For one thing he's a military expert
A military expert? You have to be kidding, right?
Moore is a blue collar workingman, devout Catholic, NRA member, from a town where all the jobs were out-sourced.
Interesting. I was just discussing this with Agustus on IM.
I grew up 60 miles from Flint. Back in the '60s and early '70s, a lot of people thought they'd died and gone to heaven if they got a job with Ford, GM or Chrysler. It was a good wage and, at that time, thought to be guaranteed employment with a nice retirement. Unfortunately, the unions shot themselves in the foot. They kept demanding bigger and better contracts. All this at a time when quality sucked big time. These union guys wanted big pay for producing an inferior product. Remember the Vega? The Pinto? Along came Toyota, with its nifty Corolla. The American car makers couldn't compete, jobs were lost.
As for outsourcing in the auto industry, or in any industry, it comes down to a simple question. Where can you make your widgets most inexpensively? Americans aren't willing to pay excessive prices for products just to be able to say it was "Made in America." Hence the success of Wal Mart. If you can make a pair of blue jeans for $1.00 in Indonesia and it costs $2.50 to make the same jeans at the Levi Strauss factory in California, where do you think the product will be made?
It's not the simple "outsourcing is bad" argument as you seem to suggest. I'm not an economist and don't claim to understand global economics. All I know is if someone has X dollars to spend out of a paycheck, they're going to spend it in a way that gets them the products or services they want at the least cost.
Going back to your original comments on Michael Moore, I'm part of the camp that thinks he's an arrogant slob who plays fast and loose with the facts to present his thesis. His documentaries aren't really documentaries. They're vehicles for Michael to present his views. And, as for Michael Moore being a populist "man of the people" kind of guy, his lifestyle says otherwise. Flights on private jets, rides around in SUV's, body guards, so on and so forth. The guy is a fraud. But that's just my opinion. |
