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At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

latimes.com

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Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#141

Post by muse900 »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #37
dabbledash wrote: post #16

Not commenting on the specific numbers, but maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that a year of college costs less than food, housing, healthcare, security, and programs combined?

As a non-American, what I find mostly surprising are these two things: 1) that a society that mostly believes that a system of private businesses competing in a free market is the be all and end all of optimal resource allocation end up having the most expensive health care, higher education and apparently, prison system in the world; that this fact does not trigger more thought and discussion; 2) that despite incarc…

Good point.

You have to think the scale though. US is not the same as e.g Sweden and can't be the same. The amount of benefits you get in Scandi countries or Europe in general against the US are massive. At the same time you have to think that the US is a country of 330m people compared to an average EU country of 10-20m people.

In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. The appointment queues go up to years for a simple thing in London. (I had a meniscus tear and they appointed me to see an orthopaedic in a year after I was diagnosed. Just to see him. While its understandable that emergency issues are getting bumped up the ladder, mine which was a non-emergency felt like a bummer when I heard the orthopaedic wont see me for a whole year just to see at which stage I am at. That includes doing some scans to see my stage which the GP won't know unless he is some kind of magician. Yes again he can check if the leg is hammered around the knee to bump up how of an emergency it is.)

Generally speaking I think the main issue is that the US is such a large country that can't work the same as EU countries. That goes for everything, from benefits, to working schedules to prison systems etc.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#142

Post by verytrivial »

bko wrote: post #129
icedchocolate wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Healthcare, that’s not true. The US spends more on health care per capita than many systems with free healthcare (Australia, UK, Canada). You pay the most and receive the least. Like the previous commenter, I am increasingly surprised that this system is still supported, instead of one that costs less and provides more (e.g. the fact that states bargain with drug companies individually, rather than federally, mea…

> I am increasingly surprised that this system is still supported, instead of one that costs less and provides more So you're for decreasing the amount of public spending on health care in the US?

The point is the correlation between spend and value to the citizenry has become detached in the US. The market is working great if you consider the value produced and extracted in dollar terms because that's what markets are good at. But is this what the citizenry want or deserve?

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#143

Post by f-securus »

wallace_f wrote: post #79
CraigJPerry wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not just a "no true Scotsman" argument? "there is no free market but they are oligopols" There used to be 12 private prison companies in 2000 but it appears there are only 3 now. The start of the journey was privatization of prisons. This is where that path has currently led. It is what it is, ergo free market didn't work?

The problem is private prisons openly lobby, and secretly collude, with the government to increase their profits. This is also why insulin is expensive (the discoverers and patent holders made their patents freely available long ago). It's regulations which keep insulin, and other drugs, protected from competition and therefore can be expensive... Really, there are endless stories about this. The gov vs private debat…

The problem with private prisons is they have a conflict of interest. Do they work to improve the lives of the incarcerated and lower recidivism? No! That would lower their bottom line as they get paid per person.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#144

Post by dagw »

fxj wrote: post #69
fxj wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is a compelling argument against gouvernment intervention, then why does it work so much better in europe where all three sectors are state-owned? The best example is switzerland, where the costs are a fraction of the costs in the U.S ( and which is not a "socialist" country at all).

Top pharmaceutical companies with revenue greater than $10 billion Rank Company 2016 USD billions 1 Johnson & Johnson NYSE: JNJ 71.89 2 Roche SIX: ROG 50.11 3 Pfizer NYSE: PFE 52.82 4 Novartis NYSE: NVS 48.52 Number 2 and Number 4 are swiss companies.

