- Near unprecedented unemployment after (mis)handling of a global pandemic https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/11/unemployment-rose-higher-in-three-m

- Near unprecedented unemployment after (mis)handling of a global pandemic https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/11/unemployment-rose-higher-in-three-months-of-covid-19-than-it-did-in-two-years-of-the-great-recession/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/11/unemploymen... - K shaped recovery driving near unprecedented acceleration of wealth inequality https://www.businessinsider.com/k-shaped-recovery-definition https://www.businessinsider.com/k-shaped-recovery-definition - Raging mental health crisis bearing down on an already overwhelmed medical system https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/16/well/mental-health-crisis-america-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/16/well/mental-h... - Raging drug crisis also raging on concurrently https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/ane/2017/00000125/00000005/art00036 https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/ane/2017/00000125/... - Clogged supply chain resulting in unprecedented amounts of vulnerable goods https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supply-chain-issues-cargo-theft/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supply-chain-issues-cargo-theft... - I could keep going, but all of this and you think... protests caused this? You saying "Manhattan was ransacked" is hilarious, I live in Brooklyn, next stop after Barclay Center, where global news networks were painting a picture of a warzone using an overturned car... Almost every person who marched at Barclay went past my apartment and you know what the damage was? The police removed the trash cans on my street in anticipation, so for a good two weeks afterwards there was trash everywhere as people just dumped it in the street instead. Oh yeah, and some businesses took way too long removing their plywood defenses despite 0 signs they were actually tested. Actually one cool story literally steps from that burning car was those same protestors stopping would-be rioters from breaking into stores... - Seriously, we need to drop this narrative that the iron fist of the law is what would stop this. So many people trying to run interference by pointing the finger at "defund the police" chants... is the only thing stopping you from stealing from a train the idea the police might catch you? Criminals are criminals, they don't respect the rule of law so you're not going to get them by sprinkling more agents of the law to crack down on people. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011128710382263?journalCode=cadc https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001112871038226... (Note the author here, Gary Kleck, this is someone who's practically a patron saint of tough-on-crime proponents after his work on DGU. And even his study can't seriously back the claim.) - Now you can try jailing all the criminals of course, and just keep growing your jails until you've exhausted the sources of crime... But even with the harshest prosecutors, eventually these people need to leave. If our prisons were about reform it'd be one thing, but crime is rampant is our prison system. So all you're doing is sticking criminals in an incubator while screwing over the communities they're from and setting the next generation of criminals in motion...