What public policies should be sought to address conditions that foster crime?

No, sweetie, it is your immature behavior and your constant name-calling. i have never judged a single person in my life based solely on their views. I am open-minded and i try not to close my mind and to learn- so long as the other person(s) involved act like adults.

i was gonna block you but i find you WAY too entertaining (for now anyways, until you stop amuzing me)... btw, how old are you?

 

For a quick example, Christamas products. An overwhelming amount of christmas products are manufactured in China, often with child slaves. We would rather be able to buy 10 tacky yard decorations made in China, than buy one American made one, for the same amount of money. Our demand for cheap products have allowed corporations such as Wal-Mart to flourish, even though most of their employees do not earn a living wage and are not eligible for benefits. A company cannot treat its employees fairly if it is only earning 10% or less on its sales. Executive greed does take a large toll on the system. Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with that. I just think that consumer spending is on a much larger scale. The Wal-Mart phenomena is happening in every city in this country!
Wal-Mart is just one easy example, though. In richmond, we have a decent burger chain called Bullets, that serves real hamburgers like you would make at home. They cost about $3.50 or so. If they were busy, they would be able to provide their employees with a decent salary and benefits. Unfortunately, they are not busy enough to do so, because of Wendy's and McDonalds $0.99 menu. How can they compete with that, with the high value we place on cheap products, often despite quality! Also, at $0.99 for a burger, how much can they be making? Even though they are busy, they still cannot aford to pay decent wages or provide decent benefits because their profit margin is so low.
I have a terrible headach right now, I hope this is making sense.

 

basically, I think consumer spending has more of an effect because of the vast amount of consumers, compared to the relatively small number of executives. CVS/pharmacy, for example, has one CEO, but over 5000 stores! Imagine how many transactions the average store does per day, times 5000!

If CVS (for arguments sake only, I am not making any comment about CVS pricing policies, etc) sells 6 boxes of Tylenol per day, but decides to cut the price on Tylenol from $5/box to $4/box to try and compete with wal-mart, that is only a $6 loss per store per day. Now multiply that by 5000 stores! That is $30,000 per day in lost profit! It doesn't take too many days before that will equal and surpass the CEO salary, and that is only on one product.
Did that help clarify my point?

 

People making 5 bucks an hour can only afford places like wal-mart, etc...

 

I heard a story on NPR recently that compared Wal~Mart and Costco. Evidently, Costco manages to provide similarly low prices while paying their workers much better than Wal~Mart.

 

So? Does everyone have a costco near them? Can they afford the membership and buying everything in bulk? I live in an apartment, and beieve me, there is no room for me to by anything in bulk.

It's good that they pay their employees more, and a person should always support a place like that if they can. But my point is, not all people can.

 

If you live alone, then Costco probably isn't the best option. However, it probably works well for most families.

The membership fee isn't really that high. (A lot of low-income people seem to find money for cable TV.) Also, Wal~Mart sells lots of (A) junk and (B) trendy middle-class items like cappuchino makers. Here, I have to agree with Photogra1 about consumer greed.

 

But where, other than Wal-Mart can you buy guns and beer at the same time? It's convenience, my friend, you cannot discount consumer laziness.

 

Look, i was raised in a low class family in Flint, MI. I have 8 brothers and sisters. There was no costco in flint, and my family was not lazy consumers. They had so save money wherever they could.

Costco has 327 locations in the US.
Wal-mart has 1,450 (supercenters only, not including Sam's and the regular walmart stores)

And regardless if costco is cheaper, not much else is.

Consumer laziness is far from the reason so many people are getting less than liveable wages. In turn fostering crime.

 

Take my parents, for example. My parents aren't rich, but they are professionals (an accountant and a state prosecutor) and they make enough money that they have little financial trouble. They live in a small town called Hickory Creek about 10 miles from Lewisville Texas. Lewisville has a wide variety of shops and businesses, from huge corporations to local small businesses. Hickory creek has little more than a few convenience stores, a supermarket, and a Wal Mart. My parents could easily afford to shop in Lewisville, but most of the time they just go to Wal-Mart so they can just get everything in one place and save themselves a few miles transit.