A lot of J&J's revenue comes from non-pharmaceutical businesses. If you rank by pharmaceutical R&D spending instead Roche comes out ahead of J&J. If you rank by revenue from pharmaceutical sales Pfizer is nr 1 with Novartis and Roche 2 & 3

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#145

Post by jjoonathan »

pnutjam wrote: post #119
chrisco255 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is sort of debatable. The U.S. is diverse and there's a wide variety of viewpoints. It's hard to fight against political inertia at the Federal level. Policies in motion tend to stay in motion. There is demand for reform but there's almost an equal demand for status quo. Cutting financial fees is one thing. Healthcare is a capital AND labor intensive industry. Cutting fees carelessly could cause mass…

There's no equal demand for status quo in the US. There is a political system that lets voices be amplified enough for those with vested interests to pretend they have an equal demand. big difference

The "hang 'em high" crowd is not a tiny minority. They're the supermajority voice on the conservative side of the aisle and you'll even see them represented elsewhere in this comments section.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#146

Post by obrisintor »

nikhizzle wrote: post #8

To put this in perspective, the US has the highest incarceration rate of any country. I have trouble finding good numbers on recidivism, but anecdotally (based on sparse evidence) it seems like the US approach to incarceration is not working. Another fact supporting this is that the racial distribution in US prisons is uncorrelated with that of the general population. Specifically, 37% of inmates are African American…

Why look at the racial distribution? The gender divide is much larger. 93.2% of all of them are men. Are men incarcerated for lessor cause than women?

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#147

Post by wallace_f »

f-securus wrote: post #143
wallace_f wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is private prisons openly lobby, and secretly collude, with the government to increase their profits. This is also why insulin is expensive (the discoverers and patent holders made their patents freely available long ago). It's regulations which keep insulin, and other drugs, protected from competition and therefore can be expensive... Really, there are endless stories about this. The gov vs private debat…

The problem with private prisons is they have a conflict of interest. Do they work to improve the lives of the incarcerated and lower recidivism? No! That would lower their bottom line as they get paid per person.

That's a market failure. I'm not pro-privatization of prisons.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#148

Post by cgriswald »

andy_ppp wrote: post #88
tasuki wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the crime rate end up reduced when you pay people to commit crime? AshishBora's point was that crime rate overall would increase, as there's a clear financial incentive to start committing crime. Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

No, it's only going to happen for all the people who would become criminals. Would you become a criminal if I paid you $75k for life afterwards, assuming the court found you were in poverty and needed the money (probably most criminals). I for one know I absolutely would not commit crimes no matter how much money you paid me.

I’m struggling to see how your argument isn’t that people are born criminals.

If you pay people to commit crime, you get more crime. That’s irrespective of any bizarre immunity you personally think you have to the incentives.

Imagine being poor and having a child. You are such a law-abiding fellow that you are going to watch your child struggle every day and maybe go hungry some nights when you could do one simple crime to end that struggle forever and whose only negative consequence is having a black mark on an abstract “criminal record”? And you’re going to do this despite massive pressure from family, culture, any woman in your life, and the normalization of such actions?

I think I could make a strong argument that in the case being discussed not committing a crime is at best foolish and at worst deeply immoral.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#149

Post by golergka »

benj111 wrote: post #138
golergka wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s about providing the best standard of life to as many individuals as possible Which is also a nice thing to have but definitely not the main objective for people on "my" political side. Main argument for privatising stuff is not being optimal or not: it's the principle of making the government, which is the only entity with monopoly on violence, as weak and as small as possible. Think about it as a microkernel…

Would you support some kind of quasi governmental organisation to administer prisons? Independent but answerable to the government, (like the Fed). That would seem to address small govt concerns whilst avoiding the problems of the free market.

I don't know enough about american prison system to have an informed opinion. My argument was about the principle and objectives I (or, generally speaking, a fiscal conservative) base my opinions on, not prisons in particular.

Re: At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

#150

Post by fxj »

lentil_soup wrote: post #133
fxj wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is called gesetzliche Krankenversicherung in Germany https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetzliche_Krankenversicherun... and is 100% state-controlled.

it is not 100% state-controlled. A lot of the fees and cost are indeed state-controlled as in set by the state, but the actual insurance companies, clinics, etc are private.

It is a little bit more complicated: The budget of the "gesetzliche Krankenkasse" is set by the gouvernment. So yes, it is not owned by the state, but in reality it is completely controlled by the state. There are, however, private insurance companies in germany which are free to do what they want. Everybody under a certain salary limit has to be insured by the "gesetzliche" and only if they earn more than a certain amount they can leave it and have a private insurance or none at all. There are many discussions whether this system should be changed to a state onwed only system, because it would be more efficient.

http://www.spiegel.de/thema/gesundheitsreform_deutschland/

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