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Elizabeth Warren on Technology
Massachusetts Senator; former head of CFPB; Dem. Presidential Challenger
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Investing in infrastructure help future business
Think of infrastructure this way. We get out there together through our government, and we build the roads and the bridges,
we put up the communications system, we do these things together because you can't start a little business and at the same time try to build the road in front of your house.
You need all these pieces to make it work. Right now we are spending about 0.6 percent on our infrastructure. China, by comparison, is spending about 5 percent of its GDP on infrastructure.
It is building a future for work in China. We need to step up our investment in infrastructure right here.
Source: CNN Town Hall on 2020 Democratic presidential primary
, Mar 18, 2019
Amazon benefitted greatly, but put only a little back
Jeff Bezos, you had a great idea, you worked hard. But remember, you built this fortune in America. You used workers that all of us helped pay to educate. You got your goods to market on roads and bridges that all of us helped pay to build. You were
protected by firefighters and police officers that all of us helped pay for, and we're glad to do that. When you make it really big, put a little back in the kitty so that the next kid gets a chance, and the kid after that, and the kid after that.
Source: NPR Morning Edition: Election 2020 Special Series
, Mar 15, 2019
Break up Big Tech companies: they stifle innovation
Warren announced her plan to use the government's antitrust powers to break up big technology companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. She compared the current system to a baseball league where participants could either be an umpire or team--
but not both. Companies like Amazon, which are marketplace platforms but also participants that use the information they glean from transactions to sell their own products, have an unfair, innovation-stifling advantage.Her big idea: Ms
Warren's campaign sometimes seems fashioned entirely out of big ideas, with her tech-company break-up plan only being the latest.
Her biggest obstacle: [At the SXSW conference, her] hour-long interview was classic Warren--a mix of history
lesson, economic theory and academic research. On the campaign stump it can be a bit clunky, but in a one-on-one format it shines. No one can talk nuts-and-bolts of policy like her. But a campaign for president is not a series of in-depth lectures.
Source: BBC.com on 2020 Democratic primary contenders at 2019 SXSW
, Mar 12, 2019
Break up tech giants; they destroy competition
At the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Sen. Elizabeth Warren defended her new call to break up tech giants to an audience dotted with employees of some of those very companies. "There are parts
about big tech that are frankly just like railroads of the Teddy Roosevelt era," she said. "What's new is old. When someone gets market dominance, how then they start to destroy competition."
Source: Sacramento Bee on 2019 SXSW conference
, Mar 9, 2019
Amazon is a monopolist; limit their monopoly profits
At a conference full of tech workers, Warren's message: Break up the tech giants; they're killing competition. "We want to keep that marketplace competitive, not let a giant who has an incredible information advantage and a manipulative advantage be
able to snuff you out," she said at SXSW.Amazon is her Exhibit One. The popular site for shopping is increasingly becoming the maker of products.
AmazonBasics offers everything from bed frames and yoga mats to jumper cables. Warren is against a single company running the marketplace and manufacturing the goods sold because, according to her, that's too much power in too few hands.
While
consumers benefit from low prices, small businesses are losing. The audience broke into laughter and thunderous applause when Warren said that under her leadership, the losers would change. "The monopolist will make fewer monopoly profits. Boo hoo!"
Source: NPR.org on 2019 SXSW conference
, Mar 9, 2019
Public spending on research is investing in ideas
During the postwar period, research of every kind--medical, scientific, engineering, social science--was honored and supported. Government agencies and universities brought together teams of researchers who worked on hugely ambitious projects.We had
long invested in infrastructure, but now we were even bolder: America was investing in ideas. The results were transformative; basic research that eventually led to the Internet, GPS, and a map of the human genome.
For me, this is the basic American
contract. We all pay taxes, and in return we all benefit--sometimes immediately, sometimes down the road--and we also help build opportunity for the generations to come. I first tried to put this into words in 2011 when I was thinking about running for
the Senate: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own--nobody." My point was that everyone who succeeds gets some help from the investments we've all made. And we keep on making those investments so the next kid will get a chance, too.
Source: This Fight is Our Fight, by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, p.101
, Apr 18, 2017
China spends 8.6% of GDP on infrastructure; we spend 2.5%
China is spending 8.6%of its GDP on infrastructure. Why? Because the Chinese are working hard to build a country for the global economy. And here in the US? Our infrastructure spending is stuck at 2.5% of the GDP--and it has been for years. By that
measurement, America now lags behind India, most of Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. In fact, the only region of the world spending less on infrastructure than the US is South America, which comes in at about 2.4%.America ramped up its
infrastructure long before many other parts of the world, but our refusal to maintain & upgrade it is catching up with us. The overall quality of infrastructure in the US is now rated just slightly ahead of Taiwan's and far behind the quality of that in
Germany & Japan.
This failure to invest in our future is incredibly shortsighted. This plan isn't pro-business. This plan is pro-stupid. More investment in basic infrastructure would transform our daily living, along with our long-term prospects.
Source: This Fight is Our Fight, by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, p.130-1
, Apr 18, 2017
Middle class built by investing in infrastructure & research
What would it take to help strengthen the middle class? There is one overriding idea: "Together we can." America's middle class was built through investments in education, infrastructure, and research--and by making sure we all have
a safety net. We need to strengthen those building blocks: Upgrade infrastructure--mass transit, energy, communications--to make it more attractive to build good, middle-class jobs here in America.
Source: The Two Income Trap, by Elizabeth Warren, p.xxii
, Apr 12, 2016
Upgrade our aging roads, mass transit, & water lines
We need to upgrade our aging roads, bridges, mass transit and water and sewage lines--the basic pieces it takes to manufacture goods and to get them to market. My brother-in-law Steve operates a Gradall out of Plymouth.
