In the documentary Where to Invade Next, Michael Moore travels to various European counties as a one man army. As the “invader,” Michael Moore starts conversations with residents and heads of large industries. He dives into controversial and provocative topics that America has lost success in. In the beginning of the film Moore says, “Take the things we need from them and bring it all back home to the United States of America. We have problems no army can solve.”
Moore’s first target was Italy. Upon his arrival Moore realizes how happy Italians are and how different the environment is. Moore meets with a working class couple and they talk about paid vacation. The couple goes on to tell Moore how most Italian’s receives Two- hour lunch breaks, eight weeks paid vacation, a two week paid honeymoon, an extra month’s salary, and a 5 months maternity leave. After talking with the couple Moore moves up the work ladder and meets with the executives of billion dollar companies Lardini and Ducati. Moore questions how and why they supply their workers with so many weeks paid vacation. The CEO of Ducati responds “Workers are more comminuted, there is no clash between the profit of the company and the well-being of the people. By paying a good wage with good benefits the company still makes a healthy profit.” Even with the long vacations and long lunch breaks Italy is among the top 15 most productive counties in the world. The well- being of the employees is more valuable than the profit of the company. At the end of Moore’s Italians invasion he states “of course Italians have problems like all counties but my mission is to pick the flowers not the weeds.” France is next on Moore’s list. Moore’s first stop in France is a gourmet restaurant or otherwise known as the school cafeteria. In this scene you see kids preparing for lunch by forming a line at the stink to wash their hands then they make their way to an already plated table as they wait for their healthy four course lunch to be served. In France lunch time is consider a class where you learn how to eat in a civilized manner, enjoy healthy food and each other. Once a month the school’s chef gets together with the cities and schools officials as well as a dietitian to go over the school’s menu. Why do the French care so much about children’s lunches? Over time they want their children to learn what a balanced diet is and to pay attention to what they eat. Moore goes on to show the chef and some students what American students are served for lunch. Needless to say they pitied our lunches. Although these schools provide a healthy four chore meal, they spend less per lunch then the United States. Even one of the poorest schools in one of the poorest town eats a healthy based diet for lunch. Moore wonders how France can afford free health care, almost free daycare and remarkable school lunches. Simply they pay a little more in taxes, their paychecks also provide a line by line description of where their taxes are going unlike American paychecks. Moore’s next stop is Finland. Finland is at the top of having the best educated students in the world. Yet Finland students have the shortest school days and the shortest school years in the entire western world. Finland believes their students should have more time to be kids and to enjoy the life of a child so they cut out homework and do they have standardized testing. When Moore askes about this concept a teacher says “school is about happiness and finding a way to learn what makes you happy.” Finland wants their students to be happy and live a happy life. There is so much more to life than just school. Moore moves over to the country of Slovenia. Slovenia provides tuition-free higher education universities. The students live a debt free life yet Moore did come across a few students that had debt, these students came from America. When the Government decided to start charging tuition the students protested, and managed to delay the law which caused the government to collapse. Slovenia believes that education is a public good and that all colleges should be free for everyone. In Germany, workers have similar labor rights and work-life balances as other European countries. Considering how most people can see how successful German companies are, it is no surprise that their methods work. Work weeks are 36 hours long, but the employees get paid for 40. For example, at Faber Castell the workers are able to live a fulfilling life and come back to work more productive. And if they get too stressed at work, employees can get a prescription for three weeks at a spa. A country like Germany values the mental health of their employees more than The United States has ever. The war on drugs in The United States is considered to be a losing battle and has been one of the longest fought in the world. The country of Portugal approaches drug policy in a different way than the USA. In 15 years, there has been no person arrested and sent to jail for drug use. As hard as it is to believe the rate of drug abuse has gone down after policy. As well, they increased quality of treatment and heathcare. In the US, we have a very wrong proportion of inmates in prison due to drug-related crime. One of the Portuguese police officers said, “Human dignity is the backbone of our society.” Considering human dignity, Norway has one of the most progressive prison systems one observe. They take the phrase “no cruel and unusual punishment” literally and take away freedom as punishment. The country only has a 21 year max sentence, no death penalty, and healthy rehabilitation ideas at prisons. Even though Tunisia and Iceland are far away from each other on the map, both countries have made much progress when it comes to women’s rights. After the Tunisian Revolution in 2011, the Democratic Government decided that they did not want women’s rights in the constitution. The women fought back and protested. They took to the streets and finally achieved equal rights. With women in mind the first country to elect a female president was Iceland, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir. As a country, they made leaps and bounds in gender equality. Also, Iceland investigated and prosecuted bankers that were involved in the Icelandic financial crisis and put them in prison. After Moore invaded these countries he discovered that these concepts weren’t foreign. All of them originated from The United States. The American dream seemed to be alive and well everywhere but America. At the end of the film Moore states, “These were not European ideas, these weren’t new ideas, these were our ideas (America), we didn’t need to invaded all of these countries to steal their ideas they were already ours, we didn’t need to invaded we just needed to go to the American’s lost in found. Maybe that was the answer.”
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