Capitalism: What Love Story?
Being a capitalist at heart, I simply couldn't resist going to see Michael Moore's latest film production, Capitalism: A Love Story. My lady loved it so much that before sunset she was sending e-mails to everyone on her list recommending they go see it right away. For me, it was something a bit less than a love story and not very representative of what I feel that capitalism truly represents in America.
Mr. Moore has been a compelling media figure since his 1989 documentary, Roger and Me, which poked exorbitant fun at Roger Smith, then Chairman of General Motors. That film did foretell some of the marketplace plague that would settle over what was then America's largest corporation. Like any good documentarian, Michael Moore brings a clear point of view to his work and holds to at least a modicum of truth in its execution. For example, I agree with him that it was unfettered greed that drove us to the brink of economic disaster. Every parent knows that the difference between a good child and a monster is some form of discipline and there just wasn't enough of that along Wall Street.
We are living in truly interesting times. Many Americans are confused and angry yet don't seem to be sure who or what truly deserves their ire, so the more rapacious forms of capitalism make a convenient target. It is easy to forget that the capitalist drive was behind the creation of some of the country's most revered mechanisms, protocols, institutions, and freedoms. In that regard, the Moore film is preachy without being "teachy." It ignores the kind of capitalist community contributions made by people such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry J. Kaiser, Bill Gates, Ewing Marion Kauffman, and even Michael Bloomberg.
One of Moore's voiceovers in his movie says, "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that's good for all people, and that something is called democracy." I've known too many people who started with next to nothing and built substantial enterprises to believe that the entrepreneurial spirit is anything other than positive and democratic. My family history includes a grandfather who was the child of slaves but became a merchant in southern Alabama at the dawn of the 20th Century. He probably didn't even know the words entrepreneur or capitalist but simply wanted self sufficiency and independence for his family.
I do, however, believe that there is one facet of business today in America that I think promotes the "evil" perception. When you look at the entrepreneur capitalists that I mentioned above, you'll quickly notice that they were the founders of the businesses that made them wealthy and known to the public. They weren't hired hands with newly minted MBA degrees who just wanted a job to make their mark and a pile of loot in ten years or less. My theory is that founders largely cared about their communities and employees in ways that that a hired gun, who is focused primarily on getting the best stock price, could never do. If it is just about the money, there will be acts that support the perception of evil. Sam Walton had to be a heck of a hard nosed businessman to build Wal-Mart, but he was also a strong and caring patriarch figure to his thousands of employees.
The current phase of American business that we are living is amazingly transitional. Some legendary enterprises that helped create America are disappearing and the crop of men and women that will become the titans of the 21st Century aren't yet fully visible. Though we talk endlessly about the Googles, Facebooks, and Twitters at the moment, only time will tell if their founders have the smart sense of their predecessors and the drive it takes to go the distance.
Let me tell you the story of Ewing Marion Kauffman to illustrate what I mean about persistence, durability, and a consciousness of greater good.
Philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman was born in 1916 and died in 1993. He was an American pharmaceutical mogul and Major League baseball team owner. Kauffman grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and was bedridden for a year at age 11 with a heart ailment, during which he read as many as 40 books a month. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Kauffman worked as a pharmaceutical salesman until 1950 when he formed Marion Laboratories with a $5,000 investment, operating it initially out of the basement of his home. The story goes that he chose to use his middle name rather than his last name in order to not appear to be a one-man operation.
Marion Laboratories had revenues of $930 million the year before it merged with Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals back in1989. The sale of the company created more than 300 millionaires, and Mr. Kauffman continued on with what I consider his greatest achievement.
He had established the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in the mid-1960s with the same set of convictions and sense of opportunity he brought to his business enterprises. Kauffman wanted his foundation to be innovative -- to dig deep and get at the roots of issues to fundamentally change people's lives. Today, it is often referred to as the "foundation of entrepreneurship." He wanted to help young people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, get a quality education that would enable them to reach their full potential. He felt that building business enterprises is one of the most effective ways to realize individual promise and spur the economy. I've spent time at their headquarters in Kansas City and seen some of what a multi-billion dollar endowment can do if managed well. It is the result of what I call "conscious capitalism."
Michael Moore needs to know more about the great capitalists whose names grace libraries, concert halls, and universities across the country. He should remember that democracy can only work if the business climate is healthy. Moore must acknowledge that he is now in an entrepreneurial business making a product for sale and that he couldn't do it without the capitalism that he rails about. I just want him to give them some well earned love.
For more small business resources and to view past blogs, visit www.MakingItTV.com.
Arianna Huffington: Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore's New Movie (and So Must You)!
