I read Elizabeth Warren's plans so you don't have to.

I read elizabeth warren's election
promises so you don't have to she is the woman who runs with the tagline I have a plan for that her plans are post to the Internet where anyone can read them over some of them are very precise and detailed and actionable and some of them are more vague statements of principle all of them have a lot of platitudes in election rhetoric rolled up with them but hey it is an election can you blame her point one she promises to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour exactly the same promise made by Bernie Sanders I think it's gonna mobilize exactly the same level of voter support the actual economic social and political consequences of this nobody has dealt with yet nobody has even thought it through I can say for San Francisco and Seattle the impacts of a $15 an hour minimum wage or easy to foresee and are much more positive than negative what about Louisiana what about smaller cities and rural areas throughout the United States where this is going to be a huge change in the rate paid per hour what are the impacts going to be on farming it could just result in much more of the labor used in the farm sector becoming black market illegal immigrant labor so on and so forth so there will be both negative and positive economic impact of this reform and the other kind of issue haunting both the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren campaigns is this question of how anti neoliberal they are how eighty China they are if you increase the hourly rate for every factory in every farm the United States to $15 an hour does that mean that poor people in America will just buy more and more of their goods imported from China imported from Bangladesh imported from countries where the hourly rate of labor is dramatically lower so it could exacerbate some of the economic problems we have while obviously solving other I don't see anyone thinking that through doing the math or making projections of the knock-on consequences of $15 an hour minimum wage probably because until recently nobody really thought it would be accomplished but having a $15 an hour minimum wage at a national level at a federal level is a very very different thing from just passing it in say downtown Seattle downtown San Francisco other very very high paid and very very high rent areas the United States of America she has extensive and detailed plans for labor reform to strengthen the role of unions in the United States of America unionized labor I think she put many years of thought into this and she probably availed herself of the huge number of academic experts in the United States who spent their whole careers sharpening their knives looking ahead to the day when they might be able to pass these kinds of reforms and there's both good and bad when you get to the details um I think she would establish a system that although well-intentioned will be very susceptible to corruption and by the way anti-corruption a huge part of a platform certainly would be an interesting experiment the United States the state of organized labor is right now at such a low ebb that probably any reform will be an improvement it's very difficult to imagine her reforms making the situation worse and you know if it doesn't work out four years eight years down the line you can make adjustments you can figure it as you go but that is not the kind of policy that's gonna mobilize support in a simple way probably industry by industry you're gonna have experts looking through those reforms and saying well this won't work for this reason this will create this problem you know sector by sector it's a sort of very complex and difficult to implement assist a systemic reform that will be met with a lukewarm response probably by both employers and employees all right well intentioned economic patriotism 0.3 on this list economic patriotism meaning protectionism meaning opposition to free Tate trade with China um the computer I'm using to record this video was assembled in China a large percentage of all the things I own and that I've bought in the last 20 years were made in China does economic patriotism mean that Americans will cease to buy goods imported from China China is not the only country with a question mark on it will Americans stop buying gasoline exported from Saudi Arabia you know these are questions with tremendous far-reaching implications for people's daily life and for the world economy she has set down a very incoherent set of principles that she will link trade she will link the right of foreign countries to have trade agreements with United States or to have trade of the United States to the status of human rights and political freedoms in those countries so obviously China would be the big loser if you actually took this plan as it currently exists now and put it into action without any further refinement well there will be winners and losers the obvious winner would be Japan so are you actually open to allowing the Japanese to import unlimited numbers of Japanese cars States and destroy the American auto sector just it's only one example but it's a pretty tremendous example the other big winner would be India India is a democracy they meet all these standards so are you going to allow Americans to buy all kinds of stuff like clothing cheaply manufactured in India India is not manufacturing the computers that Americans use yet but if you do this if you take on this this trade reform within 10 years they're going to be manufacturing a lot of the electronics Americans use they'll take over market share from China there'll be a transition to people using cellular phones and all kinds of things made in India instead of China especially if the minimum wage is good the $15 an hour they know it's so this would be a huge shift globally from trade with the countries that currently do not meet the standards