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100 Years Of Government's Takeover Of The Economy
The ever-encroaching 'might' of the government - or perhaps, put another way, the ever-decreasing need to be gainfully employed or productive...
(h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer)
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I will gladly pay you on Tuesday for a FEMA camp today.
Happy birthday... Hitler?! Jeeeze.
Later tonight will be the anniversary of Obama saying he killed Obama... where are those pics?
Keynes: "Gross Domestic Production = Borrow from the future and spend today + interest"
Yet somehow rates are at historic lows.
If we truly are turning Japanese, could rates stay low until 2027?
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2013/04/could-interest-rates-stay-low-unti...
It's suicide if we don't keep them low.
So you would rather our children become slaves to debt? I say take the big pain now, as we would be able to stand it. Yes, it would be terrible, but can you imagine what is in store for future generations? Alas, I think we have passed the point of no return anyway, the games are afoot and there will be much pain for everyone.
the central banks will suppress the interest rates until they can't. the transition will be chaotic.
The sooner the better, nevertheless.
BRICS Nations Plan New Bank to Bypass World Bank, IMF
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-25/brics-nations-plan-new-bank-to-...
Man, I don't know if we can afford to go and liberate all of those countries.
The treasury bond market's only purpose is to funnel printed money to the government through Fed purchases and to the banks through rigged trading. I am not sure it ever has to drop as long as the Fed is prepared to accept hyperinflation.
You are so right. We the few who would not take our children's further for our self's.
The money changers don't give a shit about our kids. Their kids will be Sea Dooing off the Hamptons when our kids are hoping to get jobs fixing their Sea Doos
Budd
sorry, those jobs are earmarked for offshoring.
Only the pols and crats of government and the bankster elites could steal everything, our souls included, and the future too. hujel
flacon
The fatal flaw is Government is included in Production. It should be in a separate category: GNR-
Gross Domestic Reduction.
Mathematics will soon enough kill this game. All private sector productivity increases are confiscated by government.
Wait - I thought we were supposed to think of the children. Even cretinous little bastards don't deserve this mess.
I will gladly pay you on Tuesday for a FEMA camp today. - Wimpy The Fema Camp Gaurd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS2Z19yTuPI
Will those be horse or rat burgers in the kamps?
"King Rat" burgers, maybe?
Rat burgers will be top shelf. You will wish you got to eat that well. The menu will consist of shit sandwiches, and rat might be on special every now and then.
How do you like your rat-tinis sir? Shaken, not furred...
A guy in a bar stands up and says, "All bankers are assholes." Another guy stands up and says "Hey...I resent that..." The first guy says, "Why? Are you a banker?" The second guy says, "No. I'm an asshole."
Optimist: 'in the future, we will all eat shit'
Pessimist: 'I am afraid there won't be enought for everybody'
due to expensive government studies at least we can eat "calm rats"
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/how-rocking-a-baby-is-like-grabb.html?ref=hp
A choice ?
Depends what day of the week it is.
Sundays is Soyalent green.
+1 for Soylent green
I especially like the Rich Bastards Soylent Green Sandwich. Remember: End World Hunger. Eat the Rich.
BTW, if we're gonna print $, give it to the Former Middle Class, they'll spend it and VOILA, Growth!
In the book the film was made from it would be a juicy soylent steak.
I will gladly pay you on Tuesday for a FEMA confinment loaf today.
There fixed for you.
Gotta hand it to Whimpy! Problem is he wont be able to pay you on thursday!
It is in governments nature to expand to the point of collapse. Their day is coming.
http://jimrickards.blogspot.ca/
To govern means to control. Those who are drawn to government crave control. Like Bloomturd.
What could possibly go wrong?
Those who crave control should never be allowed to have it.
That's how it works for Christian Orthodox priesthood.
Like bacteria they feed until the growth medium is completely exhausted, then comes the population crash.
hello I am from the government and I am here to help
Ronald Reagen
The irony there is that he increased government expenditures by more than any president before him except Roosevelt. He was indeed there to help... defense contractors and banks... hmm, why does that sound so familiar...?
There is also an irony in the fact that Abraham Lincoln was the first American dictator who destroyed the 10th Amendment. But we can't let details get in the way of good urban mythology...
Yes, King Abe I of the American Empire.
but... but... he fought to free the slaves! He's fights fo' freedumb!
