Rolling Stone - Socialist Bastion? "Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For" - Granite Grok

Rolling Stone – Socialist Bastion? “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For”

Rolling Stone – the aging paper of record for the 60s hipsters.  Now it  is advising the Millennials the generation already more narcissistic than the Boomers, by dint of the “self-esteem” movement in the culture and education, that they deserve more.  In fact, much more – not only should the obligatory “I merely attended my soccer team” gold statue but reforms that would have brought a smile to FDR (at the least – see his Second Bill of Rights) if not to Marx.  After all, it’s not YOUR fault that the “economy blows” – it’s somebody else’s fault and THEY are the ones that should be responsible for supporting you (i.e., nothing less than the stratagem of the furthering of the infantilizing of America.  It also shows a complete disdain to open up a history book to see how these five doozies have worked in reality.  So here is the premise:

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.

Boo-hoo! First blamed – Parents (who still have to put up with you in our basements).  Now, the real problem is that set up by other P-word entities, like Progressive Politicians, and their Progressive Policies (“hey rube, we know better than you do what is best for you!”.  We haven’t seen truly free markets for almost 100 years – I would propose that the late 1890s was the start of true Government dismantling of laissez-faire private sector where private actors were able to make contracts for themselves and determine, for themselves, the conditions under which employment was offered, employment accepted, and trading between producers and consumers happened.  But the author’s premise is that a just and fair society must be managed and controlled by some outside entity?  And this can only happen when another P-word, Politics, gets involved.  And Politics is always to be judged as fair and just?  We all know THAT premise is silly and unfactual

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody 

Unemployment blows. The easiest and most direct solution is for the government to guarantee that everyone who wants to contribute productively to society is able to earn a decent living in the public sector….A job guarantee that paid a living wage would anchor prices, drive up conditions for workers at megacorporations like Walmart and McDonald’s…

Right – and shows the absolute fealty that if Big Government is good, well adding more people to it must be better?  The giveaway phrase is “contribute productively” – and how does the author believe that a Govt that can’t even create a working website in 3 years and $600 million would be able to pull this off?  Big Government is already laying a $4 Trillion tax on the economy of $16 Trillion just in direct costs – and that Big Govt is laying down $2 Trillion in regulations on top of that.  Now add, what, another $2-3 Trillion (to pull a number out of thin air) – what does that do to the economy and the private sector people pulling the Govt wagon?  They have to pay the bill – and what happens when the money runs out (or more likely, outstripped)?  Not only that, how hard will it be to correctly slot people in with the proper skills?

and no thought as to who would actually pay for this?

2. Social Security for All

…What if people didn’t have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone’s bank account every month…

I would love nothing better than to have somebody just support me – leaving me to take long walks on the beach and mountains, never having to wonder if I’ll have enough to eat, a roof on my head, books to read, and unlimited Internet access (after all, isn’t that a Constitutional Right yet?).  No, this is the ultimate child’s dream a la Peter Pan – I’ll never have to grow up!  Sadly, a people that doesn’t have to work, a people that demands that others take care of them and provide for them, are the most dependent of all.  That also makes slaves of the rest of us, those that refuse to eat at the little kids’ table, that decided that work is noble in and of itself, that being self-responsible would no longer be possible when others have first claim on your labors.

Put another way: A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.

But what happens when the rest of us say “er, no”?  How many of us will be willing to go along with this or just head to Gault’s Gulch?  I’m figuring that most of us that would start smiling when we say “Who is John Gault?” would be a whole lot more ready when that “no mas” comes

3. Take Back The Land

Ever noticed how much landlords blow? They don’t really do anything to earn their money. They just claim ownership of buildings and charge people who actually work for a living the majority of our incomes for the privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn’t build and rarely if ever improve.

Think about how stupid that is. The value of the land has nothing to do with my idle, remote landlord; it reflects the nearby parks and subways and shops, which I have access to thanks to the community and the public. So why don’t the community and the public derive the value and put it toward uses that benefit everyone? Because capitalism, is why.

