Michael Moore’s movie Capitalism: A Love Story opened in wide distribution this weekend.
I was working in Flint Michigan (as a contract worker for EDS) at the time Mr Moore was filming Roger & Me, and I have a very different perspective than him. The city of Flint didn’t die because GM didn’t care about Flint – Flint died because the city of Flint became a corrupt bloated cesspool dominated by the labor unions and the Democratic party. They imposed a city income tax and became very anti-business – figuring GM and parts suppliers had no alternative but to keep building cars in the city, and the city could tax its workers and GM forever without consequences and give themselves huge pension packages.
The first thing that happened was businesses fled the city. What Roger & Me didn’t show was that just over the city line (in Flint Township to the west and Burton to the East), there were prospering shopping centers, new housing construction and a prosperous middle class.
The second problem was that Flint decided to choose its mayor based on the color of his skin, not the content of his character. Shortly after I moved there, I was stunned to turn on the nightly news on TV and hear the police chief say… “Well, basically there is nothing I can do about the crime. It’s being caused by drugs and poverty, and that I can’t solve – the Federal Government needs to fix that by creating new programs”.
So prostitution and drug dealing went on right out in the open all day long with the police looking the other way. In its good times, Flint was the model of a racially diverse community – many blacks from the South moved to Michigan in the “Great Northern Migration” and filled the ranks of the people working in the factory. Black and white worked and lived side by side with mutual respect with no racial tension. The Mott Foundation supported the school system to help the immigrants from the South be prepared to participate as true equals.
Without any effective political opposition to the Democratic party rule, the city lost its tax base and filled up with non-working parasites. The middle class moved out. More stores closed. GM became a larger and larger portion of the city’s revenue – they tried to get the city to lower the property tax valuation on its inefficient obsolete factories (they were designed for the old days when you had a discrete “chassis” and a body – which is no longer how cars are designed or made). When the city said no, GM tore down the Fisher Body plant (the focus of Roger & Me). With just an empty field left, the city could no longer justify the taxes it was extorting. In 1992, Flint and Gennessee County were ordered by the State Tax Tribunal to pay GM back $35 million after a 9 year long battle. Buick City would last another 15 years or so but is now just another big empty field. Background info
So while I look forward to seeing more people understanding the Goldman Sachs / Paulson / Geithner connection, I don’t expect the film to be at all balanced or objective in its politics.
