Michael Moore, Capitalism - A Love Story

[Strontium]

Goods and services being produced cheaply in China has little relevance to the standard of living in Britain!

 

 

Say what now? It surely has a direct impact on standard of living here, insofar as just about everyone in this country can now afford things that, until very recently, were the preserve of the very wealthy.

 

The problem is these big markets will eventually become more affluent, will become more educated and will suddenly start to demand equality with other countries

 

 

I don't see it as a "problem" that the developing nations who currently manufacture our cheap goods will become as educated and affluent as us - in fact that's rather the point! Don't we want prosperity and success for every living person on this planet? I know I do.

[Whelan]

Say what now? It surely has a direct impact on standard of living here, insofar as just about everyone in this country can now afford things that, until very recently, were the preserve of the very wealthy.

 

The fact that they are produced cheaply in China, Indonesia or wherever, is irrelevant to the increased rise in prosperity in this country. The loss of jobs overseas, and the increase in profits as a result does not affect the wealth of this country, certainly not in a positive way.

 

I don't see it as a "problem" that the developing nations who currently manufacture our cheap goods will become as educated and affluent as us - in fact that's rather the point! Don't we want prosperity and success for every living person on this planet? I know I do.

 

Yes, that is the only reason why Corporations have decided to move manufacture to these countries so that they too can enjoy the fruits of capitalism!

 

They moved because it is cheaper, not just labour but less red tape, less workers rights, less expense on basic working conditions. A more affluent, confident country will soon demand more, demand rights, demand basica workers rights, they will become wealthier negating the need for the children to leave school to work, and eventually said country will become as expensive to manufacture goods in as Europe, meaning they will again seek to move production again to a cheaper alternative.

 

 

This will have to end.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

People did watch that video I posted on the last page where Chomsky talks about higher standards of living, didn't they?

 

I should have just plagiarised the whole thing, nobody gives a bollock anyway.

[Whelan]

People did watch that video I posted on the last page where Chomsky talks about higher standards of living, didn't they?

 

I should have just plagiarised the whole thing, nobody gives a bollock anyway.

 

Guilty! I never watched it, mainly because I struggle to understand Chomsky!

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Guilty! I never watched it, mainly because I struggle to understand Chomsky!

 

You self deprecating mother fucker, mother fucker. He really answers this well. He is asked if he agrees that the raising standards of living is proof that 'Capitalism is triumphed'. He says, and I quote, "fook off wrinkly bollocks - Capitalism is reet shite".

[Strontium]

It's fair to say I would trust Chomsky on economics about as much as I would trust Murray Rothbard on linguistics.

[Strontium]

The fact that they are produced cheaply in China, Indonesia or wherever, is irrelevant to the increased rise in prosperity in this country.

 

 

For the reasons stated, I disagree.

 

 

The loss of jobs overseas, and the increase in profits as a result does not affect the wealth of this country, certainly not in a positive way.

 

 

Losing low-paid telesale jobs overseas is not necessarily a bad thing, it just means the people here can do something more worthwhile.

 

We've apparently lost these millions of jobs in call centres and factories to India and wherever else, yet unemployment has remained relatively stable. Someone explain that to me, please.

 

 

Yes, that is the only reason why Corporations have decided to move manufacture to these countries so that they too can enjoy the fruits of capitalism!

 

 

I know you're being sarcastic, but there's truth in it. I'm not saying corporations act out of the goodness of their heart, but it is very much in their interests to have people become prosperous, because that increases their customer base substantially.

 

A more affluent, confident country will soon demand more, demand rights, demand basica workers rights, they will become wealthier negating the need for the children to leave school to work, and eventually said country will become as expensive to manufacture goods in as Europe, meaning they will again seek to move production again to a cheaper alternative.

 

This will have to end.

 

 

Indeed it will have to end, when everyone on the planet is prosperous and happy and there is no more cheap labour anywhere. Roll on that date!

