Evicted: A Sob Story

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Rating ... C- (31)

Michael Moore returns to cursory condemnation with Capitalism: A Love Story, his usual smarmy brand of shock-umentary designed to sensationalize selected facets of the recent financial crisis in order to brainwash the "exploited" masses who know jack about why the recession actually occurred but are all too willing to accept a diatribe that reassures them they weren't the ones responsible. As always, Moore deals in absolutisms. Only the greed of the wealthiest caused the downfall he argues, with their excessive CEO compensation plans, tricky logrolling business deals, and rampant fraud; unsurprisingly, no blame is levied at the equally covetous, debt-riddled American people whose foolishness and avarice prompted them to buy and sell houses on credit to make a quick buck before the bubble burst, or procure second mortgages hinged upon the temporary appreciation of their housing appraisal. So what is Moore's thesis here? Scrap capitalism and switch to a planned economy - an economic system that fails just as massively when human greed is its driving force.

Capitalism: A Love Story begins with typical Moore pathos - a family being evicted from their house in North Carolina in hysterical fashion. Moore doesn't bother to inform us about the particulars of why; given the circumstances, we're meant to assume these folks are average citizens - just like you and me! - getting the shaft from the Man. His juxtaposition is a company called Condo Vultures that purchases property on the cheap and sells to consumers at market price. From this introduction alone it's evident Moore resides in a world of black and white, us and them.

The filmmaking techniques he uses to convey his ideas haven't become any subtler either. Moronic double meanings abound; when he exalts in "peasants executing their right to vote" by shooting down the Paulson bailout the narration is accompanied by footage of sports-goers doing the Wave. He likens ordinary citizens grasping at wealth they can never hope to acquire to a dog jumping at table scraps while the rich are depicted as a larger breed who eats the whole bone themselves. And when he remarks on how society fixates religiously on money, Jesus nailed to the cross is cheaply overlaid to Wall Street.

Unfortunately, religion is not a subject Moore is afraid to broach with his single-minded obliviousness. One of his major "arguments" against capitalism is nothing more than pissing on separation of church and state as he interviews Catholic priests whose no-doubt informed opinion of capitalism is that it is sinful and "contrary to all that is good." These enlightened views are hazily substantiated by vague interpretation of the bible as quoted passages simply extol the poor and slam the rich, while nobody seems to notice that the dichotomy can exist in economic models besides capitalism. Is it any wonder Moore elides asking the clergy their opinion on the sinfulness of the "blessed" poor who out of envy for the wealthy fell prey to moronic predatory lending scams whose unreasonable hype cozily promised them the world?

When Moore isn't holy rolling he's merely busy obscuring facts. He labels bait-and-switch tactics from Countrywide as sub-prime lending when in fact the concept refers to banks lending to individuals whose credit history carries considerable risk. He takes for granted that the debt Americans willingly shoulder is for base survival needs and not to fuel illusions of grandeur, and expects his audience to be blinded by sympathy for pilots, whose noble profession appears to average about 20K per year as salary. In his eyes, they deserve a higher salary, ignoring how the laws of supply and demand dictate this type of economic planning would cause a surfeit in the amount of pilots, a shortage of piloting jobs, and a shortage of workers in positions that are economically useful and would not contribute to deadweight loss.

In a minor tribute to Sicko Moore praises the successful economies of Europe and Japan versus our own, and once again his short-sightedness and lack of understanding could not be more apparent. Japan is actually a mixed planned / capitalist economy whose success was attributable to the fact their recovery plan of the post-war era consisted of locking out foreign goods and encouraging citizens to save and invest their money in banks, meaning Japanese companies would have readily available capital to borrow and create products that would be sold to the same foreign countries whose goods they were embargoing and levying tariffs. Obviously for each unit of trade surplus, an equal unit of deficit exists elsewhere, and Moore fails to realize this model actually generates wealth for Japan at the expense of other countries, rather than promote the global / national harmony he falsely touts. (For reference, the feat is impossible with scarce resources.)

Moore ends with an endorsement of Roosevelt's unenacted second Bill of Rights, which guarantees housing, pensions, and jobs for all Americans. Characteristically, it was too much to ask for him to actually explain how our government can afford to make all this possible, and Capitalism: A Love Story is revealed as whimsical drivel, misguided in its censure of capitalism when rampant individual greed is the culprit, and every bit the swindle that contributes to our engulfing gullibility as the frauds perpetrated by the richest 1% he so hastily denounces.