Welfare vs. Warfare States

We have no butter, but I ask you - would you rather have guns or butter? Readiness will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.
- Hermann Georing

After World War II, the choice was clear: fight anti-democratic Communism by building up your military, or fight Communism by providing for your people, and so making radical Communism unnecessary. Advocates of the second plan are generally known as Social Democrats or Socialists, depending on which country you go to.

The US chose the former, Europe chose the latter. And the results are plain to see. America is the only industrialized country with no national health care; guaranteed leave for families and pregnant women, the right to general strike, and a million other things besides. We do have the highest poverty rate, however, and run up the biggest deficits. In part this is due to

In France, or Germany, or Sweden, if you lose your job, you'll be OK for quite some time. It won't be great, of course, but you'll manage. That’s how they can sustain unemployment rates of 10% without massive unrest and violence.

In America, people who lose their $100,000-a-year jobs are living in cardboard boxes a week later. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but there are plenty of people in this country for whom it is not so far-fetched.

The EU is gearing up to oppose us as a counterbalance to influence in the world, and they've gotten so large and powerful that they just might be able to do that. With the US economy heading towards a major crisis, the Third Way might become the only one.