Quote:
Originally Posted by Relentless
Not true. It costs a fortune to put so many people in prison for selling pot. We could legalize it and tax it. That would bring in some revenue, and create a few jobs, but it won't create enough good jobs for all the people who used to make money illegally selling pot at a black market premium. However, when you factor in the cost of prisons, it is CHEAPER to do it even if we have to subsidize their standard of living when they are out of prison.
We waste more money on prisons, emergency care for the uninsured and backward systems like that than we will ever spend on food stamps for poor people. It is a net loss financially to imprison dim people and treat them badly for being dim. It actually costs less to give them food, medications, shelter, clothing and the other basics without requiring them to commit a crime first.
We should be looking objectively at what is cost effective, efficient and sustainable... rather than emotionally cutting off our own nose to spite our face by making sure nobody gets more than they earn, no matter how dim they are or how little they get.  |
Not sure how we jumped on the topic of drug legalization and prisons, but I agree with you there is no reason to keep people in prison for harmless "offenses." I agree with you legalizing of drugs would actually be a good step in the right direction.
You are making it sound like "dim" people are hopeless. I don't think most are. The system they are in taught them helplessness, so we just need to reverse that.
For example, this may not be ideal solution, but each receipient of government aid should have to do free community service... there is no reason why a skilled person like yourself should waste a day helping at a food pantry, when some unemployment "dim" person could perform that same job equally well...
another upside to this is it would filter out the people that are not so "dim", but are lazy instead... those lazy people would likely conclude that working x hours per week to get some government benefits isn't worthwhile, and so hopefully they would realize that they would be better off getting a real job...