Elizabeth Warren unveils bold new plan to reshape American capitalism

Probably because management can deliberately reduce profit, and realize shareholder gains in other ways. Amazon famously had very small profits over a long period of time because it reinvested all of its revenues back into its business:

https://qz.com/987559/charted-amazons-amzn-profitless-path-t...

https://qz.com/1196256/it-took-amazon-amzn-14-years-to-make-...

Give him some credit though, it takes real nerve to argue against big changes by saying they wouldn't change anything!

You don't have to 'remember' something in order to understand its impact. In fact, having the hindsight of history may be more beneficial to understanding something than living in the moment and having your experiences impacted by your emotions at the time.

An individual's memory is also not very reliable, so there's that too.

That said, this new plan sounds extremely heavy handed.

Unless there's a sustained period of economic prosperity similar to what followed WWII, socialism will continue to gain support among Millennials. Most of the warnings around socialism sound similar to those we've heard about illegal drugs: "I smoked one weed and it ruined my life" = "I put in modest regulation and now it's the Soviet Union"

Edit: Specifically, unless Millennials experience some measure of sustained economic growth and stability, derived from capitalism, socialism will likely continue to rise in popularity.

Capitalism is in need of a better argument than "If you think free markets are bad, wait till you see communism!"

In that it gives some voice to workers in direction of firms, it could kinda-sorta be seen as a kind of socialism, but since the firms actual decisions are made internally and not by an external central planner, it's not anything like a command economy.

> The worst thing about stuff like this is that is socialism is hard to dispell in sound bites.

I dunno, the American Right usually does a good enough job (even against things that aren't socialism) with just “socialism” repeated over and over as the soundbite, with no additional substance.

That might be changing over time in a demonstration of the “little boy who cried wolf” effect, though.

> Unfortunately millennials do not remember the Soviet Union

I'm not a millennial, and I quite clearly recall that the Soviet Union was not exactly known for large private joint stock companies with a minority voice for workers in choosing directors. So, I can see that not remembering the USSR is a problem here, though not in the way you seem to be concerned about.

That's an absolute caricature of what the bill does. It doesn't mandate what products or services companies can provide, how they charge for those services, what deals they make, etc. There's none of the fine-grained control that a real command economy would entail. All it does is change the operative definition of fiduciary duty to include people besides shareholders who are affected by a company's actions.

There are both moral and practical justifications for this. The moral justification is that it's unfair to give corporations every advantage given to real flesh-and-blood people, while also preserving their natural advantages - immortality, immunity to imprisonment for crimes, and most pertinently limitation of liability. The natural state of the market does not include limited liability. In order for the state to extend that favor to corporations (by extension to their principals and shareholders) there must be some compelling benefit to the people the state represents, otherwise it's not a deal but a steal. Historically, when corporations were first created, it was on the basis of a charter spelling out the nature of that benefit and holding them accountable for its realization (e.g. to build a road, bridge, or canal).

That brings us to the practical justification. The lack of such charters has empirically been very bad for the middle class, for the environment, for political stability, etc. In short, the grantors of these favors - the people behind the government that defines and enforces civil law - are not getting their money's worth. They're giving and not getting, even more so when the benefits can flow overseas while the costs stay here. Once government starts doing favors for corporations without expecting anything back, what you have is neither democracy nor capitalism but oligarchy. Since you made the mistake of mentioning the Soviet Union, all I need do is point to its successor state for an example. It's a bad deal, and it's bad policy. Enforceable limited charters are long overdue for a comeback.

P.S. I'm no millennial. I'm a very early GenX if you must know. What that means is that I've had time to study this stuff at more than a superficial level, so your well-poisoning is entirely off target.

So, this is very unlikely.

I doubt she expects it to pass. I suspect she does hope it will help the dems win a few seats in the next election.