I've always thought the troops should be brought home and all those trillions spent on infrastructure and community projects within America.
Unfortunately, it's more important to spend trillions on other countries than on America and Americans.
"If Americans knew what Swedes receive for their taxes, we would probably riot."
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?artic...
Clarification (I agree with your gist), that money gets funneled through the military industrial complex back into "construction companies" (i.e., haliburton), security companies (i.e., Blackwater/XE) and various other US-based corporate socialism babies.
Very little of foreign development money is actually seen by the countries we "occupy" or "assist". Please see Confessions of an economic hit man for more details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_...
(As an aside, can we stop with this "regulate and tax" boot-kissing of politicians? We all know that's how they stick their grubby fingers into everything and ruin it; there's no need to encourage it)
Also, while this article focuses on the progress being made by the police, if you switch your perspective and imagine yourself living there, it pretty much sounds like the beginnings of a standard sci-fi dystopia.
Taxes on drugs are a small price to pay if it furthers legalization.
Pragmatically, it wouldn't simply legitimize the current drug dealers overnight. You'd have to sell them on bullshit paperwork and becoming part of a system that they're predisposed to hate. Good luck with that.
Also the more complexity that goes into "appropriate" regulation, the more likely that specific (ie used by the upper classes) drugs will be the only ones that get deillegalized. Which will fail to address the actual problem at all.
> "Also the more complexity that goes into "appropriate" regulation, the more likely that specific (ie used by the upper classes) drugs will be the only ones that get deillegalized. Which will fail to address the actual problem at all."
The entire class of "we're only legalizing 'upper class' drugs" arguments are complete nonsense. The fact is that disadvantaged minorities are massively over-represented in marijuana arrests, despite using marijuana at similar rates as white americans.
> "But promoting it as an integral part of the solution helps perpetuate the same tired government-should-be-involved thinking that caused the problem in the first place."
We've got bigger fish to fry. Drug laws are modern Jim Crow laws, concerns about the merits of taxing vices and luxuries have a lower priority.
And who do you think that that society is structured around?
> allow other people
"Other people" are going to invest capital in Camden to setup a single-serving storefront that will be violently attacked by vertically-integrated competition? Sure..
There is already a mature market in place, and you're saying the right way is to create a different one and hope that the consumers switch. Maybe that works in theory, right up until junkies start getting beat up for breaking rank and going to the sellout drug store.
> we're only legalizing 'upper class' drugs" arguments are complete nonsense
It's not a claim that upper classes are the most affected by pot being illegal, it's that pot being illegal is something that actually affects the upper classes. Please show me a seriously-taken proposal to "legalize and regulate" pot, cocaine, crack and meth alike. This will never happen, and the Jim Crow laws will continue just fine without pot.
> And who do you think that that society is structured around?
That society, if you can even call it one, is the very thing that legalization is designed to destroy. Hardened criminals hiring 13 year olds to deal off street-corners to make some cash to pay for their siblings groceries is a self-destructive local-maxima.
If you want to understand legalization, then you need be able to understand a society free of the influences of discrimination enabling drug laws. We want to not break up social structures and support in the first place.
> "This will never happen, and the Jim Crow laws will continue just fine without pot."
Well no, they wouldn't. See: the massive amount of black people jailed for marijuana alone. Nothing is a full-proof silver bullet, we are dealing with shades of gray, but marijuana laws are the biggie. They need to go, even if we cannot manage to tackle anything else.
Progress has already been made on the crack front, bringing penalties back down to the level as penalties for 'standard' cocaine (a drug with high-class associations). There is more work to be done, but we are getting there one baby-step at a time.
These areas are already very cheap to build in. Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey practically give away abandoned industrial sites hoping to find companies to take them over. Getting rid of regulations can be iffy. After all, the outputs of polluting activities in Camden flow down the Delaware River to a whole bunch of other people.
Fixing education in these communities is intractable. You can't teach kids in a community where gang leaders have more authority than parents. You have to fix the community before you can make a dent in the education problem.
Local police investigators have confirmed that many individuals who have been apprehended for robberies were previously involved in the local drug trade.
Cheap buildings aren't enough. You need a full stack, top to bottom, crash program to attract businesses and encourage local entrepreneurship. A special economic zone means low or no taxes for X years, little or no regulatory interference (e.g., zoning laws, architectural requirements, ethnic/gender hiring mandates, union lock-in, etc.), just basically leave them alone and let them build a business in a war zone. Of course, you can't simply suspend OSHA, ADA, and anti-discrimination laws, but if you can make it cheap enough to conduct business, the incentives will outweigh the danger and inconvenience and they will come.
I've never heard of the cost of living anywhere going up because of an influx of highly-paid K-12 teachers.
1. Legalize drugs. Allow local municipalities to regulate and tax recreational substances. Boom. You have an instant local revenue stream, the police are suddenly out of the business of arresting people for "possession", and can focus more on violent crime, domestic disturbances, etc. In the short term, drug-funded gangs will turn to theft and robbery to stay in business, but anyway a major, relatively safe and easy source of revenue will be gone.
2. Declare certain urban areas to be economic development zones with drastically reduced taxes and regulations. Make it dirt cheap to locate factories and plants there. Provide start-up grants to local entrepreneurs, with real oversight, not just feel-good handouts. Lower the barriers to business start-ups and there will be business activity, and it will accelerate as the cycle of crime and poverty is reduced.
3. Fix the K-12 schools. Double the teachers' pay, double the security around the schools and provide secure bus rides to and from the projects and tenements. Make the school day longer, and ratchet up the standards. Demand higher achievement, and don't let a kid just flunk and walk away; make them re-take, make them realize the importance. Make school a destination, not a chore.
Teach democracy in the schools. Emphasize basic literacy skills, ethics and morality, history, how to speak and write properly, mathematics and science. Make the schools the best in the state in terms of standards.
These are all easier said than done, but can we afford to do anything less? We have spent trillions of dollars trying to fix similar problems in other countries, so why not spend a tenth of that or a thousandth of that fixing some of the problems in our own country?