Capitalism: A Love Story Family Review

An examination of the social costs of corporate interests pursuing profits at the expense of the public good.Capitalism: A Love Story examines the impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world). The film moves from Middle America, to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan. With both humor and outrage, the film explores the question: What is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? Families pay the price with their jobs, their homes and their savings. Moore goes into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal...and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. Capitalism: A Love Story also presents what a more hopeful future could look like. Who are we and why do we behave the way that we do?—Overture FilmsFilm-maker Michael Moore begins this revealing documentary with the Roman Empire, and the beginning of greed. He takes the viewer to an era of American well-being without any competition from post-war Germany and Japan; prosperity; end of slavery, and the introduction of the Second Bill of Rights by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But before this inclusion Roosevelt passes away, and the nation spins into anarchy, with indolent, right-winged, self-seeking politicians forming an unhealthy nexus with Corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the vulnerable without employment and health insurance, while putting billions at the disposal of banks and insurance companies - leaving them free to distribute this wealth amongst their executives without any conditions and audits, as well as portraying Barrack Obama as a Socialist. In this regressive era employers exploit their employees by paying them the minimum, but insuring them for large amounts, naming the organization as the beneficiary, demonstrating that they are more valuable after their demise. Middle-classed Katrina & foreclosure-ravaged Americans now must consider adapting to the new Bible (Wall Street Journal) and a new place of worship - Wall Street.—rAjOo ([email protected])Most Americans believe that capitalism is a system of the production and distribution of preferred goods and services in return for what consumers are willing to pay for them, and that this system is the bedrock on which the United States is built and upon which the country should function. This system may have functioned well in the United States in the post World War II era when there was little global competition and which truly established the middle class. However capitalism as seen in the United States today, which truly took hold in the Reagan era, is more about the want of the wealthy to get wealthier at the expense of all others. The country at that time started to be run more like a business than like a traditional government. Since, there has been a manipulation by the power brokers on Wall Street of government for their benefit, often at the expense of the the dwindling middle class and working class, and often without that production of a good or service demanded by society. The system continues to operate as most Americans strive to be among the wealthy and see capitalism as a system where becoming wealthy is at least possible. Capitalism is often associated with the ideals of Christianity and the concurrent American ideal of democracy, the latter which is increasingly not the case, where economic power is held in the hands of the few. Corporate America's biggest fear is democracy where in a one person/one vote system, a wealthy person has as much power as a poor person. With the poor increasingly outnumbering the wealthy, the poor banding together may show capitalism for what it is, at least in today's global system.—Huggo