New Proposal to Have the US Government Investment in Corporations: A Move Toward a More Fascist Economy

Under the guise of attempting to make all people "equal," a Los Angeles-based think tank,  Berggruen Institute, is proposing a national sovereign wealth fund for the United States that would put the government in greater control of many large corporations.

The cover story is that it would address "the imbalance of economic power that currently exists between rich companies and individuals, and the public sector."

Rana Foroohar reports at the Financial Times:

[W]hat about “pre-distribution”? That is a term used by Nathan Gardels and Nicolas Berggruen. The co-founders of the Los Angeles based Berggruen Institute are pushing the idea of a national sovereign wealth fund...

Such a fund could, for example, take stakes in companies that profit from public investment or public data. Digital companies including Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon would certainly fall into that category. Their products are largely built on things funded by federal government research — the internet, GPS, touchscreens — or on the use of personal data. Silicon Valley is not the only place that has benefited from such data and research — so have most US companies that profit from products that are rich in intellectual property.

Expropriating the equity of existing companies is neither fair nor politically feasible; one shouldn’t change the rules of the game post facto. But buying or demanding stakes in new ones might be. Norway and Singapore have state-run wealth funds, and Israel is starting one. In Germany, the state owns stakes in big companies. In both cases, the profits from which are used in the public interest...

Of course, the first question that must be answered is how a country that is already more than $22 trillion debt is going to fund a national sovereign fund?

The second question is why should potential investment funds be taken out of the private sector and given to the government to invest?

And thirdly, how is this not an advancement toward greater influence by government on the business sector, that is, how is this not an advancement toward more fascist-like influence over the economy?

As far as companies that already benefit from government funding, why such funding should stop immediately!

-RW