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Elizabeth Warren wants to weaponize and federalize corporations for social justice activism

Elizabeth Warren wants to weaponize and federalize corporations for social justice activism

If you like anti-Conservative bias in Silicon Valley, you’ll love Warren’s new plan

https://youtu.be/QSD8W-kPQC8

Sen. Elizabeth Warren hates capitalism and has never made an effort to hide it. Now she’s taken that hatred a step further and introduced a bill (pdf.) that would literally nationalize all the things. The government must step in and tell CEOs how to run their companies.

Warren penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about her “Accountable Capitalism Act” to sell it to the public. She gushes over how the bill would help workers and give more power to them.

That sounds familiar…*cough*VladimirLenin*cough*

In reality, the bill gives more power to the government because Warren’s bill tells a company EXACTLY how it should run. In other words, capitalism is accountable to the government, not the people or workers. Reason summed it up:

Warren’s “Accountable Capitalism Act” would require that corporations that earn more than $1 billion in revenue a year (note “revenue,” not “profits”) would need a federal “charter” in order to operate. This charter would obligate these companies to consider all “stakeholders,” not just shareholders, when making decisions. The bill would also require these corporations to permit employees to elect 40 percent of the company’s board of directors; a super majority of 75 percent of directors and shareholders would have to approve political donations. (Gee, I wonder if somebody will propose something similar for unions?) Shareholders would be permitted to sue the company if they felt its actions were driven purely by profit and did not reflect the desires of its many “stakeholders.”

If your business does not do this, then the business faces a penalty “that is not less than $50,000 and not more than $100,000 for each day that such representation is not in compliance with those requirements.”

Like Scott Shackford at Reason, my eyebrows raised when I read revenue in the bill and not profits because I have noticed that revenue tends to be higher than profit. Yes, there is a difference between the two. From Investopedia:

Revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods or services related to the company’s primary operations. Revenue is often referred to as the top line because it sits at the top of the income statement. The revenue number is the income a company generates before any expenses are taken out.

Profit, typically called net profit or the bottom line, is the amount of income that remains after accounting for all expenses, debts, additional income streams and operating costs. The bottom line is also referred to as net income on the income statement.

Take a look at Amazon’s revenue and profit:

To keep a company growing it must evolve, which is why Amazon decided “to invest in growth over profits for the long term, and the market has rewarded that decision.”

I remember the left freaking out over President Donald Trump’s tax reform because they insisted that the companies would hand over those breaks to the shareholders. Warren forgets this blog I wrote in May because data showed that the 130 companies in the S&P 500 have increased capital spending by 39%, which is the fastest rate in seven years. Returns to shareholders has only grown by 16%.

Warren hates that some companies have set “themselves up to fail.” THEN FAIL. I know it’s a TV show, but Ron Swanson is a genius:

“The government should not prop up a failed business. That would be like giving food to a mortally wounded animal instead of slitting its throat and properly utilizing its meat and pelt.”

“The free market is a jungle, it’s beautiful and brutal and should be left alone. When a business fails it dies and a new better business takes its place. Just let business be business and government be government.”

Why is Warren complaining about wages? According to the July jobs report, wages are up 2.7% from a year ago and went up by 0.3% from June to $27.05. The economy keeps adding more jobs and unemployment is at a historic low.

The middle class has shrunk so much because people keep moving up the ladder, not down. Pew Research Center in December 2015 published this report about the shrinking middle class, but look at what I emphasized:

Based on the definition used in this report, the share of American adults living in middle-income households has fallen from 61% in 1971 to 50% in 2015. The share living in the upper-income tier rose from 14% to 21% over the same period. Meanwhile, the share in the lower-income tier increased from 25% to 29%. Notably, the 7 percentage point increase in the share at the top is nearly double the 4 percentage point increase at the bottom.

The economy is growing. Businesses are looking out for American interests because without the consumer, the business would not exist.

This is the ultimate government picks winners and losers, not the consumer. The interests of the government will tell a business how to operate, therefore could stymie growth and production, but also innovation. The only way to evolve is to take risks and trial & error. But if Warren and her cronies don’t approve, they will shut you down.

In other words, it won’t matter what “American interests” are or what the consumer wants. If the government doesn’t like it, it won’t happen.

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Comments

Warren’s “Accountable Capitalism Act”… can you say Mustang ranch Brothel?

    mrtomsr in reply to mrtomsr. | August 16, 2018 at 11:20 am

    Sorry, when I googled it, they seem to be active again. I recall the government took them over for tax problems, then had to close the business as they couldn’t make a profit selling sex and booze.

      mgparrish in reply to mrtomsr. | August 17, 2018 at 11:57 am

      No matter what, the government always find new and unique ways to screw us.

        henrybowman in reply to mgparrish. | August 17, 2018 at 2:50 pm

        Which is ironic, because if the government had done its job and found new and unique ways to screw people, the Ranch wouldn’t have failed in the first place.

