... earlier this month, he unveiled a multi-pronged policy
to rein-in AI that includes public ownership of the technology, an AI
dividend paid to the public, mandatory divestiture of AI developers from
major tech companies and a new tax on AI automation.
... McMorrow and other critics have questioned the feasibility of El-Sayed’s
proposal, which in addition to 50% public ownership and direct payments
to Americans includes expanded unemployment benefits and the
establishment of a Food and Drug Administration-style safety testing
agency within the federal government to test emerging AI technology.
... El-Sayed brushed off those claims. The farther left plan would be
complete ownership, rather than the 50% he is proposing, he countered. ...
Except Meyerson can't bring himself to use the word fascist, let alone Party-State.
"State capitalist power" is his polite euphemism for fascist power, which leftists who want to be taken seriously still must use apparently, ever since
George Orwell said in 1944 that fascism had become a meaningless term, you know, like the words man and woman.
He stops short, too, of saying that there is something suicidal built into the West.
The conservative Oswald Spengler identified that something as Christian theology. He said it was the grandmother of Bolshevism, which is probably why Meyerson doesn't mention it! Don't wanna upset the fascists, the Christians, AND the true believers all at the same time.
But the fact remains that the heirs of Christianity in America have sold the rope to the Chicoms which they will use to hang our children after they are finished impoverishing them.
Meanwhile Utopia still exists for Meyerson, in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, cold, wet, snowy, and dark NATO nations which rely on the American nuclear umbrella for their security.
... there is no such communist power [like the USSR] today.
There’s China, a
Leninist-verging-on-tech-infused-Stalinist state capitalist power, but
it boasts no virtually ideological adherents either in the States or
abroad, and certainly not within the Democratic Socialists of America.
It does have spies, and thugs who intimidate dissidents in the Chinese
diaspora, but it lacks any support within the actual American left. To
be sure, China’s rise to economic world power was fueled by offshoring
American companies, but they went to China at the prompting of Wall
Street as a way to boost their profit margins, Chinese labor then being
dirt cheap. In other words, it was our leading capitalists, rather than
any American socialists or communists, who sold out the industrial
Midwest. ...
In today’s Italy, some outlets like The Guardian
label the present government of Giorgia Meloni as the doyenne of what
it describes as “neo-fascism.” They see in her politics a savvy,
gradualist way to restore the Mussolini-era patriarchy and strong,
controlling state.
Although her party has its roots in a political descendant of the fascist regime, there is little evidence of what historian Simonetta Falasca-Zamboni has
described as “fascist spectacle.” There are few Meloni posters, much
less statues in Rome or elsewhere. She does not hold the kind of massive
show-of-strength rallies that Mussolini and Hitler specialized in.
Unlike Mussolini, she has no cadre of violent “Blackshirts” to impose
the party’s will.
Meloni’s governing philosophy, instead, is traditionalist and
conservative. Like others in the European “far right,” she is protective
of the vast Italian welfare state and not willing to rock the boat of
what is, whatever its political coloration, a profoundly conservative
country. Leftists do not fear criticism of her will land them in jail.
Actually, the rising censorship in Britain and the EU is applied to
those who challenge progressive assumptions. When Meloni’s proposed
judicial reform was voted down, Meloni dutifully accepted the results. “She’s basically a Christian Democrat,” Rome-based economist Veronica De Romanis told me. “Stability is her main goal.” ...
... “It has enabled people who have completely lost their brain-body
connection to speak again … and we believe it will enable people to walk
again,” Musk said of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface, or BCI,
technologies.
... “Restoring control of people who are tetraplegics and restoring sight I
think are pretty big deals,” Musk said on Monday at the conference,
adding: “They’re sort of what I might call Jesus-level technologies.” ...
... Following years of investments into EV technology, the Detroit Big Three ... have announced more than $50 billion in combined write-downs.
EV
sales fell more than 30% in the fourth quarter, after a $7,500 federal
tax credit that had juiced U.S. sales expired in September. ...
Automakers’
retreats and massive write-downs have come as Republican lawmakers
abolished a lucrative federal tax credit for EVs last fall, while also
doing away with federal fuel-efficiency mandates. Even with federal
support, EV demand was below expectations. ...
The Trump administration’s portfolio of equity stakes in U.S.
companies has reached a scale that is unprecedented outside economic
crisis or wartime....