Not saying Reagan was perfect, but those of us old enough to remember it well will recall he was dealing with a Democratically-controlled Congress who declared his budgets "dead on arrival."
The Dems even went so far one year as to rush Reagan's budget to the Capitol in an ambulance where they had a mock-doctor examine it and declare it DOA.
[P.S. he added $2 trillion in debt over 8 years; we won the cold war, and the country emerged from the 'double-dip' recession into the growth of the 90's. Obama has added over $6 trillion in debt over 4 years, and we're still mired in recession.]
To give Reagan some benefit of the doubt, he did try to go back to the gold standard. Volker talked him out of it. But Reagan was complicit in the $Trillion print-fest that began the endgame of the Federal Reserve system and those who loot by way of it.
Edit: @poolshark - Reagan is an excellent example of how a good man can never reform a system under dishonest money. Debt-backd fiat can ONLY result in a corrupt society and system.
I'm of the opinion that it was Hinckley's bullet that dissuaded him from pursuing a return to the gold standard.
One more Reagan comment. His leadership regarding the strategic defense initiative, while expensive, is what today's missile interception technology is based on.
Imagine if Kim Jung Un threats carried some weight because his missiles couldn't be shot down.
"One more Reagan comment. His leadership regarding the strategic defense initiative, while expensive, is what today's missile interception technology is based on."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome
ICBM's Beavis, not home-brew bottle rockets from Gaza.
pie in the sky dreams on a pressure cooker budget.
Careful...
Those pressure cookers can blow up in your face quite easily.
I think that bullet dissuaded him from doing a lot of good things.
The cold was always a war against the '3rd world' and it never ended, just re-branded. There was no peace dividend.
Ike warned us in 1961
And to the claim of 'winning' the Cold War. Has there ever been an Empire that hasn't collapsed itself from within? Noboby, no ideology, no external force has destroyed us - that honor falls square on the control freaks, criminals and a political system bought and paid for by MSM opiates and fiat heroin.
Technically couple of empires were conquered, like Byzantine empire.
But there was a lot of infighting before, which helped collapse.
If they would get couple more capable emperors, they may very well survive few hundreds years more.
Reagan the politician was a creation of and shill for G.E. starting in the 1950's.
The Boston manhunt is over, but some believe that there was other motivation behind the bombings. This video was posted by a US Army Colonel on April the 17th and sure as hell raises some very interesting questions as to motivation. Take a listen.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXAaRKg37dY
I'm skeptical of this whole thing by nature. However, this video raises zero questions, and provides nothing new that people reading this site haven't already thought of.
Alex Jones becomes more and more of a character everyday. Its like MTV for an alternative crowd.
For the record, I didn't junk you. Thanks for sharing the link.
The 'factions' at odds in the Gov are the hawks and doves. The hawks want this scenario played out, as it ruggedizes the system against DT (Domestic Terrorism) at the expense of a few lives, but will save hundreds or thousands in the future. The doves don't want ANY lives lost now.
The Feds had 'played' these guys, with the help if the Russian FSB. I elaborated on this in a post last night.
The POTUS is the one who has to make the gutsy call. The way Churchill did with the bombing of Coventry, and Truman did with Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Tough call to make. Sign of the times.
POTUS is TOLD what call to make by Valerie Jarett and others whom you will never see.
No, you are confused. "hawks and doves"?? Really??
There could be as many as half a dozens factions struggling for control right now. Do you understand just how gigantic our federal government is? There are over a dozen different intelligence agencies, many flavors of federal police (ATF, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, DEA, etc), dozens of private contractor operations (Chris Kyle had one, how did his assassination fit in?), four branches of he military, dozens of cabinet departments with their own agendas (HUD alone is a slush fund throwing off hundreds of billions worth of corruption)... Not to mention foreign powers like the Russians and Chinese, for whom Obama and the Communist Chicago crowd is almost certainly an agent. And forget about the financial interests, federal reserve, giant defense corporations, etc etc etc.
wake up! Shit is getting real.
Good video. I completely agree with his take: they had a right-wing, Timothy McVeigh type patsy lined up and in custody, alerted the media, and then aborted at the last second because their story was clearly not going to square up with the massive amount of picture and video information that was "in the wild". Since the media looks stupid most of the time, it was easy to blame them for the confusion.
