Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal(!) to write a love letter to China’s “superior” economic model. I can only imagine the smiles on the faces of the Journal’s editors when the piece came in. So, Andy Stern, Obama’s top-fundraiser and most frequent White House visitor, wants to embrace the stereotype of liberals as closet authoritarians with contempt for free markets and free societies. Why sure, we’ll publish your op-ed! How much space do you need?

I’ve got a pile of deadlines and meeting this morning, so I can’t give this the full attention it deserves. But a few quick points:

A modern day Lincoln Steffens, Stern has been to the “future” and he thinks it works. What really comes through is Stern’s gobsmacking naivete. The words “plan” or “planned” appear some thirteen times in his op-ed, and at every turn he makes it seem as if five-year plans have been utterly vindicated by the Chinese model. When you embrace markets and your goals are building bridges and dams, it’s possible to hit your goals and timetables for a while (particularly when you can shoot inconvenient people and trample property rights at will). Rapid economic growth always makes government officials look like geniuses when the reality is often that the officials are rainmakers who started dancing only after the first drops of precipitation hit them on the head.

How does Stern explain Japan, which has been planning its economy into oblivion for decades?

The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model—so successful in the 20th century—is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA’s results—a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%—are pathetic.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/282207/why-we-need-not-envy-china-jonah-goldberg