EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Following the terrorist attacks in Pakistan and Kenya in 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry commented that the fight against extremism and violence was not simply about identifying and removing specific terrorists from the streets, but depended on providing “economic opportunities to marginalized, at-risk youth.” [1] Taken out of context, this statement makes perfect sense—marginalized youth, with a lot of energy and a lack of a career, family, or other balancing factor in their lives, would logically be more susceptible to extremist messages.
The problem comes when the provision of economic opportunities is placed in the middle of the European welfare state, turning these “opportunities” into an ideal environment for the development of radicalism. In contrast to what is traditionally called the “American Dream” – the idea that a person, relying on freedom, entrepreneurship and work, can build a better life with their own efforts, the “European Dream” tells us that economic opportunities can come ready-made through the seizure of resources from other people, often regardless of labor, knowledge and skills.
We can point to numerous problems with the welfare state as an institution, but two in particular have a serious impact on the issue of terrorism – youth crime and the segregation of immigrant communities.
Youth crime
The link between welfare and the first factor has been extensively studied and proven. For example, a 1990 study by the US Department of Health and Human Services found that a 50% increase in child support and food stamps led to a 117% increase in crime among young blacks [2]. The NAACP (the oldest and most powerful organization for the protection of the interests of African-Americans) itself wrote in a 1994 report that “easy access to welfare and free services is a major contributing factor to the crime problems we face today” [3]. The reasons for this are many – from encouraging single-parent families, to the lack of working role models, to the creation of a “the world owes me” mentality.
Youth crime is known to be strongly linked to jihadism, due to the active recruitment of followers through the prison system. The British authorities are trying to stop this process by relocating and isolating the most active recruiters to different wings and cells - the Telegraph newspaper reports that the number of Muslims in prisons has doubled in a decade to 12,000, with at least 100 of them known as radical Islamists [4]. The situation is similar in French prisons, as we can judge from the story of the Paris terrorist Omar Ismail Mostefai, who went behind bars for petty crimes and came out a convinced jihadist [5]. In a 2003 testimony to the US Senate, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole emphasized that radical groups' recruitment in prisons is a major problem, due to the specific environment that allows for complete isolation from the positive influences of the outside world and the advantages of belonging to a network of cooperation and protection in places of imprisonment created by the groups. [6]
Segregation of immigrant communities
The second factor is more difficult to study and track, but equally important. Namely, the availability of a lavish amount of social benefits, stimulating exclusion from the surrounding society and allowing material comfort without adaptation and cooperation with neighbors, colleagues and potential employers. Under normal market conditions, we all depend on how much our behavior meets generally accepted norms of decency. I will have a very hard time staying at work if I had been on a “Sharia patrol” on the streets of London the night before and my colleagues found out. Social benefits give us the luxury of not considering others while living off their money.
Let’s look at the data on where European Islamic terrorists come from – as the graph shows, from the continent’s largest welfare states. Denmark and Belgium send the highest number of fighters per capita, even though both countries spend more than 30% of their GDP on welfare. The Gatestone Institute reports that more than 30 Danish jihadists collected $55,000 in unemployment benefits while fighting for ISIS alone. In France, in March this year, welfare payments were suspended for 290 identified jihadists. Last November, Austrian police arrested 13 jihadists who tried to finance their trip to Syria with their welfare. [7] Virtually across the continent, taxpayers are supporting people who not only despise them but are willing to kill.
The situation with welfare and marginalization is even more unpleasant given the wave of refugees from the Middle East. The combination of a rigid labor market and a strong incentive not to work coming from the welfare state is the perfect storm to deepen the problems we see. It is no coincidence that Nobel laureate in economics Milton Friedman emphasizes the dangerous combination of free migration and welfare – it is one thing to have free migration to jobs, quite another to welfare.
The second is a trap set, both for Europeans and for people trying to find a better life on the continent. Host countries not only welcome refugees with a closed labor market, but also with a serious cash incentive for them not to try to break through the barriers and difficulties to the workplace. A sure recipe for segregation, youth crime and hence radicalism.
[1] http://editorials.voa.gov/content/kerry-on-counterterrorism/1762867.html
[2] M. Anne Hill and June O’Neill, “Underclass Behaviors in the United States: Measurement and Analysis of Determinants,” Barcuch College, City University of New York, March 1990
[3] John L. Wright, Marge Green, and Leroy Warren, Jr., “An Assessment of Crime in Maryland Today,” Maryland State Conference of Branches, NAACP, February 1994, “Executive Summary,” p. 7.
[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10823517/Its-easy-to-recruit-extremists-in-prison-notorious-convert-claims.html
[5] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/15/paris-attacker-omar-ismail-mostefai
[6] https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/terrorist-recruitment-in-prisons-and-the-recent-arrests-related-to-guantanamo-bay-detainees
[7] http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5856/welfare-jihad
Regarding social assistance, I have said it a long time ago that I can maintain up to 2-3% unemployment at the global level for centuries to come. In short, the UN Economic Department said that one of the measures is to reduce working hours in order to create more jobs. This was said in the 1930s by John Maynard Keynes, that in 2030 the world will face "technological unemployment" and people will have to work 15 hours a week to maintain high levels of employment in the workforce.
It's simple - ban on offshore companies, luxury tax, etc. for the purpose of budget surpluses that are invested through transparent public procurement for precisely defined things to avoid 3 planetary catastrophes, and for socially useful things to maintain unemployment at 2-3% (if necessary, the streets will be swept and washed twice and stones will be taken out of the river and cones will be collected from the forest so that there will be work and not social assistance)
The truth is that bankers and other financial speculators took tens and some even hundreds of millions but they brought the world into a financial catastrophe and the banks were saved with taxpayers' money and I just wrote about this in comment No. 1,2 here - http://www.investor.bg/analizi/262/a/zashto-bankerite-zameniat-wall-street-sys-silicievata-dolina-206659/
Simply put, we need a minimum wage and a cap (100% tax) on wages and profits because
– in 2012, the difference in income between the average top manager and his average worker in the US increased more than ninefold – from 30 times in the late 1970s to 277 times today
– average hourly wages from 1975 to 2010 grew 10 times less than productivity
– between 1979 and 2007, the incomes of the middle 60% rose by less than 40% while inflation was 186%
These are elementary economic laws to keep the wheel of the economy turning, that is, to have constant growth and finite demand, but the current system based on continuous growth is wrong and a new system is needed - a resource-based and planned ecological economy.
For the Parisian terrorist Omar Ismail Mostefai, who goes behind bars for petty crimes and comes out a convinced jihadist, the topic is big and I cannot understand how a person can believe that if he kills an infidel he will go to heaven with 7 women, etc. i.e. it must be clearly stated that no one has the right to kill, even to protect national borders and the police, and as self-defense is again a separate specific topic.