Actually, it is the Right to Private Property and like any good Marxist, who has already suggested that you and I support him and his,  is now suggesting that it is perfectly reasonable to steal other peoples’ property.  That landlord paid money for the building and the land on which it stands.  That is true investment (versus what Democrats say when they are only spending tax monies – another redefinition of the common language) – one that expects a rate of return.  Money is not free – but that’s what this clown either knows, understands, or wishes to acknowledge.  The value of the building is not just location but by the revenue it can generate by renting out rooms and apartments.

Capitalism is not the problem – it is only a mechanism by which you come to agreement with a landowner to rent that space.  Which this clown voluntarily gives and the landowners voluntarily accepts. There is no law that demands that agreement be made – only that it is kept (with lots of stuff thrown into that by Politicians).

4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody

…This detachment means that there’s a way easier way to collectivize wealth ownership than having to stage uprisings that seize the actual airplanes and warehouses and whatnot: Just buy up their stocks and bonds. When the government does that, it’s called a sovereign wealth fund. Think of it like a big investment fund that buys up assets from the private sector and pays dividends to all permanent U.S. residents in the form of a universal basic income. Alaska actually already has a fund like this in place.

It seems that #3 is insufficient for this lazy turd.  No private property.  Period.  Anything of value should be taken away from them.  Period.

Only Government owns “stuff”.  And if Government owns everything, are we a Free People?  No – that “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence started off originally as “the pursuit of property” – back then, the words were interchangeable.

BTW, where is the Government going to get the sufficient funds to put into that sovereign wealth fund in the first place?

5. A Public Bank in Every State

You know what else really blows? Wall Street. The whole point of a finance sector is supposed to be collecting the surplus that the whole economy has worked to produce, and channeling that surplus wealth toward its most socially valuable uses. It is difficult to overstate how completely awful our finance sector has been at accomplishing that basic goal. Let’s try to change that by allowing state governments into the banking game.

And he would be wrong – it is not the “most socially valuable uses” and it doesn’t collect “surplus”.  People voluntarily put their savings (er, that would be another form of Private Property) into the bank and the bank is legally responsible for using that money in ways that would provide the Return on Investment to its owners.  And the environment under which that is done is set by guess who?  Yeah, Politicians (and their minions) are the ones that set the legal and regulatory overhead that the banks have to obey.  And lately, with the Federal Bank playing games with interest rates, the banks are acting totally rationally to the incentives / inputs that Government has set up which seems to be that making that best ROI the last few years has been investing in T-Bills and other government instruments as opposed to what most of us think is the normal way – lending (and that’s another area where Government sets the rules: who, where, what, and how).

All in all, these five “items’ are nothing but a fanciful  act of silliness.  I have never quite understood the notion that policies that have proven to fail in the past has to be tried yet again.  Soviet Union, Cuba, the Baltic States, and the rest of those that went Communist?  How well did they do economically?  And how did their people feel about this kind of system imposed upon them?

This is far past Progressivism and runs right into Communism – where the State owns all of the means of Production, it makes all decisions, and the people just survive.  There never was any sense of a just and fair system under Marxism – only the true Hobbesian Leviathan is of any import. This guy thinks that this is a great idea?  Let him go to where it still exists – North Korea.

Which also brings up a question that many of us who truly believe in Liberty and Freedom – why can’t these putzes (of both genders) just leave us the heck alone?  If you wish to live under these conditions, be our guest.  Like that old joke of separating the country, you take your half and we’ll take our half.  Let’s compare in 50 years and see which works and which would be the dismal failure I believe it to be.  Instead, like Zandra Rice-Hawkins, why do you persist in incrementally place failed systems over us all?  Are you content enough of your long term win to gather up your Pack of Progressives?

Or are you all of a single mind that you get to remain children and that the rest of us are forced to take care of you?

Or are you all of a single mind that you get to force the rest of us into your servitude while still calling it democracy and not being truthful for what it really is?

 

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