war - Max Keiser

Stacy Summary: The US Congress refused to pass an extension of unemployment benefits to over a million Americans because they were “opposed to adding another $33 billion to our $13 trillion mountain of national debt.” A few days later, they agree to spend $30 billion on an escalation of killing and occupation.

American politicians, usually of the Republican persuasion, speak often of the evil that is ‘socialism’ in Europe is for its welfare state. But if it quacks like government spending, it is government spending. And the US government spends, as we all know, more than the rest of the world combined on war. Domestically, it keeps with this same theme of violence against others and depriving them of their liberty as a favored means of welfare spending. In Europe, the government attempts to provide more rights than it can afford; but in the U.S. the government attempts to take more rights than it can afford to.

Check this report out on the high cost of US incarceration of its population, the highest in the world on a per capita basis. Bizarrely, the above-mentioned welfare war machine is sold to the population as a means of liberating others around the world who we are told are unfree. And yet, here is the US incarceration rate compared to other OECD nations:

From MaxKeiser.com Images

And here is the US compared to the other top ten incarceration nations:

From MaxKeiser.com Images

And here is just the US incarceration rate going back to 1880:

From MaxKeiser.com Images

What happened from early 1970′s? Did the American population suddenly go wildly violent? Was it something in the water? Here is the incarceration rate since 1960 against the rate of crime:

From MaxKeiser.com Images

Nope, I don’t think it was something in the water. I think it was something in the currency. There is no way the U.S. could have afforded so much fear, war and incarceration if it were not for the abandonment of the gold standard.

Here is Alan Greenspan in 1966, before the US dropped the gold standard and before he became an apologist for units of fraud as currency:

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.

It doesn’t matter whether that deficit spending is in the name of providing benefits to certain people in society or depriving certain people of benefits. It is still confiscation whether done in the name of aggression or in the name of benevolence.

This brings me back to the European social welfare state that provides more health, pension, childcare, etc than it can afford. The financial crisis is, according to some analysts, forcing Europeans to rethink their way of life:

In the ashes of Europe’s debt crisis, some see the seeds of long-term hope.

That’s because the threat of bankruptcy is forcing governments to implement reforms that economists argue are necessary to help Europe prosper in a globalized world – but were long viewed as being politically impossible because of entrenched social attitudes.

Changes such as making it easier for companies to fire workers or stare down unions were until recently dismissed as simply not being the “European way.” Similarly, many were skeptical that European governments would or could tackle bloated public payrolls, trim entitlements or force people to retire later.

Is there any discussion on changing the “American way” of welfare: war and incarceration? I think not.