Earlier quoted context omitted.
> stealing in "shoplifting gangs" This isn't petty theft. Petty theft is an individual shoplifting, for instance. > That's a commie answer. No, that's a capitalist answer. You're comically giving the communist answer, that a business is a collection of people, and that hurting it hurts them all. Shoplifting is bad for society as a whole, but (usually) doesn't directly hurt individuals. >> If the stock market dropped…
> This isn't petty theft. Petty theft is an individual shoplifting, for instance. If any are ever caught they get treated as individual shoplifters. Magically the crime statistics never show gang shoplifting. > You're comically giving the communist answer, that a business is a collection of people, and that hurting it hurts them all. The communist answer is that it isn't theft because of how you categorize those you…
Thousands of users are killing themselves with the drugs. This is a self-harm issue, not a violent crime issue. It's only crime because we're criminalized possession, and that hasn't curbed use. It's still illegal to possess the drugs these folks are using, and they have roughly the same level of access to these illegal drugs inside of prison.
Prison simply isn't the answer to solving drug use. Drug use is also highly correlated with poverty. Some of the addicts on the street became homeless because of their addiction, but some of the addicts on the streets became addicts after becoming homeless.
The biggest driver of the heroin epidemic was perdue. The people responsible got off without punishment. You're proposing punishing their victims.
> The only thing you can trust from these cities is that they're dishonest about their stats. If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?
This is a conspiracy theory.
> And free school leads to the nonsense we have now with subsidized loans where a critical-studies degree costs $250k.
No, you get that nonsense when the government subsidized a loan program.
> In every other country it's hidden in taxes to some degree, usually a lot, if it's available at all.
This argument isn't supported by the data. The data shows that total spending on healthcare in the US is considerably higher.
In the US the cost is also hidden by your employer, who's paying thousands of dollars a month for your insurance, which you also need to pay for, where you also need to cover a deductible, co-pays, out-of-network costs, ambulance costs, etc.
These things are all covered directly by your taxes in other countries. I'm currently living in Japan, and the cost of healthcare here is considerably cheaper, and my overall tax rate isn't much higher than it was when I was living in the US.
> Our poorest are richer than the median in many countries.
We're the richest country in the world. We need to compare ourselves to similar countries, not to third world countries. Folks in impoverished areas in the US can live in third-world conditions. This is extremely out of the norm when compared against our peers.
> Crime on the other hand is more of a social thing than a poverty thing.
Again, the data doesn't support this. There's a very strong correlation between poverty and crime.
> You know what's a good social program? Building a place to put druggies before thousands of them die on the street in the middle of a city.
Yeah, this is the point of safe-use sites, which have counselors to perform outreach, doctors to ensure they don't die, and facilities to ensure they have somewhere to throw away needles and use the bathroom. They're extremely effective at combating overdose deaths and at reducing needles on the street.
As mentioned before, it's just as easy to get these drugs in prison as it is to get them on the street, so unless you're proposing detox and treatment centers, I don't see what your good social program suggestion is.