Michael Moore has always had a remarkable feel for targeting the zeitgeist. He's done it again with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, a withering indictment of the current economic order.
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Ah, Mr. Davis, you are seriously off base in this article. Go back to the year 1913 when your graduated income tax was passed into law. There were perhaps two pages then and, in just 100 years, it has morphed to 3300 pages. Yes, 100 years of continuous assault from the monopolists, the rich and the elite Corporations has yielded a tax code system that yields the rich zero taxation and the cost of government rests solely on the middle class.
Since you went Carnegie, I will go Rockefeller. In the sixties, Nelson Rockefeller had to submit a income tax return to the Senate, in in their records. One of the world's richest people paid a grand total of $650 in FEDERAL INCOME TAX. That would hardly pay for a weapon and ammunition for an American solider to defend this nation and his wealth and property.
There is no problem in free enterprise. The problem is that tax code which should be reduced to 2 single lines. One line for personal income tax and one line for business income tax -- no exceptions. Had that been in effect, you would have never heard the names Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gates or Buffet. If you want to make money, then pay your taxes and support your government processes.
Had I the space, I would like to talk to you about the Foundation Law scam, also enacted in 1913.
I am not defending Carnegie or the others being trashed however it often seems as if financial success is somehow evil.
I have a neighbor who was able to retire at 50 as a small company he started was bought out. He risked everything to get that business going but it seems he would be somehow looked down on here rather than respected. I'm 60, still working and will be for some time however I am not jealous in the least. He had the courage to take a risk and deserves the reward.
One last point, for those passing off the philanthropy of individuals I would ask how much of your money do you give to charity? I'm not talking amount, I mean percentage?
First of all, not that it's really any of your business, I give about 10% of my salary to charity. If you want to count what my wife, a school teacher, pays out for supplies for her students (without reimbursement of any sort), then it's much more.
Second, there's a difference between succeeding by behaving honestly and honorably-- as presumably your neighbor did-- and succeeding by stepping on the bodies of your fellow humans in your climb to the top-- as Carnegie did literally and as other "successes" of modern industry have done in a more figurative, but no less real, sense (for example, by employing child labor, union busting, paying substandard wages, outsourcing jobs to foreign countries, etc.).
I'm not about to give kudos to robber barons because they did something nice with the money they stole.
Carnegie brought in armed Pinkerton goons, and then the state militia to break the strike -- and crush the union -- at Homestead, PA (Pittsburgh). A dozen men (9 strikers and three Pinkerton detectives) were killed. Dozens more were wounded.
Carnegie may have publicly expressed remorse for the rest of his life, and may have spent billions to assuage his feelings of guilt... but all the Carnegie Libraries in the world, good as they may be, have yet to bring even one of those workers back to their families.
Carnegie paid his workers pittances and hired Pinkerton thugs to break their strikes.
But hey, he was philanthropic with the money he stole from the sweat of poor folks' brows, so let's all celebrate him-- he didn't steall all our money! Yay!
Capitalism is theft, pure and simple. That some bloodsuckers did nice things with the money after stealing it doesn't mitigate their misdeeds.
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Might Mr. Davis be protesting too much?
Most people confuse Capitalism with the crony Corporatism we have in the United States today.
Capitalism is about competition where giant lumbering Corporations are put out of business by better run, more efficient and more nimble competition. In a true Capitalist system government regulation can be used to increase competition, prevent monopolies and price fixing, and protect consumers and workers.
Instead today we live in the world of the Corporate Lobbyist and "Too Big to Fail". Our political leaders use the power of government to protect their Corporate benefactors. The Congress threatens industries with regulation just to squeeze more campaign contributions (protection money) out of them. Congress passes laws making it much harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy by not allowing individuals to right off credit card debt owned to big banks. Then a few years later they refuse to hold anyone accountable for billion dollar Corporate bankruptcy by the very same Big Banks giving two trillion dollars of tax payer funds to protect the very people who led the nation into economic collapse.
You can blame Capitalism but the blame rests with our corrupt political system. We could become a socialist state tomorrow and the same corrupt leaders would still be lining their own pockets while the people suffer.
The philanthropic giving of those mentioned isn't part of capitlaims. It isn't capitalism. It's rich people contributing money to people and organizations for "social causes." With their names attached to that giving in very prominent and obnoxious ways. IF truly committed ot the causes, why try to curry favor from it? Why not give it anonomously rather than having buildings, organizations, scholarships after them? It's self-aggrandizing and reputation enhancing. why not just give? strings attached that way--only if they name bldg, school, program after them.
Capitalism? No.
What we need is to replace all corporations with partnerships among the owners. Strip them all of their limited liabiltiy status -- i.e., let them know that their personal billions are on the line -- and you will see a change in this swamp hole which is modern capitalism.
