Michigan, one of the hardest hit areas of the nation, Michigan’s unemployment now at 8.7 percent.
Thousands and thousands of jobs, more jobs, are going to be eliminated, on top of the already thousands of more jobs that will be eliminated in the next few years because General Motors and Chrysler build twentieth century vehicles that either nobody wants or we shouldn’t be building, considering the climate crisis that’s in front of us.
It happened because the workers don’t control the means of production.
If the autoworkers, years and years ago, could have had a say in the cars that were being built, the Big Three would have built cars that people wanted to drive, instead of the kind of crappy-mobiles that they continue to build, the gas-guzzlers they continue to build. And people wanted something different, and nobody listened, because the auto companies were arrogant, and they had—they have always had the attitude that what’s good for— the old saying—General Motors is good for the country. Well, the country changed; General Motors didn’t change. And so, now the people have suffered as a result of it. If we had a democratic economy, where the people, we the people, had a say in the decisions that are made, in terms of how our corporations are run, the things that they produce for our society, what we need collectively as a society, we probably wouldn’t find ourselves in some of the positions that we’re in right now.
I don’t call it a bailout. This is a robbery. They are looting the US Treasury. I can’t believe that they’ve gotten away with it so far. They, over the last eight years, but really over the last twenty-eight years, have operated in a matter—I don’t know how quite to describe Wall Street, but just imagine a bunch of junkies just putting more junk into their system and constantly in some kind of feeding frenzy to get more of that junk. And it’s like the US Congress just decided to take a big hypodermic needle and give them another injection—a word they actually like to use—of the junk, of the heroin. I think that—nothing has made me more upset, other than the war, in the last umpteen years, and it’s—I start to think about it, and my brain starts to expand.
Anyone who tries to make a profit from healthcare will be arrested.
It should be a crime to make a profit off somebody being sick. I mean, seriously, you know, 100, 200 years from now, anthropologists, they’re going to dig us up, and they’re going to wonder, who were these people? Look at—they’re going to say, “Look at this. When somebody got sick in their society, they actually made them fork over money so that somebody else could make a profit off the fact that they got cancer or had a broken arm or, you know, was in a car accident, or whatever.” I mean, we’re going to look awfully cruel, and they’re not going to understand why we would do such a thing, why we just wouldn’t take care of people, why that wouldn’t be essentially a human right. So, you know, I think it should be a crime. And I’m hoping that we have a universal healthcare system that is nonprofit. Nonprofit, nobody should be making any money off this.
The French pay such low taxes, I’d like us to pay as little—as few taxes as they pay. Of course, when you say that, people are going, “What? He must have had that wrong.” And, of course, see, on paper, we don’t call a lot of things taxes. So, it sometimes looks like we pay more taxes than the Europeans, but their taxes cover real things. They get something back for the taxes they pay for. So if you live in France, your healthcare is completely free, your college is completely free, and that’s any college, a technical—all the way from a technical college to the Sorbonne, you go for free. Child care is free or almost free, depending on what your income level is. And the list goes on and on and on. And that’s why, you know, out of all the demonstrating and the rioting that goes on in France over various things, you never see them demonstrating over paying too high of taxes. And why is that? Well, that’s because they get something for it.
We have to pay for our kids’ college education. We have to pay, if you’re not covered by a group plan by your employer—and even then, you know, essentially, you’re paying for it, because you could maybe getting that money in wages. Obviously, we have to pay for our own childcare, all these other things. You know, if you add up what the average person pays, if you’re buying your own healthcare insurance, average family pays $1,000 a month. If you’re—what are you paying on your college loan? I mean, you know, people anywhere from $200 to $800 a month maybe on their college loan. How much do you pay in daycare every week for your kids? A couple hundred bucks? More? Probably. But we don’t call those taxes. But if you add all that up, in addition to the income tax we do pay, we pay more than the French and the Germans and the people in these other countries.
So, what I’m suggesting is, is that we start to look at this whole tax thing in a different way. And I understand why Americans, you know, don’t like to pay taxes, other than their own, you know, self-absorption sometimes and a sort of “me, me, me” society that we live in, whereas these other societies are constructed more around the word “we.” Even though that’s the first word of our founding document—“We the people”—it really is about me, me, getting me, getting my, myself, me, my, my, looking out for yourself. “Hey, I got mine; you get yours. Hey, you’re not my problem; I’ve got to take care of myself. You take care of yourself.” You know, that’s kind of the American way of looking at things. That’s not the way they look at things all the time in some of these other countries. And so, maybe if we thought a little differently about this and if Americans actually saw some—I mean, ask the average person what are you getting for your taxes that you’re paying, you know, $10 billion a month are going to the Iraq war. I mean, people can’t even get their potholes fixed here in Michigan on the roads, let alone, you know, being—having any good feelings about, you know, what they’re getting when they’re paying taxes.
there’s over a billion people on this planet that don’t have access to clean drinking water. You know, what if we made it an American mission to make sure that the entire third world had clean drinking water? One of the statistics I read was it would cost about $10 per person in the third world of people who don’t have the clean drinking water right now. So, that’s—geez, that’s $10 times a billion people? $10 billion. That’s just October in Iraq. For the money that we’re spending in Iraq in October, we could provide clean drinking water to most of the people that don’t have it. And I, as an American, would rather be known by the people who are struggling to survive in the third world as the country that gave them clean drinking water or gave them other things that they need to help them in their daily existence to survive. I think most Americans would rather be known for that. Instead, we’re known as the invaders and the occupiers and the people who prop up the regimes in these countries, and I’m tired of that. I’m really tired of it.
I think a lot of people don’t realize that those who make over $102,000 a year pay no Social Security tax on any of that money they make over $102,000. I think people think that that’s just a flat tax, whatever it is. I forget what the percentage is now, something like six-and-a-half, seven percent that’s on your paycheck that goes to Social Security. It’s a flat tax that everyone pays, so it doesn’t matter, you know, if you make $25,000 a year or $55,000 a year or $75,000 a year, you’re paying that—that percentage of your income automatically goes to Social Security. But once you reach $102,000, you’re home free, you don’t pay anything, zero, after $102,000. Why isn’t everyone’s income, all their income, taxed for Social Security? Because I’ve got to tell you, a person who’s making a million dollars a year, they can afford to pay the Social Security tax on that amount over $102,000, but it’s a lot harder for a person making $25,000 a year to have almost seven percent of their income go to Social Security. That’s a big bite out of them.
Senator Dodd, his staff did the research on this, and he actually brought it up in one of the debates—if the rich paid the same Social Security tax—not more- tomorrow, if we had that money, tomorrow, there’d be enough money in Social Security until something like 2075. Almost to the next century, we’d have enough money in Social Security. There’d be no Social Security solvency problem. The reason we have the problem is because the rich don’t pay. They don’t pay their fair and equal share.
Bush and his Wall Street cronies wanted to take people’s Social Security, privatize it, put it into these private accounts, and put it into the stock market. That’s what he wanted to do four years ago. That was the—it was the first thing he tried to do when he got elected for the first time there in 2004, when he was elected. And he was going to—our money—just imagine, our Social Security would be in the stock market crash right now. Thank God that didn’t happen. But that’s the way they think, and I think a different way.
Michael Moore talking with Amy Goodman
Michael Moore, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, author and activist. His new book is Mike’s Election Guide ’08, and his new online film is called Slacker Uprising: A Look at the Youth Vote. His earlier books, Stupid White Men…And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation and Dude, Where’s My Country? His other films, among them, Fahrenheit 911, as well as Sicko, and, of course, Roger and Me shot Michael Moore to fame.
– from democracynow. 31 Oct 2008