Breathtaking Stupidity
This twenty-somethings-should-embrace-communism piece over
at Rotting Stump has already been mocked relentlessly in the conservo-sphere, but I did want to focus on this bit:
Make everything owned by everybody.
Hoarders blow. Take, for instance, the infamous one percent, whose ownership of the capital stock of this country leads to such horrific inequality. "Capital stock" refers to two things here: the buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent's ownership of the means of production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets.
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. If it's good enough for Levi Johnston, it's good enough for you.
No, Alaska didn't buy up all the stocks and bonds of its citizens. It just has excess funds left over from the oil pipeline that it refunds to its citizens.
More important, the idea that the government could buy up everything in the country--buildings, equipment, stocks and bonds, etc., is ridiculous. The
market value of all publicly traded stock in the USA is $18 trillion. And the key word in there is "publicly"; lots and lots of buildings and equipment are privately owned. To give just one example, the Duck Dynasty empire is all owned by the Robertson family.
