Punishment isn’t vengeance or a primitive urge for retribution. It’s not suffering for the sake of suffering. It is the known consequence of certain criminal acts. There is due process that establishes levels of punishment, and due process that executes those punishments. If punishment were not enforced as promised, any deterrent effect that could accrue would be lost. There is no deterrence without punishment.
I’m not quite sure how this is relevant. But most people I know who oppose abortion do not do so in an attempt to punish people for having sex. I’m sure some do but IME the people who oppose abortion hold their position because they think killing people is bad and unborn fetuses are people. I support the right to choose and do not hold that view.
I’m not thinking this has anything to do with abortion, but rather with providing assistance for the new circumstances. “Here’s a medical card for the baby, and extra food for mother and child, and here’s some extra services at school so Mom can finish her degree” versus “you made a choice, so you can just drop out of school to take care of the kid, and no food stamps or child care assistance even though you can’t work while paying somebody else to watch junior.”
What exactly do you think the end result of your position is?
In many parts of the country if you want to work, you need a car. Indicating that if you can’t afford the responsibilities, then you need to go without something that is, in effect, an essential, is a punishment for being poor. Unless you have a proposal to drastically increase mass transit or alleviate the costs of vehicle registration, you are simply blaming the poor for being poor and trying to punish them for it. It’s just that simple.
And how does that benefit outcomes? It only encourages people who can’t afford mass transit to attempt to evade registration requirements even more.
Given the fact that America has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world (many of whom are in there for non-violent drug offenses), I have a sneaking suspicion that the primitive urge to cause people to suffer simply for the sake of suffering may have played a role in that.
Many conservatives propose abortion exceptions for rape. If it were truly about the personhood of the fetus and not just punishing the mother’s bad behavior, you wouldn’t see that.
If conservatives really want to minimize the number of abortions, they would accept that people are going to have sex regardless of whether we want them to or not, and provide comprehensive sex education and contraception.
Even if the government isn’t actively punishing someone, the failure to help those we deem “undeserving” can also be viewed as a form of punishment. If you can’t afford something you need (for example, food, housing, or healthcare) by paying for it with a job that you have in the private sector, you don’t deserve it. You should suffer the consequences of not being sufficiently ambitious.
For example, the hysterical opposition to healthcare reform in the U.S seems to be largely about making sure that we don’t help undeserving poor people. In fact, since we pay more per capita as a nation for worse outcomes, we are actually paying a premium just to satisfy this punitive urge.
If the government doesn’t give me $1M/year, then I am suffering from a form of punishment. It’s an odd invocation of newspeak to construe not punishing someone as a form of punishment. I note that the idea of punishment has drifted away from penalties for criminal or other behaviors, to a lack of entitlements.
Based on my limited experience with the justice system, when a court finds that you are responsible for wrong-doing and imposes a financial penalty/fine the guilty party is required to produce records of income and assets as well as a list of expenses like mortgage/rent, utilities, and prior financial obligations. The the difference between income and outgo is determined, with certain figures for things like food, and anything above and beyond that is considered available for making payments. The idea is that the guilty party will be able to continue to work and provide food and shelter for him/herself but aside from true essentials will be forking over their money to the party they are required to pay.
So, if a court determines that $50/week is sufficient for food that’s pretty much what you have to live on. If you insist on spending part of that for hookers and blow well, you’re either going to go hungry or have to find a soup kitchen.
If the court later finds out you attempted to hide income or assets then you’re charged with contempt of court and anything else they can throw at you.
well, yes - but I think far too often we made no attempt whatsoever at rehabilitation and indeed throw additional obstacles in the way of someone actually trying to reform him/herself.
My nephew got into a bad car accident. His medical bills hit 1,000,000 in the first couple months of his recovery. He is permanently disabled. His housing and care costs about $120,000 a year. Who the hell has coverage for that?
That’s the problem with “making the other party whole”. Sometimes you can’t. Do you have $15 million in liability coverage on your automobile? That’s how much it’s cost since his accident. He could easily live another 60 years - that’s another 7-8 million, assuming nothing else expensive happens to him. Do YOU have $25 million in liability insurance? I sure don’t. What I have covers the most likely and common accidents, but it won’t cover every possible contingency.