Sounds like a move towards socialism/communism.
It would make a great campaign message for the midterms, and later for 2020. Not sure the DRats will like the outcome, though.

    Edward in reply to Exiliado. | August 16, 2018 at 3:21 pm

    Not to worry about such an outcome, the Republicans won’t take advantage of the gift Warren has given them. It isn’t fair, or some such BS, to take advantage of the unforced errors of Democrats.

    oldgoat36 in reply to Exiliado. | August 16, 2018 at 10:18 pm

    Sounds closer to fascism to me. Here is the definition: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
    2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

    early instances of army fascism and brutality —J. W. Aldridge

    Fascism only became “right wing” when the left re-wrote things. The thing they eliminated is that right or left is a relationship to another viewpoint, but the political spectrum is circular, and with the exception of a dictator (which can be defined loosely as even a president who despite the limitations of a constitution or laws, acts as they please without any consequences for thwarting the limitations that are supposed to be in place.)

    JackRussellTerrierist in reply to Exiliado. | August 17, 2018 at 10:55 am

    Man, this is one dangerous red skin.

Elizabeth Warren is a useful idiot. She seems to think she’ll be one of the overlords. She’s deluded. While a wealthy woman compared to the average Joe, she’s not even in the window looking in with the real players.

One has to hope that even other Democrats wouldn’t vote for such a thing.

    Edward in reply to tarheelkate. | August 16, 2018 at 3:24 pm

    Hope is not a course of action and those depending on hope are usually greatly disappointed.

    Edward in reply to tarheelkate. | August 17, 2018 at 8:51 am

    As a guest on Fox and Friends this morning (Friday 17th) pointed out, it is good that she is being honest and telling us what she wants – Socialism.

    The Republicans SHOULD use this extensively to point out where she, and Democrats in general, would lead the country if given the opportunity. And obviously the younger generations need to be informed as to exactly what Socialism is. Recent polling gives us the impression that many of the twenty somethings (and below?) think Socialism is a good thing, they just don’t know what Socialism is.

    JackRussellTerrierist in reply to tarheelkate. | August 17, 2018 at 10:56 am

    Dream on.

OnTheLeftCoast | August 16, 2018 at 11:34 am

“In other words, capitalism is accountable to the government, not the people or workers.”

*cough*Mussolini and Hitler*cough*

    Tom Servo in reply to OnTheLeftCoast. | August 16, 2018 at 1:15 pm

    That’s exactly what I was thinking. All of these millenial leftists love to throw the term “fascism” around – don’t any of them know what the REAL THING looked like? What it really was????

      Edward in reply to Tom Servo. | August 17, 2018 at 9:01 am

      You expect people who wish to wipe the nation’s history from the collective memory of the people (and eliminate statues, plaques, etc.) to know what Fascism actually is/was? It’s easier to parrot the talking points of Democrats, teachers and professors (triple) than to think or, worse yet, have to actually research the subject matter. Finding information is so hard and time consuming on the Internet.

Elizabeth Warren loved capitalism when she was buying and selling houses Under foreclosure.

She committed one of those political gaffes….where a politician actually tells the truth.

“But between 2007 and 2016, large American companies dedicated 93% of their earnings to shareholders.”

As you’ll recall, Democrats took over congress in 2007 and Obama was president through 2016. They created such an anti-business environment that companies were reluctant to expand their business or there was nowhere to expand.

If there’s no better place to invest profits in the business, the natural place to put profits is shareholder dividends or stock buybacks.

She has demonstrated time and again that she is clueless. She should return to her ivory tower.

Shareholders would be permitted to sue the company if they felt its actions were driven purely by profit and did not reflect the desires of its many “stakeholders.”
***********************
doesn’t the SEC render judgements if the company purposely does something that devalues the company and shareholders worth?
didn’t Shlensky v. Wrigley address this?
been many years since had to study it so do not remember.

Government has already been infested with the anti-democratic concept of “stakeholders.” This is common in environmental decision-making where environmentalist groups get themselves designated as “stakeholders” who are granted say along with elected representatives, giving the environmental groups an additional say beyond the influence of their votes in choosing the elected representatives.

Now the left wants to take this anti-democratic political power and impose it directly over private institutions. The evil ambition of these Stalinists is unbounded.

They have created whole cohorts of Maoist Red Brigades college students and the only thing this army is fit for is imposing Red Brigades totalitarianism on the rest of society. That’s what this is a plan to do. Straight up Maoist red brigades

    AlecRawls in reply to AlecRawls. | August 16, 2018 at 1:58 pm

    So much for democratic socialism. This is an appeal for anti-democratic socialism.

