Elizabeth Warren has a plan to save capitalism, by Matthew Yglesias, Vox.com

Warren wants to create an Office of United States Corporations inside the Department of Commerce and require any corporation with revenue over $1 billion — only a few thousand companies, but a large share of overall employment and economic activity — to obtain a federal charter of corporate citizenship.

The charter tells company directors to consider the interests of all relevant stakeholders — shareholders, but also customers, employees, and the communities in which the company operates — when making decisions.  …

More concretely, United States Corporations would be required to allow their workers to elect 40 percent of the membership of their board of directors.

Emphasis added.

1. “You had me at ‘Matthew Yglesias.’” Fair enough.
2. ”We must kill capitalism in order to save it,” he said, without a hint of irony.
3. A new, massive federal bureaucracy to regulate the public behavior of “only a few thousand companies” (= 80% of GDP). Central planning, here we come.
4. Who will run the OUSC, and who decides what is in the public interest? Would that person be (unconstitutionally) beyond the reach of the White House, the way Sen. Warren designed the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau?
5. ”ExxonMobil, we’d like to see you allocating 60% of your capital investment to algae research and solar panels. It’s for the children, mmm-kay?”
6. ”Koch Industries, you’re in time out, mmm-kay?”
7. Because labor bosses have historically been tireless fiduciaries for the interests of their workers.
8. One road to economic equality is called “Dow 5,000”. Liz’s proposal will take us there.

Here we are, scarcely 25 years removed from the fall of the Soviet Union, and we have American politicians openly espousing government control of private corporations.

SMDH, as the young folks say.

I have long sensed that our freedoms are most vulnerable to attack from the collectivist Left, not the Right. Indeed, many apolitical corporatists may go along with such a proposal out of perceived self-interest and a promised coziness with government.

Survival of our freedoms as we know them, should such a policy be pursued? If the over/under is 15 years, I’ll take “under”.

That’s how big a threat I perceive from Liz Warren.