Fauxcahontas Barbie: Math is Hard!

Actually, Elizabeth warren thinks math is very easy.

Step 1: US be more like China
Step 2: 1 Trillion more every year in "infrastructure" spending.
Step 3: Profit Err, betterment for the proletariat and the noble servants of the masses.

Yes, once again we have a progressive complaining as to why the US can't be more like China. And that's in an ad designed to make you want to vote for her!

The NY Sun does some deconstruction.

The first problem is mathematical. U.S. gross domestic product is about $15 trillion a year. Increasing infrastructure “investment” to the 9% Chinese level that Ms. Warren cites would mean an additional $1 trillion a year in government spending. That’s an immense spending increase. To put it in context, the entire federal government spent about $3.6 trillion in 2011, on revenues of about $2.3 trillion.

Where would this money come from? Not tax increases, right? Ms. Warren has already reportedly promised nearly a trillion dollar tax increase, spread over ten years, by raising the estate tax, imposing the Buffett Rule, and letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning $250,000 a year or more. But that money, she has said, would go toward deficit reduction. If Ms. Warren really wants to spend $1 trillion a year more on infrastructure, she’d need to eliminate all national defense spending ($705 billion) or all Social Security spending ($730 billion) and then find another more than quarter trillion dollars. Or else she’d have to go on the biggest borrowing or taxing binge in American history.

Double the amount the US is in the hole every year? Sounds about right!

China is able to spend so much on infrastructure because it’s an un-free country. It lacks the rule of law that lets American community groups wage legal and political battles against big government projects. Ms. Warren may protest that when she’s talking about “infrastructure” she mainly means maintaining existing roads and bridges, not building brand new projects that flatten urban neighborhoods or destroy scenic rivers. But that’s not what’s happening in China.

Remember that. In their own words, the Progressives wish the US were more totalitarian, they wish the State had even more power and less accountability. They see themselves as, at best, wise rules over a slack-jawed populace in need of constant control and uniform messaging, lest their baser urges get the better of them.