Mickey Kaus remains the most interesting journalist straddling media Old and New -- and, once again, ties combatting terrorism with welfare reform:
As described by Johnson, the fitful but increasing German efforts at assimilating Muslims take the form of eliminating their ability to cry "discrimination" and restricting immigration. The mystery left unanswered is why Germany doesn't take the simpler, more obvious step -- allowing immigration, but denying immigrants the welfare benefits that support an unassimilated opposition culture.
No, I'm not just linking this because it helps support my argument that a poorer Europe won't be able to afford its preference to accomodate terror.
Well, maybe a little.
They can't deny immigrants those welfare benefits. It would violate the anti-discrimination clauses of both the German constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.
They can't even scale back the nanny state for everybody. That too would be a violation of the German constitution and the European Treaty on Economic and Social Rights. Problem is that these texts have made a social democratic policy into a constitutional and even a human right. Those rights are not yet as strong as classic human rights (like freedom of speech), but there is undoubtedly a so-called stand-still provision. At the very least, the current levels of welfare benefits are inviolable.
So Germany (and most other European countries) are stuck with a serious problem, the solution of which has been virtually outlawed. The welfare system keeps unemployement comparatively high, because it drives out low-paid jobs, at least in the official economy (the tax component on low wages is too high and in some cases living on the dole pays more than exercising the low-paid jobs that still exist). Europe is in fact subsidizing people not to work.
Most immigrants in Europe belong to the category of people that would perform low-paid jobs, because Europe doesn't attract many well-educated, business-minded immigrants (the prospects for getting rich using your talents are not as good as in the US, another result of European tax policies). These people have no choice but to live on the dole or work in the unofficial economy or worse yet, become criminals.
All the Euro's and lefties all shout "we must find the root casues!", shit, all they need to do is look in the mirror. Why can't they figure out that some guy is going to have a real hard time planning terror operations when he has to go to a JOB, and not wait for the big fat check from the government!