[Stu Monty]

Michael Moore Snubs Union Workers in Making 'Capitalism: A Love Story' - ABC News

 

Michael Moore used some non-union crewmembers when union workers were available in the production of his latest film "Capitalism: A Love Story," a documentary that argues the capitalist system allows for greedy corporations to exploit working-class people.

 

Documentary maker speaks to Peter Travers about his latest movie."For all of the different jobs on the movie that could have used union labor, he used union labor, except for one job, the stagehands, represented by IATSE," said a labor source unauthorized to talk about Moore's decision not to hire members of The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

 

In a statement issued to ABCNews.com, Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said the filmmaker wished the union included more documentary crew people -- but he did not deny that IATSE members were snubbed in favor of non-union employees.

 

 

Pathetic misrepresentation. He uses unions for everything apart from one job and you try and represent that as "refuses to use unions". Shameful shit.

 

I presume you'll withdraw your claim that he's a hypocrite. But you won't will you, because you've clearly read that article and still seen it fit to use it to back up your point. Who uses an article with quotes saying that bit in bold to back up the claim that he refuses to use unions? A retard or a liar, clearly.

[WaltonRed]

A retarded liar?

[Dirk]

Strontium Dogmatist

[Stu Monty]

A retarded liar?

 

The annoying thing is that Dog isn't a retard, far from it actually and I know insults are never going to help decent discussion, but what's the point in having a debate about stuff if people aren't willing to argue the actual facts. He's knows as well as anyone about how articles are framed and is usually fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with me if it's some Mail bullshit about civil rights, but he'll overlook it to try and smear Moore? Weak. Really weak.

 

Either man-up and drop the snide stuff or don't bother.

[Captain]

The annoying thing is that Dog isn't a retard, far from it actually and I know insults are never going to help decent discussion, but what's the point in having a debate about stuff if people aren't willing to argue the actual facts.

 

You haven't visited the ** lately, have you?

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

It's fair to say I would trust Chomsky on economics about as much as I would trust Murray Rothbard on linguistics.

 

Do you have any criticisms of what he says in the video specifically, or just general economics?

[Stu Monty]

You haven't visited the ** lately, have you?

 

No. It's virtually dead to me.

[Section_31]

Interesting Pilger article from the New Statesman. I find Pilger a bit blinkered in his 'USA is an evil empire' views, but found some of this interesting. The fact we're all still paying the price while the bonus culture continues is shameful, as I've said before, there should have been a financial equivelant of the Nuremberg trials over what happened.

 

 

As Britain's political class pretends that its arranged marriage of Tweedledee to Tweedledum is democracy, the inspiration for the rest of us is Greece. It is hardly surprising that Greece is presented not as a beacon, but as a "junk country" getting its comeuppance for its "bloated public sector" and "culture of cutting corners" (Observer). The heresy of Greece is that the uprising of its ordinary people provides an authentic hope unlike that lavished upon the warlord in the White House.

 

The crisis that has led to Greece's "rescue" by European banks and the International Monetary Fund is the product of a grotesque financial system that itself is in crisis. Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely reported as such, but waged with all the urgency of panic among the imperial rich.

 

What makes Greece different is that it has experienced, within living memory, invasion, foreign occupation, military dictatorship and popular resistance. Ordinary people are not cowed by the corrupt corporatism that dominates the European Union. The right-wing government of Kostas Karamanlis that preceded the present Pasok (Labour) government of George Papandreou was described by the sociologist Jean Ziegler as "a machine for systematically pillaging the country's resources".

 

Epic theft

The machine had infamous friends. The US Federal Reserve board is investigating the role of Goldman Sachs, which gambled on the bankruptcy of Greece as public assets were sold off and its tax-evading rich deposited €360bn in Swiss banks. This haemorrhaging of capital continues with the approval of Europe's central banks and governments.

