Originally posted by Wajoma
We should pay people not to commit crimes against us?
In countries with social welfare systems who do you think features disproportionally high in crime stats? The gainfully employed or those poor folk we give money to so they wont commit crimes against us?
At least the Mafia are up front about asking for 'protection money'.
there would be few that would doubt that meaningful employment is the best way to keep people occupied and therefore feeling valued and therefore, As a result, they tend to then commit less crime. But as employment is being denied to many ( oh I know, ho hum, I can hear the hollow sounding prattle of the unconvinced from here ) it is best to minimize the damage as much as we can.
Of course, logically, those with little income, no self worth and time on their hands ( not to mention, looked down upon by the self righteous, I did it, so can you lot ) will still commit the most crime.
The best answer is to create meaningful jobs, there are many ways to do that and dropping the minimum wage is the most stupid. all that means is that even though you work 2 jobs you still can not afford to live and will therefore have a higher propensity to commit crime. If you cannot earn it, steal it???.
I am not trying to justify crime here, I am trying to say that not helping those at the bottom only makes things worse.
I cannot quote where I read it but recently I read that the countries that have the highest wealth gap also have the highest crime rate. This decreased proportionally as one dropped, so did the other.
the reality,as I see it, is that we do not pay people not to commit crimes against us, but to show our humanity. You know what that is I take it?? though being human is not necessarily a good thing, I suspect, humanity means( to me at least) having the capacity to rise above all the filth that makes so many so overtly selfish. And that means HELPING others that can not or even will not help themselves.