Now the next question is: how do the Chechens fit in? Were they the actual perpetrators, or were they the "backup patsies", if you will?
Wheels within wheels.
Interesting point! But I never heard they had a "redneck" rounded up! I did see they had a Saudi kid and his track coach in the crosshairs, but mysteriously that felll thru and the kid was whisked away!
I think your point about the size of our Gov and how the dozens of billion dollar departments, could definitely be waring amongst each other at this point, is spot on!! Very little will make sense going forward I suspect!
I do know that there will be a "tea party" terrorist event very soon, and this will usher in a new era of domestic chaos, as the government employees make their push to destroy any obstacles that might stand in the way of unlimited funding of their salaries, pensions, and perks! The sequester was a wake up call for them, and they will certainly fight back against any group or ideology that doesn't provide unlimited spending on their agendas!!
Gold, I posted this earlier today on the 100 years of government controlling the economy:
Vote up! 7
Vote down! 0
We had a police action on a much smaller scale in the rather rural community which I live (appx 20,000 people max.). 50- 60 cops (including a 10 man roughly S.W.A.T) group dressed out in military uniforms, including steel Pots(helments) for the non soldier citizens--and at least 2 carting 12 gauge shotguns which were used at least 8 times as they never policed their brass and I have those shells. Callled "Barracade Projectiles" with the number #230OC stamped on them. The offence for this criminal was alleged domestic violence!! A large portion of the town was shut down like Boston----and this happened just 3 weeks ago. And now the stranger than fiction-- as the wife was not under his control told police he did not have a gun. His threating weopen-- drum roll please--a Box Cutter.
Mass. you got to outlaw those mighty weopens as shotguns and automatic weopens are no match for a box cutter.
A start of a pattern? Overwhelming use of force to impress upon the public who is in charge? Impressing the public that uprising are not possible? We have apparantly come a long way baby on the potention road to serfdom. Milestones
Good thing defense is such a minor percentage of the budget at over $650 billion. Get out there and break some moar windows you deadbeats!
Real US Defense Spending is about $1 trillion per year. The following reference explains and provides detailed spending:
While everyone knows that the defense budget is large -- even in the numbers that the public sees as the formally admitted figures by the Department of Defense -- the truth is that when one scratches beneath the bureaucratic veneer, national security spending is much larger, nearly double the amount US citizens are told.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/the-real-defense-budget/253327/
Yes...all of those billions in foreign aid flow right back to the military contractors..........
Yes, exactly. And years later we end up fighting a war against those we equipped.
Oh, I see how it works! Everybody is winner!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GkwIRbLw8
Everyones a Winner ...
Or against freedom fighters they are suppressing.
What portion of that 1T is actually defense...and not offense, empire building, democracy spreading by the global force for good?
base on the general 80/20 rule, uuuuuuh, 20 percent or less.
War isn't just 'good business'. It's a racket.
That's what you get when Big Biz and Big Banks have sex with Big Gov. A no holes barred affair. An unpleasant metaphor, but nothing when compared with what they do to the world.
+1 War is a racket!
The Iron Rule of the Oligarchy is simply doing what it has always done. All of this was quite predictable and in fact it was- in a much larger sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood, er, Brotherhood, of the FED(Fucking Evil Doers, Fiscally Eviscerating Douchebags, etc.)
+20
Good thing deficits don't matter
dear children?-- if by chance you find your parents suspicious of clandestine motives... or for that matter any and all relatives there is hope for their temporal psychotic atrophy?-- please do not hesitate to call 'Homeland Security' and feel free to talk openly and frankly to our, Big Brother's and Big Sister's, 24/7/365...
all calls are held in strick confidentiality, and archived permanently, yours truly room 101
c/c eric arthur blair [GO]d?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Security_Act
that is all...
Napadildo has your back.
We spend money on welfare?
who knew?
'Providing for the general welfare' takes on a whole new meaning in today's United States.
Alex, I'll take Big Numbers for $1000.
"What is $720 billion dollars?"
http://tinyurl.com/chk6s7l
Billons spent on Fatherland security and we still get nailed by home grown terrorists. Americans refuse to be terrorized.
They'll allow themselves to be lied to by government,
Robbed by big banks,
Poisoned by reckless industry,
Misled by Main Stream Media,
Distracted by social networking,
Denied by insurance companies,
Refused medical services by doctors,
Vilified by the 'faithful'
Pre-judged for their skin color
Divided by politicians, and
Hypnotized by Hollywood.
