I’m amazed that no one has mentioned an obvious improvement that would help balance state budgets. Since the prison system is significant cost to the state governments, simply eliminate prisons and let the large agribusinesses and meatpackers both employ and care for the prisoners/employees…
I don’t think it’s an entirely fair assessment, there. I mean, I’m sure quite a few idiots (and sociopaths themselves) just love the idea of pound-me-in-the-ass prison. That’ll teach’um !
I’m also sure that, all other things being equal, quite a few people would prefer it if US prisons were more humane. However, to make them so it would take more cameras, more guards, better guard screening, more space so that cons are not twelve to a cell…
Any buck spent on helping the prison situation is a dollar not spent on renovating a school, or buying a library book, or filling a pothole on the interstate, or fuelling a city bus, etc. And even if that money’s going entirely to waste, then “tax cut” will always win by a landslide against “better prisons”. Hell, “tax cut” would win against “guaranteed everlasting Eden on Earth for everyone except you”.
It’s not that people are voting against cons, it’s that people are voting for themselves.
But then who do we get to do all the dangerous, back-breaking, evil-smelling and underpaid work at the people-packing plants?
Pointing out negative traits to those who have them and are unaware of them being negative traits, is not only a positive act, it is a public duty.
Bingo. Imagine the entire criminal justice system transformed into a revenue collection service for the state. It’s bad enough when random small towns create speedtraps or big cities use parking enforcement like that. Or those juvenile court judges in PA that were getting kickbacks from a private, for-profit, prison for each juvenile they sent there.
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Yes. And I was considering adding at the end of my post “but that’s not a problem in the US because there are already much stronger incitements in place.”
Thing is, that’s not what he’s doing. Complaining about some people on a message board (and not even directly to them) changes nothing. The sole purpose is some sort of emotional release.
Heck, even if he was complaining to the right people, chances are that wouldn’t help. Because complaining rarely works. It just makes people defensive.
And I love how we’ve made moral progress, but that we’re all still morally depraved. So I guess that, before, we weren’t even human.
It’s called The Butterfly Effect. He doesn’t have to convince everyone; he just has to affect one person who is in a position to do something about it, and pointing out society’s faults on a world-wide accessible messageboard is as good a way as any of doing it.
Read some history; that of the conquest and colonization of the rest of the world by Europe or the wars of conquest by people like the Romans or the Mongols for example. Back then Hitler and the Nazis wouldn’t have been demonized like they are these days, because they wouldn’t have stood out as unusual.
Yes, we have made moral progress and are still morally depraved; because historically we were downright demonically evil. Entire civilizations were for all intents and purposes almost totally devoted to spreading and imposing evil. And generally they were doing so to other groups that were already just as evil, but of a different flavor.
That was meant as outrageous hyperbole. I figured the Chinese guards would make that clear. Which is the outrageous hyperbole smiley? 
:eek: ?
During tha depression of the 30’s, there was little or no ‘giveaways’, My father had to dig ditches to earn enough to pay for a roof over our head. We did get some food, we didn’t get food stamps,if you didn’t like the food you were given…too bad! We learned to do without a lot of things. Now, if people were willing to work the fields, and do restaurant work that the illegals are now doing and then get a small supplement it would be a good way to teach the value of a dollar.A man I knew…(I worked as a maid for his family) had 3 degrees all above average in Architecture, he couldn’t get a job , so worked for Sears as a stock boy, then worked his way up to head china buyer for the whole country Sears stores. That was how people were in those days, now they want to start out with enormous salaries.
My father was respected because he worked hard to get ahead,as many of my generation also did. Now we pay outrages wages to sports people or actors etc. and the people who really help the country get ahead, get little in porportion to what they get.
A person thinks nothing of paying huge amounts of money to go to a concert, a sports event etc, but thinks it is terrible to pay $50.00 more dollars a year to go to educating the children and other social programs, and of course the monies are not well spent by our government, and that is also a reason.
No they don’t. I’d say it was more like they are seeing people get extraordinary pay-packets and want some sort of reasonable recognition of their own work. The Chief Of Police shouldn’t be getting a pay-hike just because he has made the force more efficient. That would be part of his job.
This makes me wonder what the difference is between the minimum wage now, and what someone earned in past years. In the 50’s my husband was given a raise to $5.00 per hour and our neighbors thought we were rich!. I worked in a dime store in the 40’s and got $12.00 a week. Of course bread was 10 cents a loaf,My rent was $9.00 a week. What is the ratio now? No one in my area can rent the same size apartment for less than $600.00 a month and some more, depending on which town in the area one lives. My parents bought a farm in 1938 with 180 acres with barn, chicken coop and 3 bedroom house for $800.00.
I worked with some people in the 80’s who complained about their salaries and when they were absent no one knew the difference, but they complained about their wages. I asked them why they didn’t look for a job that paid more, and their reply was"We can’t find any other job that will".
In earlier times entertainers were some of the least paid people.Ask some of the sports players of the 40’s and 50’s what they were paid! They worked a year for what some get per game now!
Yup. And now their pay is a reflection of how much money is sloshing around in these areas nowadays. Still, think of all those poor agents who’d be out of work, if there wasn’t so much dosh being bandied about!
