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Without the war on drugs this would happen: 1. Half the law enforcement, out of the job. 2. Half the lawyers and the judges, out of the job. 3. Half the priv
by powertower 15y ago
Without the war on drugs this would happen:
1. Half the law enforcement, out of the job.
2. Half the lawyers and the judges, out of the job.
3. Half the privatized prison system, out of the job.
4. A few million other jobs that support and/or depend on the above, done away with.
It's pointless to even try this in the USA... No one is going to be willing to give up the ongoing and ever-giving spoils of the war on drugs.
- melling 15y agoDo you have actual facts to support your statements that you can reference? It's fine to make a case for one side or the other but I find it really doesn't help either side if we just make up facts because it takes time to sort them all out.
- dlokshin 15y agoFederal government spent $15B on drug enforcement, prevention, etc. in 2010. Clearly lots of jobs.
- melling 15y agoOnce again, where is this number coming from? Can we at least go to Wikipedia or some other source and reference them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Costs_to_taxpayers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Costs_to_taxpayers Also, a lot of jobs does not equal half the jobs.
- sunchild 15y agoReplace "out of the job" with "back on jobs that actually further the best interests of the public", and your post starts to make sense.
- powertower 15y agoAll those other in-demand jobs that are available right now, that just can't meet the supply? Let see ... there is the $3/hour farm hand shortage going around in a few states. Or do you mean all the new jobs that are going to be created, you know, just-like-that? For which they'll be re-trained, just-like-that? For which they'll get the same pay/benefits, just-like-that?
- mjdwitt 15y agoRather, I think he means that the US judicial system is currently swamped. Therefore, if drug cases no longer required court time, the load on the system could be brought down to a more manageable level.
- sunchild 15y agoThe premise of the original post in this thread is fatally flawed – the livelihood of law enforcement, corrections officers, judges, lawyers, and everyone else does not depend on putting personal drug users in prison. They can keep their jobs, and put their talents to use on matters that actually benefit the public's best interests.
- powertower 15y agoYou can only transfer so many people into other duties (on the same job) before you reach a point where people are now just getting paid to sit and do nothing. So the real question is how many people are employed by the war-on-drugs, and how many of them can be re-asigned, and how willing will they be to let this happen.
- jacoblyles 15y agoBastiat FTW: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#disbanding_troops http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html#disbanding_troops