But terrorized, . . . no way.
"Those who give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin one of our Hard-Drinking, Pot-Smoking Terrorist to the Crown Founding Fathers..
because they love the handouts.
Quiz for you:
Who is the terrorist?
A) A group that spends $100 on a bomb and blows up a few people.
B) A group that spends $1000B of your money to defend against A, destroys the Constitution, kills hundreds of thousands, destroys millions of jobs, and enriches bankers.
Hey I live 600 miles from Boston and I've stayed inside since the bombing. Think I'm over-reacting? What if these guys put a pressure cooker onto a Scud? It could have been lights out!! So, remember do as your .gov says, allow them into your house to fistfuck you with a warrentless search, all in the name of safety.
There's plenty of good reasons to stay out of Massachusetts that don't have a thing to do with bombs.
Hey Buckaroo, stop posting and get to work on a sequel.
I wonder how many bostonion's are out buying a shotgun today now that the cops told them it's safe to come out from under their couch.
the ruminants are grazing on the boston common
What they're not sold out in MA? That figures.
all your GDP are belong to us.
This kind of government spending will take down the financial system as we know it. I seek refuge in gold
I am from your friendly godfatherhood, and I am here to help you throw over your government.
This seems like a convenient moment to post this:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A matter of time...
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote
themselves largesse from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates
promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result
that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always
followed by a dictatorship...
The average of the world's greatest civilisations has been two
hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:-
From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great
courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependence; from dependence back to bondage."
--Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813)--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are we getting there?
No, we are getting even beyond.
Bondage straight ahead.
Can you buy furred handcuffs with an EBT card?
indeed. cypriots showed apathy, bostonians showed complacency. bondage should not be too far away.
That's not the only dynamic in play.
The majority can also vote to take your property, your freedom, and your life.
Only an abject moron could support such a thing as government.
I think that dynamic is included in the dictatorship that emerges after the political filth have been given far too much power/control and most importantly: access to the treasury, which they abuse and steal from until it's bankrupt and destroyed.
As you say "only an abject moron could support such a thing as government".
Sadly, there are many abject morons in every society, all keen to sell their freedoms and independence to a criminal government.
% numbers would be even higher if you were to strip out nonsense imputed transactions...
And more gov't takeover is on the way.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/10007190/Boston-bombs-Obama-lulled-America-into-false-confidence-over-terror-threat.html
http://nation.foxnews.com/boston-bombers/2013/04/19/fbi-investigated-boston-terror-suspect-2-years-ago?intcmp=fly
Corporations have by and large taken over government, so the government 'take over' is a corporate take over. I think it's an important distinction to keep in mind.
Yes, our 'representatives' are merely Political Minions doing as The Corporatists tell them.
Please don't eat the Corn!
Effective Federal Funds Rate from 1954 to 2013:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/136924220/Effective-Federal-Funds-Rate-from-1954-to-2013-Federal-Reserve
We know, we know. We've hit the debt limit.
"It's suicide if we don't keep them (rates) low."
It is suicide if we do. Math always catches up.
According to Citi Research:
Summary
We are generally very hesitant to pay much attention to moves in the gold market. However, when large moves in this market are relatively coincident with large moves in TIPS breakeven levels – it bears watching. We think that this may be a symptom of a Fed that is appearing more likely to begin tapering QE earlier into the recovery than was previously expected – even if the initial Fed Funds hike date remains well in the future. We are positioned in Treasury curve steepeners to take advantage of this view.
I'd say the modern day gold rush is having an unexpected consequence.
Loss of confidence perhaps?
A matter of time...
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote
themselves largesse from the public treasury."
What form of government has been a PERMANENT form of government? The law of cycles brings everything down eventually.
The next form of government will be none at all.
Article is mistitled; try "100 Years of Bankers' Takeover of the Government" instead.
How about: "10,000 Years of a Mechanism of Theft, Death, and Destruction Available to Various Factions" ?
This story unfortunately overlooks the group that really has taken control. Vitali, Glattfelder and Battiston (2011) were able to prove a single entity has managed to gain control of 80% of the world's wealth and yet,as this group clearly controls the media, we get fed stories like this identifying Government as the badguys. There are much worse parasites draining the life out of us than politiicians...private bankers.
