bush who had died instead.

Thousands of fans at Dublin Castle, in Ireland, cheered when the ex-Smiths frontman made the announcement that the former American president, who had battled with Alzheimer's Disease, had passed away.

And an even bigger cheer followed when Morrissey - who is no stranger to controversy - then said he wished it had been the current President, George W Bush, who had died.



Friday, July 2, 2004 Posted: 1:38 PM EDT (1738 GMT)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Get ready for a new anti-Bush book this summer. Only this time, it's fiction. And this time, the subject is murder.
"Checkpoint" by Nicholson Baker, the author of the best-selling "Vox," imagines a conversation between two old high school friends. One of them is so angry about the war in Iraq that he wants to kill President Bush. His friend tries to talks him out of it.
"I wrote 'Checkpoint' because a lot of people felt a kind of powerless seething fury when President Bush took the country to war," Baker said in a statement Thursday.
"I wanted to capture the specificity of that rage. How do you react to something that you think is hideously wrong? How do you keep it from driving you nuts?"
Baker's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, said it had received no official complaints so far about the book, which comes out August 10 with a first printing of 75,000 to 100,000 copies.
"Of course I recognize that this is a troubling premise for a novel," Baker said in his statement. "But 'Checkpoint' is an argument against violence, not for it."
Baker is known for such unorthodox narratives as "Vox," which consists entirely of an erotic phone conversation, and "The Mezzanine," set mostly on an office escalator. Baker also wrote the nonfiction "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper," a National Book Critics Circle prize winner in 2002.
"Vox" has its own political history. It was mentioned in the Starr Report as a book given to President Clinton by Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern with whom Clinton had an affair.



Charlie Brooker ended his Oct. 24 column in the Guardian with a plea for Bush's death: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?"



"Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that's what he needs." – Wanda Sykes at White House Correspondents dinner – May 2009



Bill Maher Publicly Wishes for Rush Limbaugh's Death – “Why couldn't he have croaked from it instead of Heath Ledger?” – Feb 8, 2008



Maher: What about the people who got onto the Huffington Post — and these weren't even the bloggers, these were just the comments section — who said they, they expressed regret that the attack on Dick Cheney failed. […]
Barney Frank: They said the bomb was wasted. (laughter and applause)
Maher: That's a funny joke. But, seriously, if this isn't China, shouldn't you be able to say that? Why did Arianna Huffington, my girlfriend, I love her, but why did she take that off right away? […] I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn't be dying needlessly tomorrow. (applause) […] I'm just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That's a fact.



I have good news to report. Glenn Beck appears closer to suicide. I’m hoping that he does it on camera.
Suicide is rampant in his family, and given his alcoholism and his tendencies towards self-destruction, I am only hoping that when Glenn Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls the trigger, that it’s on television, because somebody will capture it on YouTube and it will be the most popular little piece of video for months.
— Mike Malloy, liberal radio host

You can think what you want but I, for one (among many) think Michael Moore is GREAT! He speaks the truth and I admire him for the films he makes and the stands he takes. You are a good man, Mr Moore. Keep up the GOOD WORK!

Notice how the smear campaigners come out of the woodwork when someone starts speaking truth to power. How easy it is to beat a drum and call someone nasty names and question his motives, when these accusers have nothing better to offer but rage.
Saying despicable things about someone when you have no real intelligent arguments or counter proposals is pretty transparent. I might add it is also immoral to "bring false witness" against your neighbor...is it not?
So if you think Mike is a "joke" why are you worried about what he says and does?
Why not try and listen to what he is saying instead?

Reading most of these comments is a real wake up on how much this capitalism has eaten mankinds brain. People who bring up the most irrational arguments of why Micheal Moore would be wrong, and other reasons to maintain this perverted traditional western lifestyle of wich America is holding the flag of and Europe is cowardly following... Its a bloody shame and an insult for the human race!

Big deal, Obama admits we over threw a democratic government in Iran.

He doesn't do anything to teach his people more about this incident or others like it. He's still backing Kopassus. He promoted Blair and applauded Gates.

Mossadeq did ironically beat our Eisenhower for TIME magazines person of the year in 1951, and Chief CIA Iran Annalist Jesse Leaf did say in an interview the CIA taught Nazi torture techniques to SAVAK, who poured boiling water and inserted broken glass into people's rectums, extracted teeth and nails, and tied weights to people's testicles, among other things.

Klaus Barbie taught Nazi torture techniques to Boliva too.

Michael, when men like Wendel Potter state Moore's "Sicko" movie hit the nail on the head, maybe you should take another look at your thinking. Have you watched "Sicko" or just refuse because it was directed by Moore?

Dude, Neil was correct with his statement, there is not the wide difference (chasm) between the CEO and the first tier employee. In the United States we use to have a 30 - 50 times difference but now we are about 500 times, depending on who you read. If the top tiers that earn multi-millions continue to fatten their wallets while cutting jobs to lower costs, soon there will be nothing for anybody. If they were to reduce their compensation and increase their employee's income, what do you think the result? Possibly more money available in the economy to purchase consumables. Does anybody really think the filthy rich are buying Buicks, 50 in LCDs or blue genes? These are items that are above the poor, below the rich and there is hardly a middle class.
As far as Moore goes, he dissects the problems very well, the solutions are obvious, we just refuse to see them. So he is written off as a malcontent.

Aside from your dislike of Mr. Moores politics what's wrong with his conclusions? You don't dispute the facts that he quotes you just sling mud at him.

This guy Moore is just a journalist and a movie maker... I think that your aim is wrong, people like Moore just show what is happening, but they wont solve or propose solutions, as mcecil said, that's the politicians work.

By the way, we don't feel guilty of being born in America, we just feel guilty of having 50 million American people without health insurance; and if you don't feel it's wrong: you are NOT even American.