The poor ye will always have with you, so, what the hell: "The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators."

Comments

[Fec]

Great post. Additionally, we should pay more attention to criminalization of the young, who are already disenfranchised by the economy.

[Bill Bush]

As Peter Tosh famously called it, "the shitstem".

[Collards]

The rising tide is only lifting some boats. Young people do not see the same path to prosperity their parents had. Housing prices will not go up enough in the next 30 for their home equity lines to pay for Suburbans and vacations in the tropics.

Once young people adjust their expectations things should level out.

[SAL LEONE]

The best part is that the government rather spend money building jails then help the youth. We are becoming a society of jails, prisons.

The math is simple, you got a guy stealing a steak to eat and gets arrested. The magistrate places a $500 secure bond. The person spends about 5 days in jail at a cost of $60.00 per day, total $300 for a $7.00 steak. The county keeps giving money to the sheriff office but for some reason the sheriff office has not learned that money is tight, the sheriff wants more guards, gets them, result taxes up.
We need to try another approach of helping people out, its cheaper then jails.

[Bill Yaner]

Guys steal steaks?

[Ishmael]

Somehow stealing to get by sounds a lot more risky than gaining funds through fees and usurous interest. So who are the real risk takers here?

[SAL LEONE]

Hi Bill
You got a point, will change guy out for person,lol. The term guy is just that a term.

[Andrew Brod]

I don't think that was the point.

For me, what stood out in Sal's comment is that he sure isn't the Republican he claims to be. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But he's going to have a hard time ever getting through a Republican primary doing things like talking about alternatives to prison.

The real Republicans in Raleigh are on top of this, however, eliminating state funding of such programs as Greensboro-based Summit House, which provides a lower-cost alternative to incarceration for women convicted of nonviolent crimes. No real conservative wants to encourage that sort of thing.

[bubba]

Yes, of course.

If we would only raise taxes and increase spending, none of these bad things would happen. If only those eeeeeeevil conservatives would see the light on these issues, we could move on to the things that REALLY matter, like making sure same sex marriage becomes the law of the land, and that contraception becomes available at no cost to the user, and that fracking becomes so regulated and so expensive that it will never be used.

[Andrew Brod]

Yes, it would be nice if conservatives could see the light on such issues as saving the taxpayers money. But oh well.