JFK talked about it pretty clearly
I guess they advanced their agenda a bit since then eh?
He paid with his life in order to warn us. Was it a wasted sacrifice? Sure hope not.
Please explain to me how all of this could occur without the existence of government.
Page 46, SECTION 6 - SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR
"ECONOMIC
Economic surrogates for war must meet two principal criteria. They must be "wasteful," in the common sense of the word, and they must operate outside the normal supply-demand system. A corollary that should be obvious is that the magnitude of the waste must be sufficient to meet the needs of a particular society. An economy as advanced and complex as our own requires the planned average annual destruction of not less than 10 percent of gross national product if it is effectively to fulfill its stabilizing function. When the mass of a balance wheel is inadequate to the power it is intended to control, its effect can be self- defeating, as with a runaway locomotive. The analogy, though crude, is especially apt for the American economy, as our record of cyclical depressions shows. All have taken place during periods of grossly inadequate military spending.
Those few economic conversion programs which by implication acknowledge the nonmilitary economic function of war (at least to some extent) tend to assume that so-called social-welfare expenditures will fill the vacuum created by the disappearance of military spending. When one considers the backlog of un- finished business---proposed but still unexecuted---in this field, the assumption seems plausible. Let us examine briefly the following list, which is more or less typical of general social welfare programs.
HEALTH. Drastic expansion of medical research, education, and training facilities; hospital and clinic construction; the general objective of complete government-guaranteed health care for all, at a level consistent with current developments in medical technology.
EDUCATION. The equivalent of the foregoing in teacher training; schools and libraries; the drastic upgrading of standards, with the general objective of making available for all an attainable educational goal equivalent to what is now considered a professional degree.
HOUSING. Clean, comfortable, safe, and spacious living space for all, at the level now enjoyed by about 15 percent of the population in this country (less in most others).
TRANSPORTATION. The establishment of a system of mass public transportation making it possible for all to travel to and from areas of work and recreation quickly, comfortably, and conveniently, and to travel privately for pleasure rather than necessity.
PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. The development and protection of water supplies, forests, parks, and other natural resources; the elimination of chemical and bacterial contaminants from air, water, and soil.
This is only a sampler of the more obvious domestic social welfare items, and we have listed it in a deliberately broad, perhaps extravagant, manner. In the past, such a vague and ambitious-sounding "program" would have been dismissed out of hand, without serious consideration; it would clearly have been, prima facie, far too costly, quite apart from its political implications. Our objective to it, on the other hand, could hardly be more contradictory. As an economic substitute for war, it is inadequate because it would be far too cheap.
If this seems paradoxical, it must be remembered that up to now all proposed social-welfare expenditures have had to be measured within the war economy, not as a replacement for it. The old slogan about a battleship or an ICBM
costing as much as x hospitals or y schools or z homes takes on a very different meaning if there are to be more battleships or ICBM's."
--
"Report from Iron Mountain", 1967, New York
The following is the rationale leading up-to the above conclusions,
Page 33, SECTION 5 - THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR
"As we have indicated, the preeminence of the concept of war as the principal organizing force in most societies has been insufficiently appreciated. This is also true of its extensive effects throughout the many nonmilitary activities of society. These effects are less apparent in complex industrial societies like our own than in primitive cultures, the activities of which can be more easily and fully comprehended.
We propose in this section to examine these nonmilitary, implied, and usually invisible functions of war, to the extent that they bear on the problems of transition to peace for our society. The military, or ostensible, function of the war system requires no elaboration; it serves simply to defend or advance the "national interest" by means of organized violence. It is often necessary for a national military establishment to create a need for its unique powers--to maintain the franchise, so to speak. And a healthy military apparatus requires "exercise," by whatever rationale seems expedient, to prevent its atrophy.
The nonmilitary functions of the war system are more basic. They exist not merely to justify themselves but to serve broader social purposes. If and when war is eliminated, the military functions it has served will end with it. But its nonmilitary functions will not. It is essential, therefore, that we understand their significance before we can reasonably expect to evaluate whatever institutions may be proposed to replace them.
