Former Union Chief Andy Stern Praises Crony Communism

Economic Systems: The former head of the Service Employees International Union says capitalism is on the ash heap of history and sees China as our role model. We have seen his future, however, and it doesn't work.

President Obama once reportedly told aides, according to the New York Times, that things would be easier if he were president of China. Presumably he meant there would be no pesky things like a Congress, free elections and a free press to deal with.

Former SEIU chief Andy Stern, who may still hold the record for visits to the White House under this administration, would agree with that assessment. Stern, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writes of China's "superior economic model," a command-and-control economy unimpeded by such anachronisms as democracy and a truly free market. Stern writes that the "conservative-preferred free-market fundamentalist shareholder-only model" of capitalism "is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century."

We should, he says, "rethink" our economic model rather than "double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism." He speaks glowingly of China's 12th five-year plan and "Deng Xiaoping's government-led growth-oriented reforms (that) have created the planet's second-largest economy" soon to replace us as No. 1.

Stern is wrong on at least two counts. The first is that what we have been practicing of late can hardly be called unfettered capitalism. We labor under the burden of ever-restrictive regulation and the highest corporate tax burden in the world. The administration has embraced industrial policy to dictate where factories can be built and what energy can be developed. It, not the free market, picks the winners and losers.

If we were practicing capitalism, Boeing would be allowed to make its Dreamliner passenger jet in South Carolina without the commissars at the National Labor Relations Board interfering. We'd be building the Keystone XL pipeline to bring Canadian tar sands oil to American markets. We'd be drilling offshore and in ANWR.

If we were practicing capitalism, there would be no such thing as too big to fail. There would be no bailouts, no nationalization of health care or buying of car companies. There would be no Solyndras or government "investments" in failed alternative energy. We wouldn't shoot ourselves in the foot building high-speed trains.

The second is that China is hardly the worker's paradise Stern portrays. Its progress has been built on the corpses of millions sacrificed for this or that great leap forward. China has perhaps the worst distribution of wealth on the planet.

A former Democratic vice-presidential candidate once said there were two Americas. There are in fact two Chinas — the crowded bustling cities and a countryside of peasants wondering when the benefits of China's export-driven economy will trickle down to them.

If he had lived here, Deng Xiaoping would be considered part of China's 1%. But there will be no Occupy Beijing movement. There will be no workers of China uniting. That prospect died under the rumble of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Stern has said in the past that if those who disagree with command-and-control government do not bow to the power of persuasion they will bow to the persuasion of power. Stern has also said: "What we're working toward is building a global organization. Because workers of the world unite is not just a slogan any more; it's a way we are going to have to do our work."

In SEIU's world view, there is no room for dissent, or even a free market. Everything must be controlled by government and run by union members.

Sorry, Andy, the problem is not that we're not following China's example but that we've let big unions like your SEIU and the big government you crave strangle the economy. It's the capitalists, the entrepreneurs, the risk-takers and the taxpayers of America who must unite to throw off the shackles of the creeping socialism you and President Obama so warmly embrace.