Presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wants you all to know that she is very much a capitalist and a patriot. So much so she wants to weaponize the federal bureaucracy against American businesses, expand the power of the Export-Import Bank, and engage in wide-scale currency manipulation.
Buried in Warren’s plan for “economic patriotism” — remember, no matter how terrible, she’s got a plan for that! — is a telling and false dichotomy that she presents to the public. “It’s not a question of more government or less government,” Warren writes. “It’s about who the government works for.”
The axis Warren attempts to erase here — that of the size of government — is not only neither capitalist nor patriotic, but also every dictator’s first step to solidifying power. This is radical rhetoric, the kind that inadvertently blows Bernie’s out of the water in its tacit endorsement of a state not just designed to centralize power for stability but to go to war against our free enterprise system that has created the greatest economic force in human history.
Perhaps I’m speaking in vague platitudes here. Fine, then let’s go through the minutiae of what Sen. Plans wishes to impose upon us.
Most egregious is Warren’s plan to expand the Ex-Im Bank. The bank, as it exists, is a travesty, and dumping more money into it will only further the country’s corporate welfare and crony capitalism. It impedes necessary market forces, quashing the invisible hand in favor of centralizing taxpayer cash to divert it to Washington insiders.
If this were just a matter of picking who the government works for, then why has Bernie — yes, as in Sanders — voted to nix the bank entirely?
Then there’s Warren’s embrace of a protectionist National Jobs Strategy that would “defend and create American jobs.” Sure, this is the government working against the free market, but it also absolutely is a question of adding more big and unnecessary government that cannot understand or do well the task it is being given.
There’s some less offensive business in there as well, such as the expansion and restructuring of apprenticeship and worker training programs. These would presumably create a positive return on investment, but that doesn’t mean they’re not objectionable. Like Ex-Im and the Federal Student Loan Program, both of which make money for Uncle Sam, these would still be increasing the size of government, whether Warren likes it or not.
