I hadn't read that article on the prison stats and unemployment, but the logic of it had immediately come to me after a bit of ballpark mental number-crunching. I suppose the other thing that made me think of it is that I was just reading an article on the number of prisoners who were working on the firelines in California (several thousand), being paid something like a buck an hour. The same prisoners (mostly drug offenders) usually do things like working on trail construction through parks, etc... So, there you go... you just have to find some way to create a bunch of imbecilic laws so that there will be law offenders, toss them in the clinker, then "pay" them much less than the minimum wage to do grunt work that used to employ unskilled laborers... Hmmmm.... this is actually starting to sound rather like the kinds of things that go on in all those despicable communist countries... :0)
As for the War on Drugs. Yeah, well, it's a ridiculous waste of money and I doubt it does much to stop the flow. Better to spend the bucks INSIDE the U.S., improving education and the job outlook for young people so that they don't have to face a hopeless future. But, you know how it is, waste the bucks on incarcerating people for selling grass... and even for selling good ole American made bongs.... Yup, better to jail the bong-makers and import cheaper bongs from China.. lol It's all getting kinda old and pretty sad IMO. |