I don’t think the average person realizes just how effing expensive long-term care for someone can be. Unless your last name is something like “Gates” or “Zuckerberg” you really can’t cover any possible outcome of a car accident.
His case isn’t even the worst I have knowledge of, just the one I’m most familar with because he’s family.
Would it be fair to render one family destitute to help another? If making someone “whole” requires the payer’s children to forgo higher education and a chance at better lives for themselves is that fair? The kids in that scenario didn’t do anything wrong, why should they suffer?
We got rid of all the “institutions” - mostly for good reasons, because there were a lot of abuses and problems with the old system. Problem is, we never set up an alternative. That’s how we wound up with insane people living on sidewalks and in cardboard boxes.
Some people really do need to be housed and fed on the government dime. That doesn’t mean incredible luxury - a single-room apartment and perhaps a cafeteria for residents on the ground floor might be sufficient, with someone to look in on people as needed - some might need to be checked daily, some weekly, perhaps some only monthly.
Ideally you’d have a situation were the residents could have as much freedom as they could handle, but support for what they couldn’t deal with on their own. We do a shit job of this at present.
If you’re saying that people should be able to re-negotiate the repayment terms of their students loans due to financial hardship I can agree with that.
Failure to appear in court carries penalties on its own - that’s different than showing up and saying “I’m sorry, but I don’t even make $300 in a week, there’s no way I can pay $20,000 without a payment plan of some sort.” Of course, you have dickhead judges who don’t want to negotiate, I think there should be some obligation for the court to impose a payment structure the debtor is actually able to pay.
Why stop at “alleviating the cost of vehicle registration”? Maybe we shouldn’t charge for driving lessons, drivers’ licenses, liability insurance, gasoline, and tires.
Heck, go all out. Cars should be free for the poor. Otherwise, they are being punished.
Indeed. If you really want a discussion on this, you have to at least acknowledge that the other side believes that some ‘take it or leave it’ type practices are unduly harsh on the poor.
I’d be willing to go with the Federal poverty line for households. Arguably, people a bit above that could still be called “poor” for some purposes, but at least in my mind if you’re at the Fed poverty line or below are you definitely working with very few resources.
Or we could go with 150% of Federal poverty, particularly if you’re talking about expensive places like New York City or LA, but even in more moderately priced locales that still is a very tight budget.
I completely agree, except that cars should be free for everyone. Once self-driving vehicles becomes A Thing, each community should provide a fleet of them to service its members, charging usage by the kilometre (and either fines or loss of riding privileges for the slobs who leave their spilled coffee cups on the floor) based on one’s ability to pay. That gets rid of the need for lessons, licences and insurance right there.
Of course there will be things to work out, but with an expert system to do scheduling, and limited-range restrictions (such as, the car does not take you all the way to work, but to the nearest subway stop) the results will significantly improve our quality of life. Both for the poor and for everyone.
And technology can solve the library problem as well: no need for fines for failing to return an e-book, it simply disappears from your tablet when your time allowance is up. (And yes, this means that taxes would need to provide a basic tablet for poor families, but information access is becoming as much a need in our world as food and shelter are today.)
I believe those are the kinds of solutions we need to be coming up with for society. They may cost more up-front than trying to repair the current broken system, but in the long-run they will be cheaper and improve the quality of life for us all.
That doesn’t fix the problem, it just moves it up one level. Now instead of poor people getting shut out of the library system because they lost a book or dropped it in the bath, they’re getting shut out of the library system because they lost their tablet or dropped it in the bath.
No, it brings back responsibility for their actions. That kind of carelessness means they also can’t play Angry Birds or post on Facebook for the four weeks it takes to repair/replace their tablet. That is the direct opposite of having “no consequences” for a lost library book today.
If we say that there should be one car for every three Americans, and the USA has a population of 300 million, and each self-driving car costs $20,000 apiece, that’s $2 trillion.