 

At 11 per cent, Greece's budget deficit is no higher than America's. However, when the Papandreou government tried to borrow on the international capital market, it was effectively blocked by the US corporate ratings agencies, which "downgraded" Greek debt to "junk". These same agencies gave triple-A ratings to billions of dollars in so-called sub-prime mortgage securities and so precipitated the economic collapse in 2008.

 

What has happened in Greece is theft on an epic, though not unfamiliar, scale. In Britain, the "rescue" of banks such as Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland has cost billions of pounds. Thanks to Gordon Brown and his passion for the avaricious instincts of the City, these gifts of public money were unconditional, and the bankers have continued to pay each other the booty they call bonuses and to spirit it away to tax havens. Under Britain's political monoculture, they can do as they wish. In the US, the situation is even more remarkable. As the investigative journalist David DeGraw has reported, the principal Wall Street banks that "destroyed the economy pay zero in taxes and get $33bn in refunds".

 

In Greece, as in America and Britain, the ordinary people have been told they must repay the debts of the rich and powerful who incurred them. Jobs, pensions and public services are to be slashed and burned, with privateers put in charge. For the EU and the IMF, the opportunity presents to "change the culture" and to dismantle the social welfare of Greece, just as the IMF and the World Bank have "structurally adjusted" (impoverished and controlled) countries across the developing world.

 

Greece is hated for the same reason Yugo*slavia had to be destroyed physically behind a pretence of protecting the people of Kosovo. Most Greeks are employed by the state, and the young and the trade unions comprise a popular alliance that has not been pacified; the colonels' tanks on the campus of Athens University in 1967 remain a political spectre. Such resistance is anathema to Europe's central bankers and regarded as an obstruction to German capital's need to capture markets in the aftermath of Germany's troubled reunification.

 

Shock therapy

In Britain, such has been the 30-year propaganda of an extreme economic theory known first as monetarism, then as neoliberalism, that the new Prime Minister can, like his predecessor, describe his demands that ordinary people pay the debts of crooks as "fiscally responsible". The unmentionables are poverty and class.

 

Almost a third of British children remain below the breadline. In working-class Kentish Town in London, male life expectancy is 70. Two miles away, in Hampstead, it is 80. When Russia was subjected to similar "shock therapy" in the 1990s, life expectancy nosedived. In the United States, a record 40 million cannot afford to feed themselves.

 

In the developing world, a system of triage imposed by the World Bank and the IMF has long determined whether people live or die. Whenever tariffs and food and fuel subsidies are eliminated by IMF diktat, small farmers know they have been declared expendable. The World Resources Institute estimates that the toll reaches between 13 and 18 million child deaths every year. This, wrote the economist Lester C Thurow, is "neither metaphor nor simile of war, but war itself".

 

The same imperial forces have used horrific weapons against stricken countries where children are the majority, and approved torture as an instrument of foreign policy. It is a phenomenon of denial that none of these assaults on humanity, in which Britain is actively engaged, was allowed to intrude on the British election.

 

The people on the streets of Athens do not suffer this malaise. They are clear who the enemy is and regard themselves as once again under foreign occupation. And once again, they are rising up, with courage. When David Cameron begins to cleave £6bn from public services in Britain, he will be bargaining that Greece will not happen in Britain. We should prove him wrong

[Section_31]

Interesting Pilger article from the New Statesman. I find Pilger a bit blinkered in his 'USA is an evil empire' views, but found some of this interesting. The fact we're all still paying the price while the bonus culture continues is shameful, as I've said before, there should have been a financial equivelant of the Nuremberg trials over what happened.

 

New Statesman - The heresy of the Greeks offers hope

 

As Britain's political class pretends that its arranged marriage of Tweedledee to Tweedledum is democracy, the inspiration for the rest of us is Greece. It is hardly surprising that Greece is presented not as a beacon, but as a "junk country" getting its comeuppance for its "bloated public sector" and "culture of cutting corners" (Observer). The heresy of Greece is that the uprising of its ordinary people provides an authentic hope unlike that lavished upon the warlord in the White House.