“It is a invisible barrier to startups and new market entrants,” said
Scott Lincicome, an international trade lawyer affiliated with Cato
Institute. “Why would you ever want to enter a market that you know your
chief competitor is backed by the U.S. government?”...
The Trump administration’s approach is a major ideological departure
for the Republican Party, which has traditionally championed free market
capitalism and excoriated government intervention. The Democrats have
typically been the party of industrial policy and intervention in
markets.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, introduced an amendment to Biden’s
CHIPS Act that would have allowed the government to take stakes in
companies that accept federal funding for semiconductor manufacturing.
The measure ultimately died in the Senate....
Top executives have voiced virtually no public criticism of the Trump administration taking stakes....
Before the U.S. took its stake in Intel, Trump said CEO Lip-Bu Tan was
“highly conflicted” and called for his resignation over his ties to
Chinese companies. The comments sparked a brief sell-off of Intel shares....
Trump bought 433.3 million shares of Intel in August 2025 at $20.47, about $3 off its recent lows around $17.66, risking taxpayer money, not his own.
In the past, the U.S. has taken temporary stakes in companies in the
context of bailouts, said Peter Harrell, who served as the senior
director for international economics under President Joe Biden.
“With
these companies, it’s a very different thesis,” Harrell said. “The
government is kind of acting as a strategic investor to put capital into
these companies so that these companies can achieve both a commercial
return but also, at least in theory, some kind [of] national purpose.” ...
Jeffrey McCall, The Hill Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media Inc.
This university pinhead pretends that ABC's way out of Jimmy Kimmel isn't called his $48 million contract, which expires in mere months.
Kimmel isn't some dummy who didn't know he would be likely headed out the door very soon anyway.
He himself said as much already in February 2024, long before any of this Charlie Kirk business happened:
On February 21, 2024, Kimmel hinted that he may not renew his
contract for further seasons after his current contract expires in May
2026 in an interview with the Los Angeles Times,
stating that "I think this is my final contract, I hate to even say it,
because everyone's laughing at me now — each time I think that, and
then it turns out to be not the case. I still have a little more than
two years left on my contract, and that seems pretty good, that seems
like enough."[22][23]
How do you like your news being manipulated by the State Capitalist Pigs?
Oh, oh yeah, this is only an op-ed, not news. Sure.
... In
short, the extent of presidential control of the economy has not been
seen since the end of the Second World War. Trump has added to his
influence over macroeconomic policy by levying tariffs, another name for
taxes. He is in the process of gaining control of monetary policy by
packing the Fed board and firing an existing board member for alleged
mortgage fraud, no trial necessary.
Fed
independence, done and dusted, control of the macroeconomy complete, he
is turning his attention to the independent players that make up the
microeconomic economy. With sycophants in seats once occupied by
powerful advisers and the opposition Democrats in disarray, effective
resistance to Trump’s power push is negligible. ...
Now, as president, he is favouring visitors with baseball caps emblazoned “Trump in 2028”.
... “That state capitalism often evolves into crony capitalism, where you
have favored companies and industries that pay tribute to the leader,
and that is a recipe for not only disaster, but just sort of a corrupt
sense of messiness,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” ... Earlier this month, both Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices agreed to pay 15% of their China revenues to the U.S. government for export licenses to sell certain chips there. ...
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Tuesday that Intelmust give the U.S. government an equity stake in the company in return for CHIPS Act funds.
“We
should get an equity stake for our money,” Lutnick said on CNBC’s
“Squawk on the Street.” “So we’ll deliver the money, which was already
committed under the Biden administration. We’ll get equity in return for
it.” ...
Lutnick said any potential arrangement wouldn’t provide the government with voting or governance rights in Intel.
“It’s
not governance, we’re just converting what was a grant under Biden into
equity for the Trump administration, for the American people,” Lutnick
said. “Non-voting.”
Intel declined to comment.
Lutnick also suggested that President Donald Trump could seek out similar deals with other CHIPS recipients. ...
“The Biden administration literally was giving Intel for free, and
giving TSMC money for free, and all these companies just giving them
money for free,” Lutnick said. “Donald Trump turns that into saying,
‘Hey, we want equity for the money. If we’re going to give you the
money, we want a piece of the action.’ ” ...
Um, I don't think getting an equity stake was anywhere in the bill.
Just another example of Trump executive branch overreach, but will the supine GOP Congress care?