for democracy human rights that she wants to impose a shift over to economic reliance on and trade with countries that do meet those minimum standards uh it's pretty vague it's pretty incoherent what this means and nobody is doing the math and thinking through what will this actually mean for consumers in the United States of America Donald Trump has had really a very mild aunty China trade regime but even he stopped short of denying Americans the opportunity to buy a new Nintendo video game console this Christmas and so you know some of the some of the tariffs have been have been delayed in the representation until after the Christmas export season is is done Nintendo they no manufacture the video game consoles that are export the United States in Vietnam rather than China there were factories right now relocating from China to Vietnam others are relocating from China Taiwan Malaysia and elsewhere well Vietnam is also a communist dictatorship so it's not really a net benefit for democracy and human rights to relocate these industries from China to Vietnam but that's that's what's been going on so you know the impacts the short term and long term of Elizabeth Warren's principle of so-called economic patriotism there will be advantages and disadvantages I think that this part of her plan she herself probably is not really given enough thought to but hey it's it's an extensive policy document we're talking about here believe me this is a this is a cogent summary we're talking about less than 10% of the text in this video um another principle she wants workers employees to elect at least 40% of board members at big American corporations mmm at least hmm hmm I think what she means is at most can you imagine if the employees at Disneyland were more than 40% of the voting shareholders it would certainly certainly transform the American economy in many ways if at Walmart and Disney corporations if the majority of voting members were not the investors but were the employees that would transform calculus was you know if it's if it's 40 percent rather than 51 percent that's that's a very different thing interesting idealistic proposal for a very fundamental economic reform you'd then have corporations in the in the position of very directly trying to bully their workers and explain to them why they can't pay them higher wages or why they have to shut down and a certain factory and fire part of that Factory it would it would change corporate culture in America profoundly if 40 percent of the board members at all corporations were employees I can think of both advantages and disadvantages to it um if I could wave my magic wand and make it happen sure I'd do it I might make it 30% right I don't know if it's if it's above 50% then you're creating a situation in which the employees are the owners and there's unbelievable danger in terms of corruption so again I mention this before with her promised reforms would strengthen unions mm-hmm to say this is susceptible corruption as an understatement it's idealistic to think that the employee at Starbucks the rank-and-file employee the guy sitting at the front cash register is directly making corporate decisions he's not there's going to be an unbelievably indirect undemocratic non transparent and corruptible relationship between the guy who works at the front counter at Starbucks and the people who are actually in the boardroom dealing with the corporate owners or attending board meetings right if you think American party politics are corruptible there there are no journalists covering that stuff there's no transparency there's no public accountability for how it is that just a couple of employees end up being the representatives of the workers and among the things that can corrupt them are just the owners of the company themselves what if the owners Disneyland take aside those few employees and make sure they have an understanding about what's in the company's best interest yeah so it's corruptible it's unreliable it's dangerous it's not transparent it's not public countable it's never going to be truly democratic so it creates a lot of interesting questions however those questions are worth answering I mean there are really profound and interesting questions about inequality in the workplace gabriele corporations include hospitals who should make the decisions at the hospitals greedy investors you know but what's the captains of industry mustache twirling bankers and stockbrokers all right this is one stereotype the question of who should really make the tough decisions in running and managing a hospital it can't easily be said that the janitors and the nurses that the lower paid least powerful people that the workers that the working-class of the hospital are going to make the right decisions obviously of a very complex situation they're involving a lot of expert knowledge is expert knowledge that maybe the surgeons have and the janitors don't have or the nurses don't have expert knowledge that may be an economist has or may be actually a stockbroker a financier an investment banker someone that kind of specialized economic the economic knowledge economic learning they may have certain knowledge that the nurses and the janitors and you know the people who answer the phone the Secretary's worry announcement that they don't have so if 40% of the people at those corporate meetings they have that workers perspective yes but they may be lacking a lot of the expertise that's really needed to sit on that board and make those make those tough decisions so yeah it's gonna raise a lot of really interesting questions about inequality within the workplace in a quality of education and who gets to make the decision how they're made and on a cultural level if you really had this political reform and you stuck with it as a society you'd learn you learn how to work together you'd learn how to run a corporation when 40% of the