 

The crisis that has led to Greece's "rescue" by European banks and the International Monetary Fund is the product of a grotesque financial system that itself is in crisis. Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely reported as such, but waged with all the urgency of panic among the imperial rich.

 

What makes Greece different is that it has experienced, within living memory, invasion, foreign occupation, military dictatorship and popular resistance. Ordinary people are not cowed by the corrupt corporatism that dominates the European Union. The right-wing government of Kostas Karamanlis that preceded the present Pasok (Labour) government of George Papandreou was described by the sociologist Jean Ziegler as "a machine for systematically pillaging the country's resources".

 

Epic theft

The machine had infamous friends. The US Federal Reserve board is investigating the role of Goldman Sachs, which gambled on the bankruptcy of Greece as public assets were sold off and its tax-evading rich deposited €360bn in Swiss banks. This haemorrhaging of capital continues with the approval of Europe's central banks and governments.

 

At 11 per cent, Greece's budget deficit is no higher than America's. However, when the Papandreou government tried to borrow on the international capital market, it was effectively blocked by the US corporate ratings agencies, which "downgraded" Greek debt to "junk". These same agencies gave triple-A ratings to billions of dollars in so-called sub-prime mortgage securities and so precipitated the economic collapse in 2008.

 

What has happened in Greece is theft on an epic, though not unfamiliar, scale. In Britain, the "rescue" of banks such as Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland has cost billions of pounds. Thanks to Gordon Brown and his passion for the avaricious instincts of the City, these gifts of public money were unconditional, and the bankers have continued to pay each other the booty they call bonuses and to spirit it away to tax havens. Under Britain's political monoculture, they can do as they wish. In the US, the situation is even more remarkable. As the investigative journalist David DeGraw has reported, the principal Wall Street banks that "destroyed the economy pay zero in taxes and get $33bn in refunds".

 

In Greece, as in America and Britain, the ordinary people have been told they must repay the debts of the rich and powerful who incurred them. Jobs, pensions and public services are to be slashed and burned, with privateers put in charge. For the EU and the IMF, the opportunity presents to "change the culture" and to dismantle the social welfare of Greece, just as the IMF and the World Bank have "structurally adjusted" (impoverished and controlled) countries across the developing world.

 

Greece is hated for the same reason Yugo*slavia had to be destroyed physically behind a pretence of protecting the people of Kosovo. Most Greeks are employed by the state, and the young and the trade unions comprise a popular alliance that has not been pacified; the colonels' tanks on the campus of Athens University in 1967 remain a political spectre. Such resistance is anathema to Europe's central bankers and regarded as an obstruction to German capital's need to capture markets in the aftermath of Germany's troubled reunification.

 

Shock therapy

In Britain, such has been the 30-year propaganda of an extreme economic theory known first as monetarism, then as neoliberalism, that the new Prime Minister can, like his predecessor, describe his demands that ordinary people pay the debts of crooks as "fiscally responsible". The unmentionables are poverty and class.

 

Almost a third of British children remain below the breadline. In working-class Kentish Town in London, male life expectancy is 70. Two miles away, in Hampstead, it is 80. When Russia was subjected to similar "shock therapy" in the 1990s, life expectancy nosedived. In the United States, a record 40 million cannot afford to feed themselves.

 

In the developing world, a system of triage imposed by the World Bank and the IMF has long determined whether people live or die. Whenever tariffs and food and fuel subsidies are eliminated by IMF diktat, small farmers know they have been declared expendable. The World Resources Institute estimates that the toll reaches between 13 and 18 million child deaths every year. This, wrote the economist Lester C Thurow, is "neither metaphor nor simile of war, but war itself".