Consumer laziness applies to everyone, because everyone wants a little convenience. Like when I feel like picking up a few beers, I could drive into Denton for a store that sells a wide variety of microbrewed beer, or I could just walk to the convenience store down the street to a store with a very limited selection and higher prices. Being a man who appreciates good beer, I often drive into Denton to procure my delicious malt beverages, but it is not uncommon for me to just say screw it and walk down to the convenience store to buy the regular stuff.

Consumer laziness is a big factor in modern business, although I'm not sure if it contributes any more or less to low wages than penny-pinching.

My guess at the real reason for poor wages is that there are far fewer jobs in this country than people seeking those jobs. This gives employers an advantage and employees will accept lower wages because jobs are harder to find. In an environmet where there are more jobs than job seekers, the employees are at the advantage, and can demand better wages if there is noone lining up to take their place.

So how do we create more jobs? I don't know. But a good start would be buying American products where possible, growing the export markets for American goods, supporting smaller businesses when possible, and cutting down on the outsourcing of jobs.

 

Just like Marx said.

 

Like I said before, Japan has been very successful with putting a cap on their executives, so that if an exec wants to make more money they have to pay their employees more money. And the crime and homelessness in Japan is far lss than in the US. And I doubt that any consumers are less lazy there than here.

 

At the risk of irritating Balbus, I'm going to post a link to someone else's work, since I don't claim to have conducted any of my own first hand research on the subject. Be forewarned that the following article is written from an explicitly Christian perspective, which might offend the stridently irreligious:

https://www.ccda.org/Library/Just%20Generosity.pdf

While the author's proposal for expanding health insurance coverage is woefully vague, I think the article makes some good points. I'd be interested in others' thoughts.

 

Posting a link is not a problem unless thats ALL you post.

 

Interesting and informative link, Huck. Tks.

 

No. The reason people dislike you here has nothing to do with your political views. It has to do with the fact that you act like an immature douchebag with every post you make.

How old are you anyway? I'm guessing between 11 and 14.

 

Ditto, it isn't about your political views at all.

It has a little bit more to do with John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Check my signature below

 

Douchebag! Now there's an insult I haven't heard since I was ... 14!

Actually, though, I agree that this Karl guy is extremely obnoxious.

 

Let everyone in every state who has a clean record carry a gun for self-defense, and don't maliciously prosecute people who act in self defense and shoot/kill their attacker. When it is dangerous to commit crimes against people, only then will criminals abandon crime as a means to get what they want.

Apart from that, I don't think there is much that society can do to stop people from being criminals. Some people have it in their nature to want -- and take -- more than they are entitled to. Some people have it in their nature to just be evil toward others, to have rotted souls. I don't pretend that social outreach programs and bull like that will turn a bad soul good.

Economic opportunity? Everyone has economic opportunity. They just have to work for it. For example, I don't make a fortune, but if I really wanted to get off my ass, take some courses and get into a more lucrative field than I'm in, I sure as hell could do it. It's about motivation and drive, and in some ways I have it, and in others I don't. It's the same with everyone -- it's about choosing how you want to live.

-Jeffrey

 

Japan is currently in a lonnnnng-running recession, their economy is a mess (beyond that understanding which I've gotten from the news, I have no details) and they are suffering an inexplicable explosion of bizarre violent crime that is unheralded in their society -- except for maybe when they were a psychotic feudal system where the rich had hired killers working for them, or when they invaded other countries a la the Rape of Nanking... bayonetting babies, beheading contests, burying people to the waist and having dogs tear at them. Yes, the Japanese did this to the mainland Chinese. The Japanese -- even modern Japanese -- are experiencing their own serious problems, and are no one to model our society after.

-Jeffrey