This isn’t socialism, in which the state owns the means of production. It is more like state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.
China calls its hybrid “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The U.S. hasn’t gone as far as China or even milder practitioners of state capitalism such as Russia, Brazil and, at times, France. So call this variant “state capitalism with American characteristics.” It is still a sea change from the free market ethos the U.S. once embodied.
We wouldn’t be dabbling with state capitalism if not for the public’s and both parties’ belief that free-market capitalism wasn’t working. That system encouraged profit-maximizing CEOs to move production abroad. The result was a shrunken manufacturing workforce, dependence on China for vital products such as critical minerals, and underinvestment in the industries of the future such as clean energy and semiconductors.
The federal government has often waded into the corporate world. It commandeered production during World War II and, under the Defense Production Act, emergencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic. It bailed out banks and car companies during the 2007-09 financial crisis. Those, however, were temporary expedients.
Former PresidentJoe Bidenwent further, seeking to shape the actual structure of industry. His Inflation Reduction Act authorized $400 billion in clean-energy loans. The Chips and Science Act earmarked $39 billion in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Of that,$8.5 billion went to Intel, giving Trump leverage to demand the removal of its CEO over past ties to China. (Intel so far has refused.)
Biden officials had mulled a sovereign-wealth fund to finance strategically important but commercially risky projects such as in critical minerals, which China dominates. Last month, Trump’s Department of Defense said it would takea 15% stake in MP Materials, a miner of critical minerals.
Many in the West admire China for its ability to turbocharge growth through massive feats of infrastructure building, scientific advance and promotion of favored industries. American efforts are often bogged down amid the checks, balances and compromises of pluralistic democracy.
In his forthcoming book, “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future,” authorDan Wangwrites: “China is an engineering state, building big at breakneck speed, in contrast to the United States’ lawyerly society, blocking everything it can, good and bad.”
To admirers, Trump’s appeal is his willingness to bulldoze those lawyerly obstacles. He has imposed tariffs on an array of countries and sectors, seizing authority that is supposed to belong to Congress. He extracted $1.5 trillion in investment pledges from Japan, the European Union and South Korea that he claims he will personally direct, though no legal mechanism for doing so appears to exist. (Those pledges are already in dispute.)
There are reasons state capitalism never caught on before. The state can’t allocate capital more efficiently than private markets. Distortions, waste and cronyism typically follow. Russia, Brazil and France have grown much more slowly than the U.S.
Chinese state capitalism isn’t the success story it seems.Barry Naughtonof the University of California, San Diego has documented howChina’s rapid growth since 1979has come from market sources, not the state. As Chinese leaderXi Jinpinghas reimposed state control, growth has slowed. China is awash with savings, but the state wastes much of it. From steel to vehicles, excess capacity leads to plummeting prices and profits.
State capitalism is an all-of-society affair in China, directed from Beijing via millions of cadres in local governments and company boardrooms. In the U.S., it consists largely of Oval Office announcements lacking any policy or institutional framework. “The core characteristic of China’s state capitalism is discipline, and Trump is the complete opposite of that,” Wang said in an interview.
State capitalism is a means of political, not just economic, control. Xi ruthlessly deploys economic levers to crush any challenge to party primacy. In 2020,Alibabaco-founderJack Ma, arguably the country’s most famous business leader, criticized Chinese regulators for stifling financial innovation. Retaliation was swift. Regulatorscanceled the initial public offeringof Ma’s financial company, Ant Group, and eventuallyfined it $2.8 billionfor anticompetitive behavior. Ma briefly disappeared from public view.
Trump has similarly deployed executive orders and regulatory powers against media companies, banks, law firms and other companies he believes oppose him, while rewarding executives who align themselves with his priorities.
In Trump’s first term, CEOs routinely spoke out when they disagreed with his policies such as on immigration and trade. Now, they shower him with donations and praise, or are mostly silent.
Trump is also seeking political control over agencies that have long operated at arm’s length from the White House, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. That, too, has echoes of China where the bureaucracy is fully subordinate to the ruling party.
Trump has long admired the control Xi exercises over his country, but there are, in theory, limits to how far he can emulate him.
American democracy constrains the state through an independent judiciary, free speech, due process and the diffusion of power among multiple levels and branches of government. How far state capitalism ultimately displaces free-market capitalism in the U.S. depends on how well those checks and balances hold up.