    Nationalizing every substantial corporation (what FDR initially tried to do before the Supreme Court shut him down) would be the almost complete destruction of American liberty, but not quite complete because we could still “throw the bums out.” There would still be democratic control.

    Warren has an answer for this. She wants to impose anti-democratic control on every corporation. Pure totalitarianism.

The idea of shareholders influencing the company business practices has been floated around for decades. The idea, as a hypothesis since there was nil data to even suggest a theory, was that 1 million activists would each buy one share of a company and then turn into a socialist utopia. I think I first saw it as a notion in Jerry Rubin’s “Do It.” IIRC, there are a bunch of safeguards built into most, if not all, publicly traded companies to prevent this happening. But is does make a nice pipe dream.

The best example of self-sabotage was John Hechinger who destroyed his home improvement company by pissing off gun owners, who happened to make up most of his blue collar customers.

“Is she a communist, or is she a fascist? Only her Commissar knows for sure!”

The red suit is just too perfect.

The Progressive Left has innoculated itself by calling everything fascist. When everything’s fascist, nothing is. Not even a bona-fide fascist.

There’s not one thing I even remotely like about this woman. Dangerous, disingenuous, and profoundly stupid – the freakin’ trifecta.

    Close The Fed in reply to UJ. | August 16, 2018 at 1:15 pm

    UJ, I don’t think she’s stupid. She has an agenda, and she’s happy to put a bow on it to sell it to the ignorant. The dems whole thing is, they want power, raw unadulterated power, by any means necessary.

    oldgoat36 in reply to UJ. | August 16, 2018 at 10:22 pm

    She and Cuomo share quite a bit of those very traits in common, I imagine that is nearly a dream team for the Democrats.

Regulation entrenches monopolies. Just look at what happened to the financial industry after Dodd-Frank was passed.

Typical of the Dems/Progs, it’s all about control, all control, all the time. They’ll call is something else, but they want to control everything. They know how to live everyone’s life better than you do. Just ask them.

Versus unaccountable socialist government actions???

… corporations that earn more than $1 billion in revenue a year (note “revenue,” not “profits”) would need a federal “charter” in order to operate.

Of course, this charter would come from Tony Soprano

Can you spell … S H A K E D O W N

    Then of course the line would progress slowly down the ladder to a half-billion, then a quarter, then a hundred mil…

    “Hey! Let me see your profit distribution form and equitable labor agreement for this lemonade stand, little miss moneypants.”

And Warren and her toadies will wake up one day and wonder why the Fortune 500 starts with companies worth under $1 billion. “Fortune 500 companies represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP with $12.8 trillion in revenues, $1.0 trillion in profits, $21.6 trillion in market value, and employ 28.2 million people worldwide.” Nah, this would have no impact on the US economy…

Shrieking Crow is not so much against capitalism as she is in favor of fascism controlled by herself. She was and is corrupt and a heartless opportunist. If Hillary had been elected Shrieking Crow would be now making herself very rich via the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and would be using that agency for unaccountable surveillance and extortionate fines and penalties in every facet of American life and against every American.

“corporations that earn more than $1 billion in revenue a year”

This is the key. If your company is about to cross the $1B threshold, you spin part of it off as a separate company (in which you, personally, have controlling stock).

Like any other ridiculous, unenforceable law, they’ll call that a loophole and prosecute you for using it. Because Lizzy must be obeyed!

This is text-book fascist economics.

But even Princess Running Bare isn’t so stupid that she thinks this would fly. Capital is mobile. Most American businesses are mobile, and they DO have effective voices that would never allow any of this bilge to actually happen.

This crap is just for her more stupid followers.

“Warren’s “Accountable Capitalism Act” would require…”

Uh, no. My problem isn’t with Fascist-hontas, but the gobsmackingly idiotic voters who elected this fascist into office.

The best part of silly legislation like this is when it falls into the “wrong hands”.

Witness the CFPB,designed to not be accountable to Congress. When Warren wanted to wrestle control from Trump-appointed Mick Mulvaney. He gave her a dose of non-accountability, ignoring her demands to appear before the Senate.

“…a super majority of 75 percent of directors and shareholders would have to approve political donations.”

What are the penalties for donating to “the wrong party”?

Hoping they bring this up for a vote as soon as possible. WOuld love to get them on record as either being for government control of private business or Warren not being supported by even her own party.

“Like Scott Shackford at Reason, my eyebrows raised when I read revenue in the bill and not profits because I have noticed that revenue tends to be higher than profit. Yes, there is a difference between the two.”

Well, when you hate capitalism, why waste time learning anything about it?