Elizabeth Warren introduces a plan to make success illegal

Elizabeth Warren introduces a plan to make success illegal

Not quite – but close.

9 thoughts on “Elizabeth Warren introduces a plan to make success illegal

  1. My brother-in-law, who is 1st generation Mexican-American, supported Donald Trump in the Republican primaries. He is a Democrat who despised Trump, but thought he would be the easiest opponent for Hillary to beat. The moral, be careful what you wish for.

    The hard left is the most energized part of the Democratic Party and it’s quite possible the most leftward mainstream candidate might get the nomination. I don’t really see anything good coming from that. Trump might actually be able to beat such a candidate. Or that candidate could win. From my perspective another Sophie’s choice at the ballot box. I might even end up voting for the orange-skinned asshole this time. Please no.

  2. So what’s worse: corporations owning government or government owning corporations?

    Neither is likely in any real sense, but both ideas will always spawn shit-tons of hyperbole.

  3. Your absolutely correct about the hackery of the National Review. I hear they even have a racist homophobe who they employ who blames her views on some imaginary hacker who somehow gained access to her blog and her moronic employer buys her load of horseshit. The organization’s consumers even parrot this idiotic narrative. I wish every organization was as upstanding as everything that is Liberal

  4. Even the vague descriptions given in the article of what Elizabeth Warren is proposing don’t come anywhere close to matching the hyperbolic claims of what the National Review say she is proposing.

    The article spends one paragraph fairly vaguely describing her proposals and 12 paragraphs describing how her proposals are ” unconstitutional, unethical, immoral, irresponsible, and — not to put too fine a point on it — utterly bonkers” as well as Godless communist.

    Before I became a vegetarian about 20 years ago, I used to eat some kind of fish sticks, and this article reminded me of them – virtually all batter and no fish.

    It sounds to me like her actual proposals cover two areas
    1.Either mandating or in some other fashion ensuring that companies with over $1 billion in revenue per annum hire women and visible minorities to their boards and executive positions.

    2.Restricting the political activity of these companies. I don’t know if that’s just in terms of political donations or in terms of lobbying as well, but in terms of political donations, many nations around the world already do that. The U.S does it directly but leaves a gaping whole as everybody knows.

    In regards to these proposals, since the description says so little I could be way off but it does seem to me what she’s proposing in no different from what has been placed onto unions: restriction of political activity at least in the form of members who don’t want their union dues going to political activities.

    Everybody knows that was really done for ‘muh freedom’ but was done to restrict union influence. In the same way however, there are no restrictions on corporate political activity for publicly traded companies. The argument for unions is that ‘nobody should have to join a union and have their dues go for political activities they don’t support just to get a job in their field.

    I think there is no question though that with the virtual death of the defined benefit pension plans that individuals have no choice to invest in the stock market either through buying shares in individual companies or in some form of mutual fund. Since in practice, individuals who do this have defacto no say over who the corporations make political donations to, I think Senator Warren may be trying to argue that ‘if the restrictions on political donations should apply to unions due to ‘muh freedom’ it should also apply to corporations.

    Anyway, I’m certainly not surprised to see a junk publication like the National Review engage in hackery.

    1. The 7th paragraph should start “everybody knows that wasn’t really done for ‘muh freedom.’

    2. You missed my point, which has nothing to do with National Review’s hyperbole. You can avoid government interference as long as you are unsuccessful! (Although new companies would obviously spin off divisions as separate companies when they approach the magic billion number.)

      Also, the magic cut-off should be based on some criterion other than revenues. In certain industries (like intellectual property), a billion dollars in revenues can be a small company. Mojang was a billion dollar corporation with 12 employees. (They have since been acquired by Microsoft.) I think we probably don’t want the government micro-managing companies with 12 employees. (Although we probably do want to get more of their taxes!)

      1. 1.I don’t think that there is much of any ‘micromanaging’ that was the hyperbolic claim in the article, that doesn’t make it true.

        2.I doubt that it’s that easy or practical for a company to split into separate divisions just to avoid hitting $1 billion in revenue.

        However, I agree the $1 billion is arbitrary and revenue should not be the only criteria.

        1. It is very easy. Spin-offs are routine.

          Micromanaging would be determining how many people and which people should be on the board of a 12-person company.

          And, needless to say, Warren’s plan will never come to pass, or even come close,during her lifetime. It’s just pie-in-the-sky ruminating to pander to her base, so all discussions of it are purely academic.

          1. Hard to say, if the Democrats retake the White House in 2020 with large majorities in Congress as a backlash against Trump I certainly could see something like this, both the greater focus on the number of women and visible minorities on corporate boards and senior executive positions and the restrictions on corporate political activity.

            If I have the analysis of restrictions on corporate political activity correct, it would be restricted to just publicly traded companies, and from my experience spinning off publicly traded companies into various subsidiaries isn’t done all that frequently.

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