 

The same imperial forces have used horrific weapons against stricken countries where children are the majority, and approved torture as an instrument of foreign policy. It is a phenomenon of denial that none of these assaults on humanity, in which Britain is actively engaged, was allowed to intrude on the British election.

 

The people on the streets of Athens do not suffer this malaise. They are clear who the enemy is and regard themselves as once again under foreign occupation. And once again, they are rising up, with courage. When David Cameron begins to cleave £6bn from public services in Britain, he will be bargaining that Greece will not happen in Britain. We should prove him wrong

[Captain]

No. It's virtually dead to me.

 

It's dying on me too, but I'm trying to find a reason to stay.

 

And MM hasn't changed, it seems.

[Strontium]

Pathetic misrepresentation. He uses unions for everything apart from one job and you try and represent that as "refuses to use unions". Shameful shit.

 

 

One job! One job!! Oh my stars, I can't believe what I am seeing here.

 

Quite clearly you don't know what a stagehand is. Let me help you out: it includes grips, carpenters, electricians, audio engineers, wardrobe, technicians, light ops, prop people... well, just about everything outside of writers, actors, directors and cameramen.

 

In all, Capitalism: A Love Story utilises a crew of 26 in jobs that would be covered by either the IATSE or one of its sister unions.

 

One job! Dear oh dear oh dear, you've had a shocker there Monty.

 

 

I presume you'll withdraw your claim that he's a hypocrite. But you won't will you, because you've clearly read that article and still seen it fit to use it to back up your point. Who uses an article with quotes saying that bit in bold to back up the claim that he refuses to use unions? A retard or a liar, clearly.

 

 

So in my haste to post I miswrote earlier. For "refuses to use unionised filmcrews" read "uses a non-unionised filmcrew". For all the difference that makes. I'm sure it's a real compensation for the snubbed stagehands union that he's using unionised teaboys or whatever. It still makes him a hypocrite, just slightly less of one.

 

Fucking hell. Is this a deliberate attempt to goad me because I haven't responded to your little Israel troll thread?

 

And you negged me for it!

[Stu Monty]

One job! One job!! Oh my stars, I can't believe what I am seeing here.

 

Quite clearly you don't know what a stagehand is. Let me help you out: it includes grips, carpenters, electricians, audio engineers, wardrobe, technicians, light ops, prop people... well, just about everything outside of writers, actors, directors and cameramen.

 

In all, Capitalism: A Love Story utilises a crew of 26 in jobs that would be covered by either the IATSE or one of its sister unions.

 

One job! Dear oh dear oh dear, you've had a shocker there Monty.

 

So in my haste to post I miswrote earlier. For "refuses to use unionised filmcrews" read "uses a non-unionised filmcrew". For all the difference that makes. I'm sure it's a real compensation for the snubbed stagehands union that he's using unionised teaboys or whatever. It still makes him a hypocrite, just slightly less of one.

 

Fucking hell. Is this a deliberate attempt to goad me because I haven't responded to your little Israel troll thread?

 

And you negged me for it!

 

You never miswrote anything, you've said the same thing before. Using people 26 people who aren't in unions to make a film doesn't make him a hypocrite at all. Refusing to use people in a union does. A history of refusing to use unions would. Just using a mix of unionised and non-unionised staff is not reason to castigate him, unless he's previously said that all employers should always use unionised staff for everything at some point...but I doubt he has. It's an idiotic viewpoint you're standing behind.

 

And only the truly warped observer could consider a thread about someone selling South Africa's aparthied reigime nuclear weapons a trolling attempt.

[Hermes]

Not sure what that proves? Goods and services being produced cheaply in China has little relevancee to the standard of living in Britain!

 

It is a business decision to re-locate to cheaper countries, less unionised and dare I say it, less educated countries (better to say, less comprehensively educated countries) whose populace offer less obstruction and whose government offer low costs, cheaper working conditions etc.

 

The problem is these big markets will eventually become more affluent, will become more educated and will suddenly start to demand equality with other countries, and then where do you go?