ECONOMIC
The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with economic "waste." The term is pejorative, since it implies a failure of function. But no human activity can properly be considered wasteful if it achieves its contextual objective. The phrase "wasteful but necessary," applied not only to war expenditures but to most of the "unproductive" commercial activities of our society, is a contradiction in terms. "...The attacks that have since the time of Samuel's criticism of King Saul been leveled against military expenditures as waste may well have concealed or misunderstood the point that some kinds of waste may have a larger social utility."
In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social utility. It derives from the fact that the "wastefulness" of war production is exercised entirely outside the framework of the economy of supply and demand. As such, it provides the only critically large segment of the total economy that is subject to complete and arbitrary central control. If modern industrial societies can be defined as those which have developed the capacity to produce more than is required for their economic survival (regardless of the equities of distribution of goods within them), military spending can be said to furnish the only balance wheel with sufficient inertia to stabilize the advance of their economies. The fact that war is "wasteful" is what enables it to serve this function. And the faster the economy advances, the heavier this balance wheel must be.
This function is often viewed, oversimply, as a device for the control of surpluses. One writer on the subject puts it this way: "Why is war so wonderful? Because it creates artificial demand...the only kind of artificial demand, moreover, that does not raise any political issues: war, and only war, solves the problem of inventory." The reference here is to shooting war, but it applies equally to the general war economy as well. "It is generally agreed," concludes, more cautiously, the report of a panel set up by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, "that the greatly expanded public sector since World War II, resulting from heavy defense expenditures, has provided additional protection against depressions, since this sector is not responsive to con- traction in the private sector and has provided a sort of buffer or balance wheel in the economy."
The principal economic function of war, in our view, is that it provides just such a flywheel. It is not to be confused in function with the various forms of fiscal control, none of which directly engages vast numbers of control, none of which directly engages vast numbers of men and units of production. It is not to be confused with massive government expenditures in social welfare programs; once initiated, such programs normally become integral parts of the general economy and are no longer subject to arbitrary control.
But even in the context of the general civilian economy war cannot be considered wholly "wasteful." Without a long-established war economy, and without its frequent eruption into large-scale shooting war, most of the major industrial advances known to history, beginning with the development of iron, could never have taken place. Weapons technology structures the economy. According to the writer cited above, "Nothing is more ironic or revealing about our society than the fact that hugely destructive war is a very progressive force in it. ... War production is progressive because it is production that would not otherwise have taken place. (It is not so widely appreciated, for example, that the civilian standard of living rose during World War II.)" This is not "ironic or revealing," but essentially a simple statement of fact.
It should also be noted that the war production has a dependably stimulating effect outside itself. Far from constituting a "wasteful" drain on the economy, war spending, considered pragmatically, has been a consistently positive factor in the rise of gross national product and of individual productivity. A former Secretary of the Army has carefully phrased it for public consumption thus: "If there is, as I suspect there is, a direct relation between the stimulus of large defense spending and a substantially increased rate of growth of gross national product, it quite simply follows that defense spending per se might be countenanced on economic grounds alone [emphasis added] as a stimulator of the national metabolism." Actually, the fundamental nonmilitary utility of war in the economy is far more widely acknowledged than the scarcity of such affirmations as that quoted above would suggest.
But negatively phrased public recognitions of the importance of war to the general economy abound. The most familiar example is the effect of "peace threats" on the stock market, e.g., "Wall Street was shaken yesterday by news of an apparent peace feeler from North Vietnam, but swiftly recovered its composure after about an hour of sometimes indiscriminate selling." Savings banks solicit deposits with similar cautionary slogans, e.g., "If peace breaks out, will you be ready for it?" A more subtle case in point was the recent refusal of the Department of Defense to permit the West German government to substitute nonmilitary goods for unwanted armaments in its purchase commitments from the United States; the decisive consideration was that the German purchases should not affect the general (nonmilitary) economy. Other incidental examples are to be found in the pressures brought to bear on the Department when it announces plans to close down an obsolete facility (as a "wasteful" form of "waste"). and in the usual coordination of stepped-up military activities (as in Vietnam in 1965) with dangerously rising unemployment rates.
Although we do not imply that a substitute for war in the economy cannot be devised, no combination of techniques for controlling employment, production, and consumption has yet been tested that can remotely compare to it in effectiveness. It is, and has been, the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies."
To sum it up: Any build up of surpluses in almost any civilisation inevitably leads to war, hence, the wasteful social welfare programs are viewed as its substitute - a mere 10% of GDP down the toilet in order to secure a future without any (major) war(s).
