njlauren
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
A fun piece showed up in Rolling Stone - an appeal to millenials to embrace communist principles.
I checked the article to make sure, but I didn't find the word "communist" anywhere in the article. There were a few comments containing that word, but the article itself never directly said to embrace communist principles.
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Millennials have been especially hard-hit by the downturn, which is probably why so many people in this generation (like myself) regard capitalism with a level of suspicion that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But that egalitarian impulse isn't often accompanied by concrete proposals about how to get out of this catastrophe. Here are a few things we might want to start fighting for, pronto, if we want to grow old in a just, fair society, rather than the economic hellhole our parents have handed us.
The author does have a point here. Considering how much the U.S. had after World War II and our relative position in the world, the fact that it's been all pissed away so relatively quickly is quite an accomplishment. The millennials have every right to be pissed at the previous generations who fucked up a good thing. Our economic demise is purely our own fault; we certainly can't blame it on the communists. After all, we also supposedly "won the Cold War," so what excuses can there be for such a poor economy?
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1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody
2. Social Security for All
3. Take Back The Land
4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody
5. A Public Bank in Every State
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-economic-reforms-millennials-should-be-fighting-for-20140103
I enjoyed the read, and I'm curious what others think.
I'm not sure that I agree with all of the proposals here, although they're worth thinking about. I don't think we necessarily have to "take back" the land, although I agree that some serious reforms in that area are necessary. Perhaps there might be ways to impose increasing taxes on absentee landlords and unused/vacant properties, such as doubling their property tax each month until they sell their property or utilize it for productive purposes.
The sad thing about the world's history with communism is that most of what happened was really so unnecessary. If only the wealthy, privileged classes had been willing to give just a little tiny bit, it could have avoided a lot of problems and prevented things from getting to such extremes. Even here in the United States, we've had labor unrest mainly due to stubborn, greedy bosses who said "We ain't payin' those bums one more penny!" These people resorted to violence and murder for the sake of higher profits, and then they seriously wonder why there are "communists" who come out of the woodwork? Is it really that difficult to figure out?
What happened was globalization, where those controlling industry could exploit dirt cheap labor bred by huge populations desperate for work. The post WWII era was an era when for many years, the US had no competition, it took Europe and Japan many years to rebuild, and the US had such a huge domestic economy that those countries faced huge obstacles......what we have today is very much like the 19th century, where they had workers, either immigrants or people from poor rural areas, flooding in to work in their factories..take a look at India and China, and that is basically what you have. In the 19th century, factory owners and 'capitalists' controlled a huge amount of the wealth and income, a show I saw I think on History said Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan between them controlled something like 20% of the wealth in the US....and we are seeing a similar concentration today. Companies outsource what were once decent paying white collar jobs to people from India and China, because they come cheap, so that those running the show can collect record compensation. Once upon a time a CEO made about 30 times what a worker did, today it is 400 or 500 times as much, and so forth. Once upon a time a CEO made his money producing a good product and got paid salary and a cash bonus; today, 95% or more of their compensation is in stock, and most of their effort is not necessarily in producing a good product, but making stock analysts happy.
One of the things even economic conservatives are realizing is that things like communism (which to me is fundamentally just another way to screw people, the reality of 'people states' is very few benefit, most suffer) don't come about by chance, that if people's fundamental sense of hope and optimism goes into the shitter, you have problems. Someone mentioned unions wanting 30 bucks an hour, which doing rough math is 60k a year, which quite frankly isn't a lot of money given the cost of living in many places, and how does that compare to executives making 10's of millions of dollars? The problem is a capitalism that doesn't benefit everyone, that uses economic exploitation to benefit a very small percentage of those out there..and also when a lot of money is being made chasing electric blips of money all over the world, rather than actually doing anything.
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RE: Call to the communists, in Rolling Stone - 
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