re: Dennis Prager on why poverty does NOT cause crime

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It's about as good a means as I can think of to opening the door to many.

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you really think so?

for instance, I think getting a job at mcdonalds, while admirable and a good starting point, will not yield an opportunity for the majority of people. Even if you get promoted, you won't be making very much money and they basically expect you to quit.

sure its better than waiting for life to hand you everything but its not really an opportunity for most.

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sure its better than waiting for life to hand you everything but its not really an opportunity for most.

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Certainly not for those with the sort of defeatist attitude you allude to above going in.

I assure you, an exceptional worker at McDonalds will be afforded many more opportunities than one who simply tells themselves it's a dead end job and does little more than show up every day.

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Even just in the late 80's, I'm sure you're aware of drug sentencing laws that were passed re crack which very clearly were done with the intent of incarcerating large numbers of blacks vs whites and their cocaine habits.

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I'm against the War on Drugs(tm) - the mental model used for crack was heroin, while the mental model for powder cocaine was upper middle class marijuana - having said that, there was a rational relationship to the violence associated with the activity.

Upper middle class doctors and lawyers (and Hollywood and music types, powder cocaine's universe) were not the risk for violence that, say, heroin trafficking and fights over drug turf. It was when large, wholesale distribution of cocaine that became associated with violence that at least the trafficking was targeted most severely by the federal authorities (i.e. Miami during the 1980s).

On the other hand, you have a point - cocaine is cocaine and the effect of treating crack like heroin resulted, particularly at the street dealer level and the megapossession ("with intent") in disparate treatment between powder cocaine users/dealers and crack user/dealers.

My counterpoint to that is that crystal meth is definitely following the crack model - despite a very high ratio of white dealers/users (although blacks have embraced the drug, to a certain degree, as a stimulant to replace crack, just as white stimulant users gravitated to crack during the latter decade of its heyday).

So, I believe it is more of a class targeting, with race as a reverse proxy in the case of cocaine (just my $0.02).

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That is an incredibly glib/facile way of stating it

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What I said was absolutely accurate and fair. I CAN'T go back in time - if I could, I'd be ruler of the Universe.

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Let's call it what it actually was: state-sponsored terror against an entire group of citizens.

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Meh. There was no genocide. There was no extermination. There wasn't even ethnic cleansing (although barriers were fairly well maintained) - it was an apartheid, legal, instutional, no question. It was barbaric. But the authorities tried actively to root out the terror elements and there was steady progress through much of the 20th Century towards Civil Rights reform.

Was it perfect? No. Am I proud of the way my country handled race relations during the entire period in question? No. Am I going to sit around and agonize about shite I didn't participate in and cannot change? No.

Do I want to talk about solutions going forward? Yes. Do you? I'm not certain. It seems that you and others want to dwell on festering wounds, pick at scabs and put off the healing process as long as possible on principle.

Hopefully, I'm wrong about that.

I wish conservatives would abandon their commonly-held trope that people could succeed if they would only try really hard. That's going to work for some people in some situations...but the problem isn't the PEOPLE. The problem is the SYSTEM. It's a system that ENCOURAGES dependence, poverty, and hopelessness -- not by design, but that's what happens.

Poor people are not all "lazy." That's a bullshite argument. Some of them are, but many are simply behaving rationally in terms of maximizing what they have. They are avoiding the risky behavior of taking chances that could potentially yield great success or, alternatively, great failure. Some people will take these risks, and that's fine. But you're not going to get people to do so en masse by telling them to just work harder -- the system is the problem. Change the institution, and people will change their calculations.

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You can't get into college? Learn a trade.

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Yep. When I retired a couple of years ago from the railroad, there were guys making over a hundred grand a year riding trains. Qualifications - high school diploma.

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for instance, I think getting a job at mcdonalds, while admirable and a good starting point, will not yield an opportunity for the majority of people. Even if you get promoted, you won't be making very much money and they basically expect you to quit.

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yeah....this isn't true at all

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I assure you, an exceptional worker at McDonalds will be afforded many more opportunities than one who simply tells themselves it's a dead end job and does little more than show up every day.

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I definitely would agree but the reality is the opportunities are likely going to just be more of the same. Not a real chance to get ahead.

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there are some stunning stats about mcdonalds (and walmart, for that matter) hiring managers who started at low-levels with the company

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yes there are. And I have admiration for them, but those are the exception not the rule. Most people work at mcdonalds or wal-mart for very short periods of time b.c the job fricking sucks.

What I would say is that most people on this board if they were put in a situation where they were struck to zero could make a stunning comeback. But what you have to realize is everyone is not you. Some people are stupid. Some people are lazy. Some people are stupid and lazy. Some people had bad role models and have no idea what hard work can yield.

Those people see lack of opportunity, maybe wrongfully so, but they are the ones that turn to crime. It appears to be an easier path to getting ahead.

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i seent it

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His autocorrect is a virulent antisemite.

Wow slow, thought you were smarter than that

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i'm lucky that my big learning experience failure was an international sports website that i lost only like a grand (and time). lesson learned (don't attempt to start a website with 14 investors from various countries solely b/c you know 1/3 of them from the internet)

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What doesn't kill you makes you stronger (except tuberculosis.)