I've worked 25+ years @dozens of companies throughout the US. Here is what I've learned:
1) Over the last few decades, the workday's lengthened (suddenly, the "lunch hour" became unpaid, and you have to be at work at 8 instead of 9; many stay much later and work nights, weekends, vacations, etc.)
2) Even though breaks are legally mandated, few get or take them. (most eat lunch over their keyboards.
3) Off-hour meetings +events have become mandatory. (Lunch "meetings" are popular, yet unpaid; time zones are blamed.)
4) Benefits are reduced yet more expensive (notice how we pay insurance on a bi-weekly basis, company contributions have dried up).
5) More work is asked of us continually, yet contracts aren't renegotiated (i.e., we get paid the same, but do more work; bonuses are capriciously reduced.)
6) Employers fire at will and employ savvy HR departments to avoid legal repurcussions.
7) It costs more to get to work (transportation costs, car payments, gas, parking) and your employer weasles out of paying.
8) It takes longer to commute (we are always expected to be on time, regardless of the random yet common traffic jams and holdups, which causes frantic speeding that in turn, guess what? produces traffic jams.)
9) Information is controlled to control employees (no discussion of salaries is allowed, hidden cameras and email monitoring are implemented).
10) Employees are rewarded for the wrong reasons (friendship, nepotism, good looks, image, connections, etc.)
Things got worse as the unions were broken.
Philanthropy or TAX WRITE OFF? If I won lotto today, I would have to find a CPA and a Tax attorney just to cover my a$$. Which is exactly what they did. Excluding those whose desire of posterity assured them a building named after them, it's all about the IRS and what you can get away with doing. There is a reason for giving away money, in some way it's profitable.
I have yet to hear a single 'free market' economist come up with a single idea for what MOST American people are supposed to do now that they've deliberately exported ALL living wage jobs from the country. Their standard mantra by way of response is invariably "education" - as though it were remotely possible that EVERY American could find a middle-management position at an insurance company somewhere. Let's imagine: Poof - you've got 200+ million Americans with college degrees - and still no job out there to apply to after you're done school.
Aren't the 'free market' economists ever going to get the idea that their 'big idea' of unfettered world trade of the last quarter century was an absolute disaster for the 'bottom 99%'?
How about you stop trusting economists. What do you think *they thought* was going to happen?
The single biggest roadblock to democracy in this country is the inability of masses of people to deal with lying.
"Many Americans.
That's disingenuous to say the least!
That sentence implies 'the more rapacious forms of capitalism' are *undeserving* of our ire. The Business Right has been schooling us for twenty years to 'fear government regulation'. Government is always the bad guy. Well, it wasn't the government that layed me off a year ago. It wasn't the government that lost a third of my accumulated retirement savings. It wasn't the government that unbolted the machinery off MOST American shop floors and shipped everything to communist China. It wasn't the government that crashed the economy into a brick wall at full speed a year ago.
The American people are coming to realize they've been played for suckers for twenty years. Apparently, 'regulations are bad' because regulations keep CEOs from cheating and stealing. Our ire is well deserved.
Reaganomics my friend, it happened to us too. Nearly lost everything. You boil the tar and I'll gather the feathers..
Reaganomics! Trickle down ecconomics. But nothing trickled down. Did we really believe the rich would share?
Funny how France, Britain, and Italy, which still have unions that can really people, have excellent governmnet health care..watc
Thanks to the deregulation by Bush, Wall $treet r@ped the country, while the countries airways became propoganda networks and where the FAA let safety standards of the airlines drop to unsafe levels.
Andrew Carnegie? Andrew Carnegie exploited his workers, as did most of the "benevolent" capitalists of the Gilded Age. [They were, after all, called "Robber Barons."] Yes, he built libraries, but his workers couldn't patronize them--because they were only open during the LLOONNGG hours when they were in his factories, and because, as a good Presbyterian legalist, he would not allow his libraries to be open on the one day his labor force had off! Yes, this is just what we need more of today.
Exactly. And calling Sam Walton "a strong and caring patriarch figure" is a damning insult to all the employee who didn't see a surrogate father, but a decent employer who wouldn't treat them as dirt or worse.
That should read "who didn't NEED a surrogate father..."
We all have our place...
especially after we have our say.
Apples and oranges, buddy.
An entrepreneur may or may not be a philanthropist, a good boss or a decent person.
However, a corporation is a soulless entity intent on and responsible only to the the bottom line. And that's who or what is running capitalism today and has been controlling it for 50 years or so.
Watch the documentary "The Corporatio
Good comment, among many others here.
Fanned!
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