people this meetings are are lower-level employees you have a lot of problems Warren you still interesting idea idealistic be nice to see where it goes okay canceling up to fifty thousand dollars in student loan debt for ninety five percent of people who have it's there are a few little weasel words in here but this is very similar to Bernie Sanders promise to cancel student loan debt so billions of dollars would be handed out to people who have already completed university but who are in debt to the universities for the cost of their education ninety five percent of people a discount of up to fifty thousand dollars so a slight variation on the promises made by Bernie Sanders under that heading she has a dedicated plan to reduce the cost of rent in the United States of America these gets into the problem of the American Constitution what is the federal responsibilities and what is the state responsibilities which he never touches she never really deals with constitutional amendments and many of her plans really probably require a constitutional amendment but without amending the Constitution she's gonna create a five hundred billion dollar budget creating 1.5 million new jobs and an independent analysis by an economist says that this would end up reducing the cost of rent throughout the United States as a whole by about ten percent this is a realistic estimate and also tragically tells you just how little of a difference the federal government can make at least with this five hundred billion dollar budget to improve the situation with housing interesting plan I did the reading I would prefer more of a principled approach that really asks and answers the question what is the role of government in the housing and real estate sector and gives a coherent answer we really start from first principles and probably it's going to an amendment to the Constitution you do have a very fundamental conflict of interest in that the government doesn't feel that it's in its interest to be counter-cyclical it's not in the government's interest to lower the value of property of houses to be blunt they don't feel it's in their interest to lower the value of the cost of rent instead the government makes more and more money through procyclical policies through having this ever upward ever increasing cost of both buying and selling residential property and rent but anyway this is a kind of stopgap band-aid solution 500 billion dollar band-aid that would result in a 10% reduction in the cost of rent by by these estimates a nationwide program to provide universal affordable childcare for all children ages zero to five not free Japan has free child care zero they have free preschool whatever free what's a free nursery school what's what's the word about something you equate free the early childhood childcare today but this isn't free this is just Universal and affordable so a little bit vague but again this would be a multi-billion dollar commitment again not really the federal government's responsibility as opposed to state government maybe you want to take that up with Constitution what is under the American Constitution what is the role the federal government in providing daycare to children ages 0 to 5 hmm did the founding fathers think that one through making tuition free here's note the wording tuition free at every public technical school two-year college and four-year college so I'm guessing I'm guessing the difference between a college and a university starts to be some guessing there's some unstated fine print but some kind of sweeping reformed education that would make tuition cost free in many institutions a lot of the time I have my doubts as to whether or not that's gonna include Ivy League universities I I don't know let's go for that but in any case the tensions you you at home Gedo your calculators an estimate how much these policies would cost if we add up medicare for all free health care for everyone this is basically identical to Bernie Sanders plan from what I can see but anyway so her health care plan in one sentence is a promise of Medicare for all a 100 billion dollar budget to quote unquote end the opioid crisis drug addiction I've seen her detailed breakdown of the budget in my opinion it is complete nevertheless um interesting that she cares interesting that she's committed to making a difference and you know I would just sort of vaguely hope that if she has that commitment has that interest at some point this would be refined into something more effective that the tough questions would be asked about the future through a policy in America how to really solve these these problems but anyway it's good that she cares you can definitely be elected president knighted States just by coming out and saying that you care and saying that you want to solve the problem not all of these plans really deserve to be called plans in some cases they're just commitments to you no commitments to solving a problem one way or another and a commitment to spending up to 100 billion dollars doing it yeah her hearts in the right place I mean again I'm a snob I look at these things as someone who really cares about political philosophy and political science but these policies don't have to live up to my snobbish high standards fundamentally she just has to have a package of policies that are better than Joe Biden and are better than Donald Trump and I think if you guys are following along and making a list of these policies as we go it's pretty clear she's already done a better package of policies than either of those two capacities a two trillion dollar investment in American green research meaning ecology meaning climate change meaning air pollution and water pollution Center two trillion dollars over ten years so that's going to be a lot less than one trillion dollars per year right it's maybe gonna be zero point two trillion dollars two trillion spread out over ten