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What’s the Difference Between a Socialist and a Capitalist?

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Professor Warren speaks about mortgage loan disclosures. Photo courtesy of CFPB December 6, 2010.

Five percentage points.

Elizabeth Warren is for “accountable capitalism,” and Bernie Sanders proposes “corporate accountability.” Warren would make big companies give 40% of their board seats to workers. Sanders wants 45%, reports the WSJ.

  • Both Sanders and Warren would force these companies to get a new federal charter requiring them to consider “stakeholders” rather than shareholders in their business decisions.
  • Both Sanders and Warren want to reimpose the old Glass-Steagall fence between commercial banking and investment banking. “The business model of Wall Street is fraud,” Mr. Sanders likes to say. Ms. Warren also thinks bankers are crooks: “Wall Street is looting the economy.”
  • Both Sanders and Warren agree the U.S. Postal Service should become a bank that offers government checking accounts and would compete with private banks.
  • Both Sanders and Warren want to ban shale drilling for natural gas and oil
  • Both Sanders and Warren have co-sponsored the Green New Deal resolution that calls for getting the U.S. economy to net zero carbon emissions within 10 years.
  • Both Sanders and Warren want universal free college and would cancel student debt.

Expanding the Power of Washington

But the main difference between the two concerns their presentation and political rhetoric. Mr. Sanders has devoted his long life to promoting socialism, and he wants to make it politically mainstream. Ms. Warren would rather avoid the socialist label as potentially damaging, so she instead wraps her version in populist, anti-Washington rhetoric, even as she’d vastly expand the power of Washington.

Read more here.

Hear Elizabeth Warren’s response to question about debating Bernie Sanders

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Debbie Young

Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving her Porsche Boxter S through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga.