From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Thu Aug 01 2002 - 11:22:46 MDT
In a message dated 8/1/02 9:29:43, charleshixsn@earthlink.net writes:
>I believe that the US has a larger fraction of it's citizenry in jail
>than any other government, except, perhaps, for one or two extreme
>autocracies. But we are told that it's for our own good. Perhaps the
>term "benign" needs a bit of rethinking.
Yes, the US has a lot of people in jail; but it does have a relatively high
violent crime rate, which *partially* justifies that. Taxes and regulations
are less onerous than most other Western countries. What's the tradeoff
between taxation and unjust imprisonment? It's not so obvious - the
taxation sucks up more man-hours but unjust imprisonment is less
evenly distributed. In any case, the EU governments are pretty benign
too; you have to remember that Western government is still far from
the norm worldwide or historically.
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