Seems to be working in Europe.
Until it doesn't.
Okay, it's still important, but not any news. Why do you think crewed spaceflight (and I don't count orbital cargo delivery as such) ended so abruptly? But maybe you are right, and it's time for a reminder.
Because One World Order comes before any tangible crewed space exploration ala Star Trek.
It's inherent in the design of this Universe, it would seem.
If you're implying that space exploration is wasteful in the sense of resources, and that it would be a substitute for war - I guess it was deemed to be unfit due to the vast majority of peasants not being able to dream on that High of a Level, meaning, you can't control people with such Noble of Noblest of Dreams.
ha.. government spending on defense IS corporate welfare!! need to include it.. everyone acts like we are being sieged on a weekly basis and need to keep funding the charade
Secret World of Gold. For the non-Canadians.
https://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/the-secret-world-of-gol...
Smell like comunist snaps in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-ZlH5Zz-A
Why is defense spending excluded, and what constitutes "welfare" on this graph?
Parasites, bitchez.
BITCoin BITChez. Deficit spend that. I dare you ;-)
The Bitcoin Channel
We need to break through the looking glass with respect to all these issues!
We live in a Bizarro Mirror World, where everything we see appears backwards to the way it actually is.
Therefore, we need to profoundly change our political paradigms with respect to all issues, such as raised in this article.
The world is made out of the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies, operating organized robberies.
The paradoxical problems we primarily face today are that the powers of governments to rob, and to kill to back up their power to rob, have effectively been more than 99% privatized.
There is no way to fix that problem, but to go with it and through it!
We should start looking at all our political problems in ways which are backwards to what we used to do, because everything we perceive IS based on seeing things backwards to the ways that they really are.
That problem continues on through the most basic levels of the philosophy of science. That is important because progress, via paradigm changes in other sciences, have made our technologies become trillions of times more powerful. HOWEVER, our political science is almost totally still dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is all as backwards as it can possibly be to what is really happening.
The Century of the government take over of the economy has been directed by, and primarily benefitted, privatized interests, which have covertly taken over the government itself.
There is no doubt that we have seen "government" take over of the economy since 1913, through the Federal Reserve Board, and the Income Tax. HOWEVER, those were both the result of the application of the methods of organized crime, working covertly to take over the government, in order to PRIVATIZE the powers of government!
Again, we need to go with the flow of energy, because there is nothing else we can actually do! We almost totally understand energy systems backwards, on every level, because out basic concept of entropy is backwards.
We are understanding the organized systems of robbery operating through governments in profoundly backwards ways. The only genuine solutions must be based on first understanding we are looking at a Bizarro Mirror World in the mass media, and school systems, etc.!
Thus, I repeat, we NEED to go through that looking glass, rather than continue to steer backwards, because we fail to understand that everything we see in a mirror is backwards!
The Corporation, as an entity, needs to be outlawed. It is used only as a way to escape culpability and responsibility for its actions. If a Corporation were indeed a 'person,' it would at some point DIE.
It is the root of most problems. Why not utilize a Co-op as a model for business? Wouldn't this form resist the hierarchial problems and lessen the greed?
I've never seen any use for a Corporation....unless of course one wants its soul sucked dry.
http://cafrman.com/index.html
Put All of the Money on the TableOur government does not have a shortage of money. Contrary to what we are being told the government has more than enough money if all of the money earned was put on the table. We are told that we are 16 trillion dollars in debt and that we had a budget deficit of over 1.3 trillion dollars last year. What we are not being told is that the government earns trillions every year that is not being used to fund our government. This money taken off the table and is hidden in secret accounts.
