On: The Largest Prison Strike In American History Goes Ignored By US Media

[axod]

If there were less people in prison, and less reoffenders, who would make all the military equipment, household appliances, license plates etc etc for free?

The US would have no slaves to work with!

edit: Since I'm being downmodded for stating fact:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=82... http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/slavery-in-u-s-prison-sys... http://newworkerfeatures.blogspot.com/2010/02/us-prison-labo... http://www.insideprison.com/prison-industry-labor.asp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwT6CisM0mU

There was also a great wikipedia article listing all the different things that inmates make. If they refuse, they're subjected to solitary confinement.

The US should be thoroughly ashamed. Not that it'll ever be reported by the mainstream media.

[jbooth → axod]

That misses the mark.. prisons are expensive. We'd be better off paying people $8/hr to make that stuff and not paying to house and guard them.

The real reason is because you immediately lose a political argument if you're accused of being soft on crime. So there's absolutely no reasoned debate on the topic, the only time it comes up is when every so often a pol comes up with some dumbass punitive and counter-productive measure to get a headline. Additionally, most prisoners are black, and everyone knows this, while 80% of voters in most districts are white.

So basically, the way we're acting is both short-term stupid (could just pay day laborers and save money) and long-term stupid (creating lifetime criminals by destroying other options for them).

[ChristianMarks → axod]

Mod parent up. The United States has NEVER gotten over its plantation/slave owner mentality. It's too deeply embedded in the collective unconscious to be calmly refuted--it's so close to the bone that it has to be vehemently, hysterically denied. It goes together with the inability of the United States' public to comprehend risk pools. And not only workers are enslaved, but you entrepreneurs are also, because the state requires you to administer a social program that the government is in a far better position to administer: health insurance (private insurance could then be purchased for more benefits). But forcing businesses to do this is a huge chunk of the deficit, incredibly economically inefficient and is forcing companies to outsource labor. Your new slave owners are the prisons and the insurance companies.