• Reddit_Is_Trash@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    Or how about we don’t provide services for people who make obvious mistakes. I’d rather keep my tax money than it go to them

    • treefrog@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It costs less in taxes to take a child out of poverty than to put them in prison as an adult.

      Additionally, taking children out of poverty improves the tax contributions they and their own children will make more than it costs.

      In other words, your taxes aren’t going to just them but is an investment in us all.

      And you’re making the same argument people without kids sometimes make about education, why should I pay for public schools, I don’t have kids, I don’t benefit. But you do, everytime a cashier counts change, everytime you don’t get robbed because a kid had an opportunity to come out of poverty, everytime you have an intelligent conversation with a neighbor.

      We live in a society. If you don’t want to be part of our society, feel free to move someplace without taxes.

          • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            TIL that voting for people who also want to punish others is the best way to punish others.

          • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Have you considered that many of the public services you rely on every day (roads, safety in food and drugs, public works, fire departments and police, etc) are partly funded with MY money, given to you, a stranger?

            I’M happy to contribute to YOUR health, safety, stability, and enjoyment, because I want all of us to have a better future, even if you don’t.

          • treefrog@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It’s not your money, it’s your tax contribution which is the government’s money and decision how to spend.

            I’m a pacifist based on religious beliefs and can’t be drafted. My tax contribution still goes to wars. Because the money goes into a pool and spent where our officials decide it best serves everybody (ideally).

            The idea that it’s your money is as bullshit as the idea that we all benefit from letting children starve because a high school kid made a mistake and didn’t wear a condom.

            It’s not your money. It’s the tax man’s. If you don’t want to pay taxes, move someplace without them.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And this is why I left lolitarian after about a month. Once you start looking at the numbers of how much crime costs vs how little after school programs cost it is a no brainier. If someone gets convicted of a felony from the pure cold government accounting they are a net loss. There is almost zero chance that the government will make back what was spent on them.

        It just is so much easier to be proactive vs reactive. We know the statistics, we know that a dollar spent on such and such program removes multiple times future costs.

      • albert@lemmy.sysctl.io
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        1 year ago

        Source on the costs? (I’m not doubting what you say is true, I would just like to know where you get your data).

        • treefrog@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Search Incarceration vs. Education.

          It’s easy to extrapolate just from the headlines but I’m sure if you dig into the articles you’ll find the data you are asking for.

          My source is lived experience and human services courses. So I don’t have a study to point too.

          But there are studies and data on this is abundant.

          One ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and all of that.

          • albert@lemmy.sysctl.io
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            1 year ago

            But there are studies and data on this is abundant.

            And you couldn’t find one?

            It’s easy to extrapolate just from the headlines

            Clickbait articles are everywhere. NEVER trust the headlines.

            I’m still not doubting what you say is true – I just want to know what studies prove it, simply because I do not possess the requisite knowledge to assume “truthiness” of said articles if I were to even find them. My area of expertise is very far from anything related to human services.

            • treefrog@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Here’s a NAACP report. Prison is expensive because all of that security is expensive. Add onto that medical care, especially older inmates with long bids cost a lot. It’s cheaper to invest in education. High school drop outs, black or white, are more likely to be incarcerated. Reducing high school drop out rates is something doable and it would save money.

              https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/naacp/misplaced_priorities.pdf

              Also, investing in education improves GDP. People in higher income brackets also pay more taxes. The GDP increase for the US if we ensured every child access to education is 16% per year for the next 80 years.

              Here’s that study. That’s the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. OCED.

              https://www.oecd.org/education/universal-basic-skills-9789264234833-en.htm

            • treefrog@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I can find something for you. Just was busy when I replied earlier and finding good studies to share that aren’t behind a paywall takes time.

              Let me burn one and do a few other things. Then I’ll see if I can dig something up for you.

    • SARGEx117@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Weird way to say “I’m a selfish piece of shit who thinks others should suffer because I think I am superior”

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Also, entirely ignorant of the long term savings social programs provide. Poverty is expensive. The cost of a condom is nothing compared to the cost of a baby. The cost of caring for and educating a baby is nothing compared to the cost of an adult raised and living in poverty. The cost of providing for an adult raised and living in poverty is nothing compared to the cost of dealing with systemic problems related to homelessness.

        You cannot avoid the costs, you can only kick them down the road a ways, where they will only grow.

            • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              They’re not if you consider the cost of funding a whole state’s worth of condoms vs the cost of dealing with unwanted children in the foster care system, then the legal system when some of those children grow up to be criminals after society has failed them.

