[6]

Michael Moore’s latest isn’t as witty or well-crafted as his previous work, but it still provokes an interesting conversation about its subject matter, the dark side of capitalism. The most interesting (and horrifying) parts are a segment about blue chip companies taking out life insurance policies on their employees and naming themselves as the beneficiaries (ie, making money off their employees’ deaths), and the story of a town where the judge was in cahoots with a tax-funded juvenile correction facility that needed a higher number of teen convictions in order to thrive. Moore’s message ultimately comes down to: if it’s profit-driven, it can never be in the people’s best interest. Moore also claims that capitalism is neither democratic nor morally right, and it’s a pretty compelling argument. I’m just not sure capitalism needs to be completely abolished, especially when the movie admits the problem was born out of massive deregulation and decades of tax cuts on the richest 1%.