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Related: About this forumBefore We End The Drug War, We Must Retrain Prison Workers
While the surge towards Marijuana legalization continues across the United States, questions addressing the logistics of shutting down the drug war must be addressed before actually doing it big. David talks about what kind of retraining that should be offered to workers in the prison-industrial complex, before a drug-war shutdown can be considered.
russspeakeasy
(6,539 posts)(where is that sarcasm thingy)?
grasswire
(50,130 posts)Did all those workers who lost their jobs to off-shoring get training in a new vocation?
I don't think so.
I suppose the best answer is that it's not good for society to have lots and lots of angry, unemployed broke people en masse. Plus, we have lots of good things for them to do, and the money to pay them.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)What kind of training do you propose for them?
A great number are unsuitable for training. That's why they got jobs as prison guards.
Response to grasswire (Reply #4)
Cronus Protagonist This message was self-deleted by its author.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)employed by Homeland Security.
Jobs like the private prison and Homeland Security gigs are the American equivalent of the jobs the USSR provided for extra workers who weren't really needed. They aren't real jobs.
OK. We are in our 70s, and on our way back from a trip, a Homeland Security guy found a "knife" on my husband's corkscrew. It was very small. It could probably have barely cut through the plastic around the top of a wine bottle, but finding it was an achievement for the Homeland Security guy. The funny thing was that my husband had owned and used the corkscrew for years and never noticed the "knife."
That's a pretend job. The Homeland Security guy pretends he is making America safe from terrorism. Of course, one in several million people boarding a plane might be dangerous. But by this time, surely the terrorists are not expecting to take over planes with the tiny knife on a Trader Joe's corkscrew (an old one at that).
The underlying problem is that we have automated and outsourced and sold off our good jobs. If you count underemployed and unemployed Americans, you find that we are going through a massive restructuring of our economy. Capitalism based on production by American labor being marketed for profit to Americans is just a joke. Our economy does not work that way any more.
So the question really is what in the world would you retrain the prison guards to do? There is no demand for their labor. Anything they could do could be done cheaper in India or China. So I don't see much point in investing in retraining programs for jobs that don't exist. It would just hurt the prison guards all the more.
Has anyone seen the film, "How to Make Money Selling Drugs"?
Here is a link to the preview.
It's a great film.
BillyRibs
(787 posts)They launder the money and skim the cream off the top. till bankers and the greedy see the profit to legalization we're fooked!