              It’s actually much higher than that.

                • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Sorry, I just switched Lemmy clients and i responded to the wrong comment. My reply was meant for the ‘condoms cost less than $500’ comment in this thread.

                  I agree with you.

                  (And then I just responded to myself instead of you. I think I need to clear my cache.)

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Are there numbers way off? I paid tens of thousands of dollars in taxes last year which is only possible because my parents had access to food stamps when I was a kid. Over a lifetime it could definitely work out to half a million.

              • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                It could definitely work out to half a million.

                Pretty sure it’s a lot more than that. Food stamps aren’t the only expense.

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Even if we pandered to your every preference, I doubt it would satiate the greed of someone who’d rather see children punished than contribute fractions of a penny to prevent it.

      So why make society worse if it won’t even make you better?

        • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They’re not my children, why should I as a taxpayer have to pay for them?

          Because they are your fellow citizens.

        • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago
          1. You have to pay for them either way. Only 1 way is multiple orders of magnitude less expensive.

          2. Because children shouldn’t be disadvantaged or suffer because of the poor decisions of their parents.

          3. Because they’re fucking people, bro. Have some compassion. Everyone makes mistakes.

        • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          You already know the answer to that but you asked the question anyway because it serves as self-entitled neoliberal/libertarian propaganda.

          And of course if there was an actual city out there modelled after your libertarian paradise, there’s not a chance you’d move there, let alone be happier there.

          But boy would I love to see it.

          Because no matter how much of your personality you devote to being a miser, your actual, actual wealth is a piss puddle next to an ocean.

          You’d be a functional slave with every dollar you earned being immediately extracted from you as you’re charged by the foot for the roads you use, living off post-FDA Starbucks that you don’t know has baby-killing levels of formaldehyde in it (again) because the one media company left was paid to not report it.

          But hey, at least you wouldn’t be paying 1c a year for someone else’s birth control.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You are paying for them. You live in a society and anyone languishing in that society makes your life that much worse off.

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That “obvious mistake” is made every day by teens, some not even old enough to drive. I’m sure letting them fend for themselves is the best way to instill responsibility and not a recipe for child neglect or abandonment, but not like that’s a recipe for a future criminal or junkie.

      /s

      • Reddit_Is_Trash@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Ok, but giving them money is literally rewarding them for these actions. Taking money out of my paycheck via taxes is not the answer

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well if you are so very concerned about the taxpayer dollars you should be a supporter of this. A rubber is a whole lot cheaper than a single teenager mom with baby. It’s thousands of dollars just to birth a baby with a healthy pregnancy.

        • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          You should realize it’s going to cost more of your tax money to throw those kids in prison once they have grown into terrible people because they were shunned by society. They aren’t raising your taxes because of this.

          They are taking a bit of tax money that you already have to pay and allocating it to helping people instead of buying another missile with it. It’s not like your taxes would go down if they stopped helping pregnant teens.

        • treefrog@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          We’re literally going to pay less in taxes by helping them as I already explained to you in another post

          Yet you cling to this hateful position. Get therapy or something damn.

    • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I’d rather keep my tax money than it go to them

      Ahh, the classic ‘we shouldn’t reward bad behavior’ line that completely ignores that treating tax money like Santa Candy (to be withheld from the bad little boys and girls) just costs everybody more tax dollars when it means foregoing spending on preventive measures that help avoid expensive problems.

      It’s not rewarding teen pregnancy, it’s preventing it

      Also,

      I’d rather keep my tax money

      You don’t get to keep it either way.

    • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Oh man there is so much to unpack there its hard to tell it you’re just trolling or absolutely oblivious to what teenagers are like. There are libraries worth of papers and studies showing how that line of thinking is the first step down a steep and slippery slope that turns the USA into Afghanistan as far as society and quality of life.

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That would be 100% of all people who have ever lived, are alive today, and in the future.

      Do you seriously believe there are people who haven’t made mistakes?!

    • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      The whole purpose of society is that we’re stronger together. If you disagree, that’s your prerogative, and if you want to go off the grid and back to a hunter-gatherer everyone-for-themselves lifestyle, you’re welcome to it.

      Most of us don’t want that because it was objectively terrible compared to civilisation. We wouldn’t have modern technology or any of the things we take for granted without societal cooperation. You wouldn’t have a computer or internet to complain about the society you enjoy the benefits of.

      That’s a pretty myopic take, honestly.