 

Sooner or later, Corporations will have no other option but to either return or stop re-locating, it is inevitable.

 

When the poorer countries develop they demand goods, services and technologies provided by the richer countries. That is basic economics which any GCSE Economoics student knows. Countries concentrate on products that they produce most efficiently. That way every country gets richer.

[Jose Jones]

Interesting Pilger article from the New Statesman. I find Pilger a bit blinkered in his 'USA is an evil empire' views, but found some of this interesting. The fact we're all still paying the price while the bonus culture continues is shameful, as I've said before, there should have been a financial equivelant of the Nuremberg trials over what happened.

 

There are some bloody good arguments to be made about the bail out of the financial sector, how the banks are not even obliged to pay back the money from the public purse, and that everyone just accepts that the government has to cut civil service jobs and increase taxes to pay for it.

 

There’s room for some proper investigative journalism on how companies have been profiteering over the financial crisis, screwing over governments and fucking up economies for their own profit and because they know they’re too powerful to be pulled up on it. There has been ridiculously minimal amounts of discussion about how the financial industry fucked up and how dependent economies are on the big investment banks, and how they can be regulated better to stop it happening again. There should be plenty of room for a crusading journalist to get their teeth into that.

 

However, Pilger seems to want to frame all of it in pre-conceived “class war”, “us against them” stuff, so it damages any decent point he makes, for me.

[Catch22]

There are some bloody good arguments to be made about the bail out of the financial sector, how the banks are not even obliged to pay back the money from the public purse, and that everyone just accepts that the government has to cut civil service jobs and increase taxes to pay for it.

 

There’s room for some proper investigative journalism on how companies have been profiteering over the financial crisis, screwing over governments and fucking up economies for their own profit and because they know they’re too powerful to be pulled up on it. There has been ridiculously minimal amounts of discussion about how the financial industry fucked up and how dependent economies are on the big investment banks, and how they can be regulated better to stop it happening again. There should be plenty of room for a crusading journalist to get their teeth into that.

 

However, Pilger seems to want to frame all of it in pre-conceived “class war”, “us against them” stuff, so it damages any decent point he makes, for me.

 

 

The US has made money from their bail out.

[Jose Jones]

The US has made money from their bail out.

 

Aye, the US banks had to pay their bailout money back, and Goldman Sachs has been investigated by federal prosecutors for dodgy profiteering.

But British banks don't have to.

[Strontium]

You never miswrote anything, you've said the same thing before. Using people 26 people who aren't in unions to make a film doesn't make him a hypocrite at all. Refusing to use people in a union does. A history of refusing to use unions would. Just using a mix of unionised and non-unionised staff is not reason to castigate him, unless he's previously said that all employers should always use unionised staff for everything at some point...but I doubt he has. It's an idiotic viewpoint you're standing behind.

 

And only the truly warped observer could consider a thread about someone selling South Africa's aparthied reigime nuclear weapons a trolling attempt.

 

 

You know, I don't care what you think about this any more. You're the one with the dogmatic position, defending Michael Moore even when the criticism has some merit. Whether he actively refuses to use unionised filmcrews or not isn't even the issue. Michael Moore made a move extolling the virtues of unionised labour with cheap, non-union labour when unionised labour was available. That makes him a hypocrite and I don't care which way you cut it.

 

And yes, I think dredging up ancient history about what Israel may have done in the 80s, with the clear and obvious subtext of using that to criticise their present stance on the Iranian nuclear programme, constitutes... well, if not trolling, then very certainly provocative behaviour.

[Catch22]

Aye, the US banks had to pay their bailout money back, and Goldman Sachs has been investigated by federal prosecutors for dodgy profiteering.

But British banks don't have to.

 

The US made every bank sell them an equity stake.

Good idea.

 

They should have discounted the AIG debt (which saved GS, hence the attack)

 

GS are pretty innocent on this charge