by From Ken Zimmerman Again, history can teach us. Looking back to the post-World War I period, the soul-searchingly pejorative “merchants of death” rhetoric was in vogue. One of the most outspoken critics of war profiteering was Marine Major General Smedley Butler, a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who had spent his 34-year career in uniform dutifully fighting various colonial wars at the turn of the 20th century. His highly publicized 1935 speech/short book “War is a Racket” spoke bluntly in terms worth remembering today. “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A
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from Ken Zimmerman
Again, history can teach us. Looking back to the post-World War I period, the soul-searchingly pejorative “merchants of death” rhetoric was in vogue. One of the most outspoken critics of war profiteering was Marine Major General Smedley Butler, a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who had spent his 34-year career in uniform dutifully fighting various colonial wars at the turn of the 20th century. His highly publicized 1935 speech/short book “War is a Racket” spoke bluntly in terms worth remembering today.
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”
For anyone other than a person like General Butler this might be written off as just wild conspiracy theorizing. But he had seen war, its creation and its aftermath close-up for decades. He was in a position to understand why it existed and continued. We can, in my view transfer Butler’s insights to inequality. Like war, “profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives” and like war “It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.” Out of inequality, like war a few people make huge fortunes. Simply put, if you want to know the “causes” of inequality, look to these “few people” and their “huge profits.” Remove these factors and inequality will be greatly reduced if not eliminated. Of course, this means we can’t keep capitalism. It’s primary goals are profit and monopoly. The propaganda about capitalism emphasizes competition but capitalists pursue monopoly and through monopoly great profit. Accepting no responsibility for the negative impacts of their pursuit.
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/04/23/median-income-us-uk-france-and-germany-50-year-trends/#comments