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An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

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Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#231

Post by vitalyan1234 »

kube-system wrote: post #220
vitalyan1234 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a mother stealing food from a chain store oh come on now, how can that Dickensian scenario happen in a country where even a McJob pays, per hour , more than enough to feed for a week?

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. If you run the math, there's not many places in the US that a mother can raise a child on a minimum wage job without relying heavily on assistance.

don't move the goalpost. "raising" is expensive, sure, but that was not what I replied to, I replied to the image you tried to evoke with "mother stealing food from a chain store", and I'm telling you that it doesn't make any sense. US wages - even the minimum wage - are incredibly high compared to your very low prices of food. "share of household income spent on food" is a common metric, and it is very low in the US.

"mother stealing food from a chain store" is what people far removed from poverty think poor people do.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#232

Post by testing22321 »

silisili wrote: post #139

Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this. My father lives in the middle of nowhere in a perfectly safe area, yet still at least once or twice a year someone steals the phone or power lines leading to outages. I live in a similar area in another state and it's nearly unheard of. I wish they'd up the severity of these crimes - people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else just to make drug money are…

> Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this

The link between poverty and crime has been a stab listed for centuries

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#233

Post by testing22321 »

MisterTea wrote: post #226
FatherOfCurses wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mystery to me why the scrap metal industry doesn't have more scrutiny given how much copper is stolen.

Years ago we were cleaning out our shop and had to scrap a lot of metal. At the scrap yard in Brooklyn there was a separate line for copper and aluminum vs iron and steel which was mostly a bulk dump job. Seemed like half of the line were homeless and destitute people. Many had shopping carts full of various pieces of aluminum and whatever, lots of AC condensers and copper tubing. There was a couple ahead of me, skin…

Should we police the scrap yards, or help the fellow citizens who are “skinny, toothless, ragged and smelled of BO and urine”

What a place to live.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#234

Post by Ylpertnodi »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #229
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upping the severity of punishment will be as effective as the war on drugs was, that is to say not one bit. You'd need to reduce poverty to prevent this kind of thing.

This is not true, it is a false analogy. The war on drugs has been a definite failure, but we can see the effects of lower punishment for low hanging crimes in the decriminalization of shoplifting in california.

Isn't the cali-decriminalization of shoplifting designed to avoid people going to jail.....for the health care they'll receive?

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#236

Post by stronglikedan »

pjc50 wrote: post #201
silisili wrote: post #139

Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this. My father lives in the middle of nowhere in a perfectly safe area, yet still at least once or twice a year someone steals the phone or power lines leading to outages. I live in a similar area in another state and it's nearly unheard of. I wish they'd up the severity of these crimes - people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else just to make drug money are…

> people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else Cable theft is particularly destructive because it's so value-destroying. $100k of cable destroyed for a maximum profit of $1k. Or in this particularly egregious UK case, a multimillion pound artwork destroyed for £1,500 scrap value: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/may/17/henry-m... I also think that stereotypes make people underestimate rural…

> a multimillion pound artwork destroyed for £1,500 scrap value

I think a more apt comparison would be the retail value of the metal compared to the scrap value, since the "multimillion" is more of a subjective artistic value. Egregious nonetheless.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#237

Post by fred_is_fred »

silisili wrote: post #139

Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this. My father lives in the middle of nowhere in a perfectly safe area, yet still at least once or twice a year someone steals the phone or power lines leading to outages. I live in a similar area in another state and it's nearly unheard of. I wish they'd up the severity of these crimes - people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else just to make drug money are…

"Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this."

Meth.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#238

Post by [deleted] »

vitalyan1234 wrote: post #231
kube-system wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. If you run the math, there's not many places in the US that a mother can raise a child on a minimum wage job without relying heavily on assistance.

don't move the goalpost. "raising" is expensive, sure, but that was not what I replied to, I replied to the image you tried to evoke with "mother stealing food from a chain store", and I'm telling you that it doesn't make any sense. US wages - even the minimum wage - are incredibly high compared to your very low prices of food. "share of household income spent on food" is a common metric, and it is very low in the US…

[deleted]

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#239

Post by kube-system »

vitalyan1234 wrote: post #231
kube-system wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. If you run the math, there's not many places in the US that a mother can raise a child on a minimum wage job without relying heavily on assistance.

don't move the goalpost. "raising" is expensive, sure, but that was not what I replied to, I replied to the image you tried to evoke with "mother stealing food from a chain store", and I'm telling you that it doesn't make any sense. US wages - even the minimum wage - are incredibly high compared to your very low prices of food. "share of household income spent on food" is a common metric, and it is very low in the US…

Moving the goalpost? Every household has expenses other than food.

People who resort to theft don't allocate the theft proportionally to each of their expense categories. They do it based on opportunity. If you're $50 short at the end of the month, you can't retroactively take it out of the rent check you sent at the beginning of the month.

> "mother stealing food from a chain store" is what people far removed from poverty think poor people do.

Rich neighborhoods don't lock up the baby formula.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#240

Post by Symbiote »

general1465 wrote: post #110
aeonik wrote: post #15

Working backwards from clues in the article, thief maybe stole 200-400 ft of wire. Assuming between 3-1/8″ - 6-1/8″ diameter. Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value. $70k-$100k to repair... Absurd.

The bigger absurdity is when thief mistakes bunch of fiber for copper wires and then whole countries can go offline https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12985082

In the Russian far east, where it's not practical to bury cables, many roadside bars have small signs showing a piece of fibre cable and how it's worthless for scrap.
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