He tells me that he digs up water and sewage pipes in some parts of the state that were laid in the late 1800s and now are crumbling. We could be upgrading right now--creating good jobs and investing in our future.
Source: Quotable Elizabeth Warren, by Frank Marshall, p.157
, Nov 18, 2014
End bulk collection of phone records
Warren would like to end the bulk-collection of phone records, which is authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act and set to expire June 1, 2015.Even though Warren praised the Obama's administration's reforms of its surveillance apparatus
earlier this year, she said they might not go far enough: "Congress must go further to protect the right to privacy, to end the NSA's dragnet surveillance of ordinary Americans, to make the intelligence community more transparent and accountable."
Source: Megan R. Wilson in TheHill.com weblog, "Clinton vs. Warren"
, Aug 24, 2014
Would you prefer air travel without any FAA?
[When I enthused about our consumer protection agency, one Tea Party congressman said]: He didn't believe in government. Sure, I understood the basic point that government plays a limited role in a lot of people's lives and that government isn't the
solution to every problem. But someday I hoped to get a chance to ask him: Would you rather fly in an airplane WITHOUT the Federal Aviation Administration checking air traffic control?
Would you rather swallow a pill WITHOUT the Food and Drug Administration testing drug safety? Would you rather defend our nation WITHOUT a military and fight our fires WITHOUT our firefighters?But I wasn't a member of Congress and he was.
And the Tea Party had just helped dozens of people like him make it into public office, all loudly committed to unraveling just about everything the federal government had ever built.
Source: A Fighting Chance, by Elizabeth Warren, p.188
, Apr 22, 2014
Nothing pro-business about crumbling roads and bridges
The real battle isn't "pro-business vs. pro- government": the real battle is whether everyone pays or just the little guys. Giant companies hire armies of lobbyists to craft custom-made tax loopholes. And it's working: big corporations are paying an
average tax of 12.6% of their profits. Less than half of the advertised 35% corporate rate. Meanwhile, middle-class families & small businesses are left to pick up the tab.For businesses, the real battle isn't whether we need the government to invest
in education & infrastructure & scientific research--businesses need all those investments. There's nothing pro-business about crumbling roads and bridges or a power grid that can't keep up. There's nothing pro-business about cutting back on scientific
research at a time when our businesses need innovation more than ever. There's nothing pro-business about chopping education opportunities when workers need better training. To most people, it's pretty obvious that businesses need government investments.
Source: A Fighting Chance, by Elizabeth Warren, p.247-8
, Apr 22, 2014
Increase research for new industries in Massachusetts
Massachusetts is a world leader on the research that produces new products and new industries--and creates the demand for new technical jobs.
Increasing our support for this kind of research helps Massachusetts and helps the country.
Source: 2012 Senate campaign website, elizabethwarren.com
, Dec 10, 2011
Upgrade our aging infrastructure and invest in the future
We need to upgrade our aging roads, bridges, mass transit, and water and sewage lines--the basic pieces it takes to manufacture goods and to get them to market. My brother-in-law Steve operates a Gradall out of Plymouth.
He tells me that he digs up water and sewage pipes in some parts of the state that were laid in the late 1800s and now are crumbling. We could be upgrading right now--creating good jobs and investing in our future.
Source: 2012 Senate campaign website, elizabethwarren.com
, Dec 10, 2011
Push for spending on infrastructure
When pressed on what kind of formidable legislation she would actually pursue in the Senate, Warren's organization served up a snoozy list of the priorities that Democrats have been talking about for years: she will push for spending on infrastructure,
education and renewable energy. She will work to strengthen labor unions and advocate for the reregulation of the big banks while easing regulations that make it difficult for small businesses and community banks to compete with giants.
These are fine notions; there's a reason they've long been the mainstays of an imagined liberal revolution.
But they're also the ideas that cause Congress to immediately grind to a halt and that, when packaged in nonspecific campaign-speak, are quickly drained of meaning.
Source: By Rebecca Traister in New York Times on 2012 election
, Nov 18, 2011
Support Lifeline program for low-income broadband.
Warren signed supporting Lifeline program for low-income broadband
Excerpts from Letter to FCC chairman from 15 Senators: We write to express how deeply troubled we are that one of your first actions as FCC Chairman has been to undermine the Lifeline program and make it more difficult for low-income people to access affordable broadband. Lifeline is a critical tool for closing the digital divide--a problem you pledged to prioritize. Abruptly revoking the recognition of nine companies as Lifeline broadband providers does nothing but create a chilling effect on potential provider participation, and unfairly punish low-income consumers.
Last year, the FCC modernized the Lifeline program, rightfully refocusing its support on broadband, which helps end the cruel `homework gap` for the five million out of the 28 million households in this country with school-aged children who lack access to broadband.
By statute, the FCC has an obligation to ensure `consumers in all regions of the country, including low-income consumers` have access
to `advanced telecommunications services.`
Opposing argument: (Heritage Budget Book, `Cut Universal Service Subsidies`): Heritage Recommendation: Eliminate telecommunications subsidies for rural areas, phase out the schools and libraries subsidy program, and reduce spending on the Lifeline program by reducing fraud and waste. The `Lifeline` fund, while well-intended, has been plagued by fraud and abuse, as costs tripled from under $600 million in 2001 to almost $1.8 billion in the 2013 funding year.
Supporting argument: (ACLU, `Task Force Letter`): The ACLU, a co-chair of the Leadership Conference Media Task Force, joined this letter to the FCC Chairman in response to his decisions to revoke the Lifeline Broadband Provider designations for nine providers. The ACLU has long supported expansion of the Lifeline program, which provides access to phone and broadband services for lower income families.
Source: Letter on low-income broadband 17LTR-FCC on Feb 10, 2017
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