The Federal Budget discloses the amount of money that Congress is willing to allocate to cover the cost of doing business, but it does not disclose how much money the government generates from all other sources. The solution is not to raise taxes or to cut services, the solution is to report all of the government's income and put all of that money on the table. Last year the government claims that they had a budget deficit of approximately 1.3 trillion dollars. If all of the government's revenue were disclosed we would discover that last year we had a surplus of nearly 3.7 trillion dollars. If Congress gave everyone a tax refund equal to what they paid the IRS last year we would still have a surplus of well over a trillion dollars. Do you think that by returning the surplus to the American people would jump start the economy? Do you think that it would stimulate employment? Do you think it would restore prosperity to America? This simple solution will not even be considered by the criminals that reign on Capitol Hill, unless we the people demand it. To verify what I have written is true, watch the following video and go to the following websites. The Comprehensive Annual Financial Reportshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pRPBKJQnyU& The Websites for the CAFR
http://www/cafrman.com
http://www.cafr1.com
even if these claims are true..it is NOT THEIR MONEY..it belongs to the people who are overpaying taxes. i find it difficult to comprehend the scale of the conspiracy you are suggesting.
how could anyone who knew this not use the information in a poltical campaign? why aren't there any "whistle blowers"? where is it invested/held?
At the end of WWII the rich bastards realized that the US was the only economy left in the world that had the potential to produce the things the rest of the world needed and more importantly had the where with all to buy stuff produced by the emerging economies when that time came. They also understood that there would need to be a safety net for the average joe before they started moving production out of the US because folks with no means to feed, clothe, or house themselves tend to go in for revolution.
The rich bastards came up with a brilliant plan, through their puppets in the government they instituted this plan of a social safety net that had the average joes paying for it themselves through taxation. Food stamps to provide food, subsidized housing, and the grand daddy of them all, social security that made sure the elderly and disabled had an income.
Then the rich bastards through their stooges in the media and entertainment industry sold the myths of the American dream and you have to have a job. They enticed the joes to leave the farm where they were pretty much self sufficient. The joes moved into cities, got jobs, lived stacked on top of one another, and consumed all the crap that the rich bastards were getting wealthy from the arbitrage between production cost and retail price.
Eventually that spread tightened to the point that the rich bastards decided to take their game to China. Don't look for anything to change, the rich bastards will never grow a conscience or lose their greed and the joes will never wake up, for as George Carlin so wisely said, "it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it". How quickly it became the Chinese dream.
Wake up folks we are being duped on a daily basis.
ok..i may have got it wrong here..i thought that because the USA won both world wars, it became the dominant country and its currency was the only one left that was trusted by all other countries, since the losing countries (including britain and france plus smaller satellite countries) were pretty much destroyed.
the US continued its hegemony in the free world (i.e. excluding the communist bloc of soviet satellites) by printing massive amounts of dollars and lending it to subservient countries, so that they could feed, heat and clothe themselves for the ten years after the end of the second world war, plus buy the plant and machinery necessary to rebuild infrastructure and factories.
were it not for the US, the "allies" would have starved or frozen to death.
so i am on the same page as you, i think..but..today...the US does not enjoy hegemony and it is printing dollars that the rest of the world doesn't want. it still carries a huge stick, so its nuclear gunboat diplomacy keeps its colonies of taiwan, south korea, germany and japan subservient with a military presence. but that is only for now.
i think it won't be too long before america is asked to leave its overseas colonies because the war finished almost 70 years ago and i detect more and more anti-americanism and pro-chinesism in each passing year; ranging from africa, through south america (but not india) and russia. which is s shame after the collapse of the soviet union opened a huge market that for whatever reason was left to fester in the hands of the russian mafia, despite the best efforts of its politicians, (including Putin).
what we are about to witness is the collapse of the chinese economy (because of famine and disease, combined with a realization that its health care provision cannot cope with pollution) and a resurgence in europe, which by now may have only one way to go (up). i see the measures being taken in europe not as austerity, but the elimination of waste in the public sector.
the system in the US is instead avoiding the issue by in effect, nationalizing the labor market, the banks, housing and healthcare and believing it isn't; thus creating a communist state like the old soviet in all but name.
anyways..just saying.
It seems to me the Welfare card is a red herring; a canard. I see spending less defense, but the trillions spent on all the wars past and present are not included in Government spending. Even the Defense budget isn't the financial drain of the military. It at best is only a fourth of the actual defense budget, which includes all defense spending for nuclear, hospital administration and all the Intelligence departments. God knows what else is being hidden in secret budgets and funded through drug profiting and money laundering.
A country like Norway has the most extensive social safety net on the planet and yet runs a budget surplus. Blaming the US problems on a social safety net is b.s. that promotes the entitlement of transnational corporations, the military/industrial complex, and the greed of international banks.
The US is a lie and always has been.
Define government. I'm thinking something this chartporn occludes.
are you including corporate welfare in your pretty graph?