Wall Street scion Bloomberg pitches populist policies
Socialist is one label that will never stick to Michael Bloomberg.
The billionaire owner of a financial data and media empire is a pure-blooded capitalist in the classic New York mold of center-left politics. If he were running for office in another country, journalists might even call him the national unity candidate due to his history as a Republican.
For the past two months, I’ve written columns examining the economic and health care policies of the Democrats running for president. By narrowing my focus, I look past the personalities, polling and melodrama of the campaigns to explain the candidates’ meaningful differences.
Bloomberg made his billions running an eponymous financial information and business news company. If there is one thing he understands, it is Wall Street.
Perhaps surprisingly, Bloomberg would resurrect Obama administration-era regulations such as the 2010 Dodd-Frank
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and re-empower the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He wants to particularly strengthen the Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from engaging in risky trading with their own funds.
Trump’s deregulation may have helped the stock market reach new heights, but Bloomberg says only 10 percent of investors control 85 percent of the market, while half of Americans do not own stock and do not benefit.
“The economy works really well for people like me, but it’s badly broken for most Americans,” Bloomberg told a rally in Chicago. “Too much wealth is in too few hands and in too few places, as well. We have an economic inequality that is distributed unfairly.”
Critics may complain that Bloomberg is an oligarch. Still, his plan to tighten regulations on the financial industry and ensure U.S. taxpayers will never again bail out big banks will not make him any friends in Lower Manhattan.
Bloomberg reveals other populist tendencies by proposing to enroll student loan holders in income-based repayment programs automatically. He would cap loan payments at 5 percent of disposable income, giving young people more opportunity to buy homes and start families.
He also wants to impose a 0.1 percent tax on financial transactions to pay for programs that would reduce income inequality. In Houston, he promised to boost African-American home and business ownership.
The campaign also promises a $15 minimum wage, seven guaranteed sick days a year, 12 weeks of paid family leave and equal pay for women—all intended to reduce income inequality.
Workers would have more expansive rights to organize, and employers would have to hire more employees and rely less on independent contractors if Bloomberg passes his agenda. The federal government would enroll 1 million workers a year in job retraining programs.
Bloomberg’s economic policies sound like something that would come out of a union hall, not off a trading desk.
“We should raise taxes on the rich. I did that as mayor in New York City,” Bloomberg said at the Nevada debate, though he opposes the wealth taxes proposed by other candidates.
More problematic for Texans is his energy policy. Bloomberg has made eliminating fossil fuel consumption a big part of his platform, and he opposes expanding natural gas use.
A Bloomberg administration would mandate zero-emission buildings by 2025 and reduce carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030. The United States would also mandate 100 percent pollution-free vehicles by 2035 with a significant emphasis on electric cars. But he’s not ready to ban fracking quite yet.
“If we could enforce some of the rules on fracking so that they don’t release methane into the air and into the water, you’ll make a big difference,” Bloomberg said at the debate. “But we’re not going to get rid of fracking for a while.”
On universal health care, Bloomberg wants to improveand-expand Obamacare, capping insurance expenses at 8.5 percent of disposable income and offering a public option similar to Medicare. He would also shut down the cheap, inadequate plans introduced under the Trump administration.
To tackle costs, he would be more aggressive than any candidate who is not proposing a government-run health care system.
Bloomberg wants to cap bills from out-of-network doctors and hospitals at 200 percent of Medicare rates, effectively creating a price cap and a pretty low one at that. He would introduce a limit on drug prices at 120 percent of the average price paid across developed nations.
Based on his positions, Bloomberg is no oligarch, but neither is he truly a national unity candidate. His beliefs are solidly in the Democratic camp, not what a voter would expect from a former Republican. But he is to the right of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialist frontrunner.