I would rather fire the illegal workers, prosecute the illegal employers, and hire Americans to work the fields legally. Higher food prices in this case are a good thing, because they will be directly tied to higher wages for working-class Americans who will be recirculating everything they earn into the economy.
As has been mentioned before, the vast majority of migrant farm workers are paid via a piecework system, rather than minimum wage. They get paid $X for every basket of apples or whatnot, minus $Y for damaged goods. So hard working undocumented aliens will be making a lot more money than lazy American citizens. The employer doesn’t care about the illegal status of his workers, and certainly doesn’t pay the illegals less than the legals, because that would leave a paper trail the proved he knew they were illegal.
As for the salary for professional athletes, what does that have to do with the price of eggs? In the old days athletes got paid for shit, and the owners got all the profits. Well, nowadays a lot of the profits go to the athletes. Why should the owners get everything? Professional sports brings in a lot more money in 2010 than it did in 1910. If the owners want to pay 1910 salaries, they are certainly free to do so, nobody holds a gun to their heads and forces them to pay superstars millions. But of course, your typical professional athlete isn’t a superstar, and will have a pretty short career in the first place. And so what?
In any case, it strikes me as bizarre that some people think literal no-kidding slave labor is essential, here in 2010. That we have work that needs to be done, and no one wants to do it, and therefore we need to force people to do it at gunpoint, anything else–like improving pay or working conditions or increasing mechanization–is unthinkable.
The salary of professional atheletes,and any entertainment person tells a lot about our culture. There are so many people who do not want to work for their money, but,play a game, sing, strum a guitar etc… Too many want to get rich by winning the lotterey or play some game. The people who cannot afford to pay the prices to see the entertainers seem to think, if they can put it on their credit card they can afford it. Paying for unnecessary things like toys, and entertainment on credit is a bad idea. That is why so many are losing their homes etc. now Paul wants to be paid back and Peter is out of money. If one spends more than one makes or even what they make one will never get ahead. We have lived in this country for too long on false economy. One only owns what is paid for. It is so much easier to struggle a little when one is young that to wonder what will happen now, if they are unable to collect from Social Security.
According to what I have read and heard through the media, there are many, many people who are so far in debt because of living beyond their means;one of the reasons we are in a recession.Some of the same people used their money for unnecessary things and now cannot afford even to stay in their homes. Many foreclosures and bankruptcies, are the result of living beyond one’s means.
Sooner or later it effects the economy,when one can no longer charge things the need for new merchandise becomes a problem and people are then laid off work.
If one works for a dollar and hour and pays $9.00 a week for rent, there is no difference if he earns $100.00 and hour and pays $900.00 a week for rent. My numbers may be wrong but the ratio to what one earns or what one pays for things makes a big difference. Numbers are just that.
We always lived under our income, raised 7 children and have no worries about the economy, we are not rich, but we saved for the time in our lives that we knew we would be unable to work.
Yes, but what does that have to do with high salaries for athletes?
The athletes don’t want to work for their money, is that what you’re saying? That since they’re playing a game, or strumming a guitar, they should be paid less?
Athletes get paid a lot because they generate a lot of money. Ticket sales, advertising, merchandise, there’s a lot of money. And since the athletes are the ones generating the money, they get paid a lot. If the owners could pay the athletes nothing, they would. But then how do they attract the superstar athletes that generate so much money? If you offer Michael Jordan $9.00/hour, he’ll look around to all the other owners and see if any of them are willing to pay him more. And when one owner offers $10/hr, another offers $15, then another offers $20, and another offers $100 and another offers $1000 and another offers $1,000,000. Because they believe that they’ll make more money with Michael Jordan on their team, even after paying him millions of dollars.
What does this have to do with the problem that kids today are lazy and spoiled? And what does this have to do with illegal immigrants? Are the illegal immigrants lazy and spoiled? Are migrant farm workers making too much money? Should migrant farm workers be replaced by slaves? What does this have to do with the topic?
I see it going something like this:
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Replace illegal immigrants with prisoners.
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Count backwards from 20.
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Cue “them convicts took our jobs!” from the idiocracy.
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Don’t profit.
Assumptions like this are the reason that reasoned discussion of the illegal immigrant problem is so difficult.
Illegal immigrants typically do not work for less than minimum wage, except in agriculture, which is specifically exempted from federal minimum wage laws.
Employers very rarely hire illegals “under the table”, which is why it was such a huge story when Wal*Mart was busted for it.
As somebody already pointed out, underpaying a worker is prima facie evidence that the employer knows the worker is undocumented.
It’s not that illegal immigrants work for less than minimum wage. It’s that they do jobs few others will do for minimum wage.
Skilled tradesmen, for example. Experienced drywall installers do not expect to make $7.25 an hour, but you can hire a Mexican guy with 20 years’ experience to do it for $7.25 an hour, just as long as you don’t ask him too many questions.
Exactly. Employers don’t have to hire workers under the table (unless they want to get around the tax laws). The law itself provides them a huge loophole, the “good faith” loophole. All they have to show is that the employee presented documents that looked legal, and ta-da! you’re covered.