years that is a definite contrast to Bernie Sanders sixteen trillion dollar plan which I believe is supposed to be spread out over 15 years in his case they're all in the trillions but this is a relatively modest plan to as she says research manufacturing and exporting in the so-called green sector again I would warn that there's there's the potential for corruption there um still hearts in the right place there's a general expectation that everyone on the left is going to show the depth of their commitment to coming up with real ecological solutions to take real local action so putting the number two trillion on it doesn't hurt the greatest weakness of her plan it's probably foreign policy I've already mentioned that there's a lot of intentionally vague garbage that book foreign policy year I'll probably make a separate video just talking about that from one angle or another she is committed to less military spending she's committed to ideas like it's time for troops to come home we've heard this under Barack Obama before it's not really clear what it is she's one to commit you there um and there were commitments to pay for all this some of them vague some of them precise and worked out in great detail to increase taxes for the rich and that is one policy proposal I'm absolutely certain she will stick to so greatest weaknesses as I read through this mess of plans in general I think her foreign policy is still at the stage of being a sketch on the back of a napkin I don't think she's lying or being dishonest I think it's just something she never really devoted much attention to beyond very very vague promises of peace there's just nothing of substance there there's no question of are you willing to abandon South Korea so that South Korea gets conquered by North Korea probably not are you willing to abandon the US military base in Okinawa Japan which is directly linked to South Korea North Korea by the way probably not you know are you willing to abandon the Philippines so that their outer islands get taken over by China probably not when you go through the list of policy priorities even get down to the really low US military policy priorities like are you willing to abandon the island of Cyprus so that it gets taken over by Turkey probably not so how much can you really you know reduce the American military endeavor if you're not willing to make you know hard decisions hard sacrifice like that which will include actually closing down military bases actually giving up on wars that you haven't won and that will cost trillions of dollars well at least at least billions of dollars to win starting from your current position in 2019 or 2020 her criminal justice her criminal justice reform I felt was a joke well-intentioned thoroughly thought through a lot of detail there to me that's that's very easy to criticize and it's often laughable so without going detail yeah one would hope again that she moves I mean there were enough positive promises here to win the election they're not positive positive problems still a lot of good in the world but sure long story short the criminal justice reform is weak the anti-corruption agenda which she places a lot of emphasis on in her campaign I found shockingly weak I don't know why that is in terms of her education her background and so on and the emphasis she gives to this I think she very correctly saw that she could distinguish yourself from Bernie Sanders by putting a lot of emphasis on the anti-corruption agenda the actual plan as it's set down right now is weak it's it's it's poor but still hurts in the right place and I mean what can I tell you it's better than the anti-corruption promises that were made by George W Bush before he was elected you guys remember that george w bush had an anti-corruption agenda he had electoral reform agenda ha ha now the whole lot happened with that so yeah but still it's it's worrying and you know maybe in the months ahead she'll come out with I know something a little bit more convincing in terms of getting tough on crime shall we say yeah both crime in terms of corruption and crime in terms of conventional criminal justice reform I would note because it's an issue that's been in the mainstream news a lot lately her position on gun ownership gun rights gun violence incredibly weak just a huge hole in her policy in my face you can read her plan shockingly weak poorly thought through and again what she's really fundamentally doing is avoiding committing to anything that would entail an amendment to the Constitution and on some of these issues gun violence electoral reform corruption the role of corporate lobbyists in government the role of corporate lobbyists in the military there are many many issues where fundamentally what she's talking about absolutely would require a constitutional amendment maybe that can be my positive suggestion in closing this video is that Elizabeth Warren takes the mess of Policy Priorities that she now has and she refines them she distills them she extracts from them a short list of exactly what the amendments to the Constitution are that she would propose because if you want to get money out of politics if you want to reform the electoral system if you want to end corruption if you want to accomplish all these things if you want to fundamentally change the way employees relate to their employers if you want to fundamentally change the relationship between tenant and landlord you want to change the way Americans buy homes and go into debt there are a lot of fundamental changes you say you want to make to your plus you want to raise the minimum wage $15 an hour plus you want to destroy trade between the United States and China in the name of human rights I'm all for it I'm all for it but dealing with the consequences do you have a plan for that it would entail quite a few amendments to the American Constitution and hey that's what amendments are for