Since Elizabeth Warren announced her intentions to run for president she has put out a full series of proposals ranging from student debt relief to progressive taxes on the richest one percent among us. She has called for the breaking up of the growing monopolistic tech industry and the closing of loopholes only exploited by the rich. Much of the reporting from traditional news outlets on Warren’s candidacy has been half serious. An unfortunate mixture of sexism and status quo news sensibilities, but there are many out there for whom Warren’s populist proposals and sense of justice have not gone unnoticed.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is a big fan of Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’s economic proposals. He has gone on as many news shows as he seems to have been allowed in order to promote the tenor and intent of these proposals. Stiglitz was on Democracy Now! recently, to talk to some of these proposals and why they are important to the direction of our country—and the world. He began by explaining that these proposals are girded by some rock solid and easily accepted social beliefs.
Stiglitz: You should look at these proposals in two ways—she’s setting out a set of principals: we should have more progressive taxation and not let the corporations escape taxation, we ought to do something about the growth of monopoly power in our society. We ought to make sure that education is accessible to everybody, regardless of the income of their parents. These are basic principles that all Americans should subscribe to.
Seems simple enough. Stiglitz then explains that Warren is offering up not simply ideas but examples of actions we can take as a country to make those principles a reality.
Stiglitz: Then the second thing is, here is a particular way that we can apply that. And let’s all, we all know that when we go to Congress, there will be a lot of discussion about how to do it, and hopefully during the primaries and the election we allot more discussion, but she’s putting forward the idea that these are doable ideas. These are not pie-in-the-sky, we can do it. We can get more progressive taxation, for instance, on a small wealth tax on those with more than $50 million. It’s not going to affect … I mean it’s not even going to affect the bottom 99 percent. We are talking about a fraction of the top one percent.
Asked about Warren’s proposal to wipe away millions in student debt, offer up billions in debt relief, and move toward free higher education, Stiglitz explained this is all elementary:
Stiglitz: On the student debt. We have a student debt of $1.5 trillion. It’s so large it is beginning to affect our macro economy. It’s affecting individuals’ lives. They can’t buy a home, get a family, because of the debt. It’s a new form of indentured servitude. So we have to think about it in two parts: going forward, how do we make sure that university education is affordable to everybody; and the second part is, what do we do with the backlog of $1.5 trillion.
It’s important to note here that Stiglitz himself has advocated for a student debt relief for many years now, and Warren’s plan is different from his. And while he may differ from Warren in the approach, he thinks the importance of relieving our student debt burdens is more important than arguing about the details, “One way or the other, we have to deal with the legacy debt problem.”
Asked to pivot to Bernie Sanders’s explanation of Democratic Socialism, during his controversial Town Hall on Fox News, Stiglitz explained what many progressive Democrats understand, Sanders’s position isn’t some kind of radical orthodoxy, it’s pretty standard humanistic stuff.
Stiglitz: So, I think he’s given a good definition of what is called Democratic Socialism. Now what Trump is trying to do is confuse people’s minds. Traditionally, socialism—you know a hundred years ago—was about the ownership of the basic means of production. You didn’t hear a word about that from Bernie Sanders. He’s not talking about that old-style socialism. He’s not saying we want to bring Maduro, Venezuela, to America. That’s not what he’s talking about. What he’s talking about is what in Europe they call social democracy, sometimes called the welfare state, you know it’s basically based on, we need systems of social protection, we need systems to make sure we invest in our young people, invest in our infrastructure, invest in R&D*—invest in the future. Protect the climate, protect the environment. In other words, we make our economy work for all Americans … I call it progressive capitalism. Is there any difference between my definition of progressive capitalism and what Bernie has called Democratic socialism? No. It’s all trying to get at an economy that serves its citizens.
There’s a bit to discuss, but getting the middle of the country to hear these two messages for what they are and not what the right is trying to twist them into is of the utmost importance to the future of our country and planet.