Two Decades

Michael Moore has always had convenient amnesia, but perhaps never more so than in his latest letter, "Goodbye, GM."

Moore made his career twenty years ago by attacking GM, and seemed to believe that the company could afford to pay its workers as much as they want for as long as they want, and the only reason GM wouldn't is that they're too busy hoarding their obscene profits.

I was hoping he'd gained in wisdom, and now realizes the situation was more complex than that. But no, he's hasn't learned a thing, and believes, even as the company hemorrhages billions, that they're still cheating the workers. He even has the nerve to claim that if GM had listened to him (and paid even more to run the company), they would have survived.

Certainly GM was poorly managed, and there was waste all over. But let me ask Moore something. Look at the foreign companies that "got it," that allegedly made product the people wanted. Is (or was) Moore willing to have GM compensate its workers the same? These companies don't sell any more cars than GM, so what is the difference here? (And I hate to give away the ending, but small, fuel efficient cars actually have a very thin profit margin.)

But I keep forgetting, Moore lives in a world where good intentions (as determined by Moore) are always costless. No, not costless, profitable. After all, he wants to spend hundreds of billions on trains, because everyone knows that though there are all these routes that don't make money, if you build more of them, they suddenly will turn a profit. And if they don't, the government can always pay for them.