The 110-minute documentary was produced, directed and narrated by Academy Award winner Michael Moore.
Moore visits Italy, France, Finland, Portugal, Norway, Slovenia, Germany, Tunisia, and Iceland to show how those countries successfully deal with social issues by spending less on war, more on citizens.
He meets with CEOs, Ministers of Education, a former President of Iceland, an American teacher in Finland, and others, to reveal fascinating simple solutions, such as:
- Focussing more on the ‘we’ rather than the ‘I’. This means working for the common good of all instead of working to become rich.
- Favourable working conditions and good wages which allow for paid maternity leave for women that give birth to babies, and provide free paid vacation time to the workers.
- Gourmet meals for school children.
- Free education to all.
- Equality in work and opportunity for women.
- Enlightened rehabilitation of prisoners.
- Liberal attitude to drugs.
- The application of the rule of law to all, including bankers and CEOs who take advantage of the public good. Equality is the way to ensure that the gap between the rich and the poor is greatly narrowed.
- Universal medical, hospitalization, and drug services to all citizens.
- Infrastructure of public facilities have to be based largely on human needs rather than on profit.
Thanks Koozma.
ReplyDeleteI think a few more points that they did not dwell on were that each country should have the right and mandate to form a strong public banking system where we don't have to pay unnecessary interest to private banks.
Another would be the breaking up of large monopolies, especially in the mass media. No one company should own more that a few media companies in any one media.
We should be aware as a society that waste = food and whatever we use and throw away comes back into our bodies. We are using far to many products (toxins) that do not safely decompose before they end up back into our bodies, causing untold harm to humans and animals.
In terms of patents, we as a species must move towards an open source system where new ideas are shared by everyone so that they can be improved upon and be affordable. If a company wants to have a patent, they they must pay 'The Commons (the people)' a fee each year they want to keep this idea private. This fee increases each year until the idea is folded back into 'The Commons' for all to share and benefit from.
Other ideas to improve our lot include more stringent rules on resource sharing and safety for public ownership of important resources (energy, water, mining, health, etc) vs selling off to private corporations.
Corporations should be striped of person rights and be made more accountable.
Taxing should be more equitable. Citizens pay 30-40% taxes while corporations pay 0% to 15%. What is that all about?
We subsidize factory farming which is poisoning our food and destroying the soil but we don't subsidize organic and permaculture farming.
Laws should favour co-ops and unions instead of the reverse.
I could go on....Cheers, Kenskyman
Thanks Koozma. Great review.
ReplyDeleteI hope it actually shifts the Americans' assumptions. But judging by the Trump phenomenon it does not look promising.
I liked also the list of issues added in the comments section.