If there's one thing Democrats have always wanted to get their hands on, it's workers' private retirement accounts — the 401(k)s, the Roth IRAs, the Social Security checks.  The idea is that that big pot of stored savings can be spent now for leftist social programs instead of raising taxes, and let what happens happen to people who've saved for retirement.

We saw it in 2010, in the Democrats' effort to "Argentinize" U.S. 401(k)s and replace them with "guaranteed retirement accounts," using the private savings to bail out failing public pensions.  It fell flat, but that didn't stop Democrats.  The job-free economy created by the Obama administration then drove many workers to deplete their private retirement savings just to stay afloat, which served Democrat interests, too.  I wrote about the Democrats' cat-food future for seniors here. 

Now we have yet another, and much sneakier effort, buried deep within the scads of policy proposals coming from emerging Democratic presidential frontrunner Elizabeth Warren.  Jazz Shaw at Hot Air dug into the fine print and found a new expropriation scheme within Warren's "Accountable Capitalism" plan to re-do corporate boards on a political correctness model:

Buried in that proposal is a plan to force all corporations with more than $1 billion in revenue to staff up at least 40% of their board of directors with representatives elected by the employees. Traditionally, board members are major stockholders and their focus is on maximizing corporate revenue to deliver the best return on investment for shareholders.

Under this new scheme, the board could look into more esoteric aspects of corporate policy and stop worrying quite so much about pesky details like making a profit. As the article notes, Germany already has laws along these same lines and it's resulted in slower growth and lower stock prices. One estimate suggests that share prices at affected American companies could fall by as much as 25%.

So how would that impact your average voter? As it turns out, somewhere between 37 and 50 percent of US stocks are held by retirement investment accounts. You know… the people who manage your 401K accounts? If the companies take a 25% hit, so does your retirement nest egg. On top of that, companies making less profit tend to lay people off rather than hiring more. Sounds like Warren has a real recipe for success here. Oh, sorry… I meant to say disaster.

Obviously, Warren doesn't know what boards are for, and now wants to remake them on the low-profit, low-jobs, stagnant Western European model, same top-down centrally directed one that Andy Stern of the SEIU was so fond of.  The boards would quit trying to make a profit for the shareholders, who are significantly 401(k) funds, and instead focus on virtue-signaling and shoveling union pork to union leaders.  Net result?  Much lower 401(k) payouts to workers, much more feeble pensions, but plenty of feel-good stuff for the politically correct along with unearned power for the unions, who'd surely take over those "worker" votes and rig them to their liking.

Workers of the world, reject this hag's zero-profit plan like the plague.  You have nothing to lose but your 401(k)s.