On Friday, Economist Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes and former Obama administration adviser Steven Rattner slammed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), calling her economic proposals “extreme” and suggesting that they would devastate the U.S. economy.
“Many of the things that she’s trying to address are real problems in the U.S. economy – the scale of inequality, the increasingly concentrated nature of the U.S. economy – but on balance, when you look at it, I actually think that many of her specific proposals, there are some that make a lot of sense, but many of them, when taken together, it would give a shock to the U.S. economy that on balance would be not good for the U.S. economy,” Beddoes said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“About 50% of the stock market and private equity companies would be affected by her re-regulation, by break up, by some of, one of her many very big, ambitious proposals, and I think it’s not just that there are individual policies that one can disagree with, and there are many,” Beddoes continued.
“The broader philosophy underpinning it, I think, has two elements: one is that she has an enormous faith in government and government regulation, and as we all know, government regulation has its downsides, and we may be in a situation where we need [a] different kind of regulation of some industries, but she is driven by a faith in government,” Beddoes added. “And the converse of that is that I think she’s driven by a real punitive dislike of much of business, and that is actually some of the underpinning of American prosperity – much of that underpinning. American capitalism is strong because of its business.”
Beddoes said that there was “quite a lot to be worried” about in regard to Warren’s policies, noting that while they may sound attractive to some, they would end up hurting the people that they are supposed to help.
“Well, there’s certainly a question about how she pays for some of her policies, but I think it’s not just how she pays for it, it’s the consequences, the unintended consequences of all of this re-regulation that she’s planning,” Beddoes said. “They sound attractive, you’re helping workers, you’re shifting the balance of power back to workers. That’s a great idea, but the way she’s going about doing it will have knock-on consequences.”
Beddoes noted that Warren’s wealth tax proposal, which would confiscate large amounts of wealth from America’s richest individuals, is an antiquated idea that many European countries abandoned a long time ago.
Rattner jumped in, saying, “I would say it’d be disastrous for the American economy.”
“The fundamental different view she has of what capitalism is – she says she’s a capitalist, but she’s not a capitalist,” Rattner said. “She’s really a democratic socialist in some ways, and she wants to fundamentally change the role of an American company, how an American company is governed, what it’s supposed to do, in ways that I think at least would be disastrous for the American economy.”
Rattner concluded, “I think you could make an argument that her plans and policies are far more extreme than Bernie Sanders’ in terms of its impact on the American economy and the fundamental way in which we do our business here.”
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