You can think whatever you want, but this is literal communism he's proposing.

I would love to see a public bank. I hate getting blasted in the ass by fees, crappy service, and even worse hours at private banks.

Why would a public bank not have fees, crappy service, and bad hours?

It's hardly surprising that it's literal communism, since he identifies as a communist. If you were using that as a red-scare thing, you really need to think again.

Why is it that whenever someone criticizes communism people play the red-scare/red-baiting card? I didn't know anything about him till I read this. Sorry I'm apparently not an authentic Millennial and don't keep tabs on radical chic media personalities.

There is a spectre haunting America . . .

You should never go full communist

You attempted to scare people away from his suggestions by calling it communism, as if that is a genuine attempt to have a conversation about the proposals. You weren't criticizing communism, you were using the word "communism" as a pejorative against his ideas.

If people haven't learned their lesson about collectivization from the 20th century, they are incapable of learning.

The problem with this article isn't that it advocates communism--the problem is that it does so in an extremely poor fashion. It offers little-to-no substantiation of the ideas presented and is written at high-school level English.

All you need to do is read this to understand that not only is this person a blithering idiot...but anyone that believes this trash is clearly a worthless, moronic fool. (Oh, does that include some of you?)

"2. Social Security for All

But let's think even bigger. Because as much as unemployment blows, so do jobs. 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."

Give me a fucking break already...That's even beyond Communism! At least communists expect you to contribute your fair share! This is just a fucking lazy asshole.

What a *brilliant* and well written piece. So impressive (gag....puke...) Clearly he knows a great deal about the world of economics...NOT!!!

"Ever noticed how much landlords blow? They don't really do anything to earn their money. They just claim ownership of buildings"

They "claim" ownership of buildings? No, fucktard, they work hard enough to save enough money to get a mortgage and *purchase* a building, for which they then spend time and continuing money to maintain the building at a certain standard, usually a standard determined by the government all your fucktard liberals claim to love when they are handing you money.

It's in Rolling Stone, so to expect a fully comprehensive analysis is just completely ignoring the context of the piece.

Invictus, you should read the comments section of that article, my faith in our generation was restored by reading that

Then you are not aware of the quality of work Rolling Stone **used** to be capable of.

This is low quality trash - as someone above mentioned, written at about a high school level (and a C+ high school level at that...)

RS used to be a quality publication with intelligent, thought-provoking articles *worth* reading, even if you didn't agree. This is neither.

@mendax, I'll be honest, I don't read the Rolling Stone, so I didn't know. But I would say even by low standards, this article is poorly-written and not well-thought-out.

As a supporting piece: http://www.businessinsider.com/some-of-these-communist-ideas-are-actually-pretty-good-2014-1

There's also a full hour of him discussion communism here: http://www.theradiodispatch.com/show/radio-dispatch-revisiting-the-communism-show
If any of you are actually interested in finding out more instead of just frothing at the mouth.

The only thing I could possibly agree with here is the basic income principle. Because there are indeed economic trends that are making human capital obsolete.

Everything else is, as Invictus said, is communism. If that's not enough of a reason to disagree with the ideas, then just look up how communist countries have fared economically.

Not much "support" there. He says how every one of the explicit proposals is still pretty bad and takes as granted the underlying ideological positions being wrong.

Oh yay...Josh Barro the *psychologist* giving advise on how to overhaul teh economy. Hell, you might as well just keep it in the hands of the incompetent fools already in Washington.

If that "supporting" piece was supposed to firm up the argument, it fails. It only demonstrates that the author of the Rolling Stone piece plagiarized the Business Insider.

This isn't 1919 or 1950. No one's opposed to communism just because it's communism. They're opposed because it's consistently failed, often catastrophically.

Goldie - the "basic income"...uh, if the government deposits in *everyone's* bank account a "basic income" every month, then who the fuck is going to Pay the taxes to fund the government to give you your income when everyone quits working because the government is giving them what they need to live. Moronic…

Supporting as in pointing out how ridiculous it is to use "communism!" as a reason to write it off completely, which was my argument to Invictus.

@mendax, Do you have any book recommendations for communism? I mean, aside from primary-source material. Das Kapital is a bit of a long read for me.

@krellin, I actually found a few academic articles on basic income if you'd like to read them. It's fascinating.

Krellin, if you really think that's how people you work you really don't understand people. We already have people going out to work when they already have enough to live. Why do you think that would change?

Yes. They're getting enough to live WITHOUT work under that plan. Why bother doing any work if you get a good life by doing nothing?

@pangloss - most of the economic book recommendations I have are more anti-cap rather than pro-communism, as I've pretty new to anarcho-communism as opposed to liberal social democracy myself. One such example of this would be The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. For the most part, most of my reading is more in civil liberties/foreign policy/nat sec areas than economics.

Branching out beyond books, I'd recommend reading Alexis Goldstein regularly, and she hosts a podcast with Jesse Myerson called Disorderly Conduct which I haven't got to yet, but will do once I'm done with exams. Another good person to read is Mike Konczal, and there are probably others that I can't think of from the top of my head.