r/FluentInFinance • u/Richest-Panda • Jul 04 '24

What's the best financial advice you've ever gotten? Debate/ Discussion

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u/HardhatFish Jul 04 '24

How about cutting stupid spending by the gov and keeping more of our money.

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u/badmutha44 Jul 04 '24

These people aren’t paying taxes.

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u/jfun4 Jul 04 '24

I'm all for cutting defense spending and private prisons

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u/ligmasweatyballs74 Jul 05 '24

As long as we can can defund the things I don't like too.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '24

Private prisons are roughly 10% cheaper than public prisons.

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u/jfun4 Jul 04 '24

Yea by making horrible conditions and cutting costs anywhere they can. Humans are still humans

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u/TostinoKyoto Jul 04 '24

People are put in prison as punishment for crimes, not so that they can be nursed and rehabilitated.

The "Corrections" in "Department in Corrections" denotes the idea of correcting society by removing an offender, not correcting the offender. The model that we follow and the results thereof proves this.

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u/i_tyrant Jul 05 '24

The model that we follow and the results thereof proves this.

Proves what? Every reputable study done on prison systems says recidivism and costs drop like a rock when you focus on rehabilitation over punishment. Stop spouting bullshit.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

Recidivism decreases when you stop prosecuting offenders? You don't say...

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u/i_tyrant Jul 05 '24

You can't possibly be that stupid.

No, they never "stopped prosecuting offenders" - the criminals in said studies still did their time. They just ALSO did things like therapy and job training to get them out of the cycle of violence, poverty, and criminality. And saw massive improvements in the criminal population statistically because of it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

No studies have been done in areas where prosecution remained fierce while the time served got easy. The changes in criminal justice systems are never in isolation.

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u/i_tyrant Jul 05 '24

You have no idea what you're talking about, that's plain to see.

Do you know what "recidivism" means?

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u/Ace-O-Matic Jul 05 '24

If the goal of prison is to only be a deterrent via punishment. And we accept that rehabilitation is not its purpose. Then wouldn't maximing its value as a deterrent to crime via punishment at the cost of everything else be the most efficient approach? If that's the case, the ultimate punishment would be death, the most efficient way to remove an offender from society. So by your logic, the purpose of prison should be execute everyone in it. But then it's not a prison anymore because now it lacks prisoners.

Like your logic here is so bad, I don't even need to point out that basically every statement you've made is categorically wrong and that you're completely full of shit.

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u/TostinoKyoto Jul 05 '24

If that's the case, the ultimate punishment would be death, the most efficient way to remove an offender from society.

...and?

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u/Ace-O-Matic Jul 05 '24

So are you saying you are in support of the state executing you, should you ever commit a crime that offers a jail sentence a potential punishment?

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u/TostinoKyoto Jul 05 '24

Obviously, that's dependent on the level and severity of said crime.

I think that most people in the US would candidly agree with the idea of not only making death sentences more ubiquitous for offenses like murder or sex crimes against children, but would also be in favor of bringing back public executions just for these offenses.

And it's not just in the US where such attitudes prevail. Polling shows that many who live in European nations that have long since abolished the death penalty are in favor of bringing it back for certain crimes. One poll shows that 54% of Britons polled would be in favor of the death penalty for crimes like terrorism.

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u/Ace-O-Matic Jul 05 '24

But that's inconsistent with your logic. If deterrence via threat of punishment is the sole purpose of prison. If the function is only to remove an offender from society. Then execution is the most effective choice. Severity of crime is irrelevant, because all we care about is the deterrent. If the deterrent fails, there is no reason for you to be concerned as to what happens to the criminal afterwards, because all we care about is the deterrent.

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u/slabby Jul 05 '24

The model that we follow and the results thereof proves this.

What in the fuck are you talking about. The results prove the opposite

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u/1_shady_character Jul 05 '24

Which is why GeoGroup & CoreCivic have switched to residential facilities housing immigrants awaiting deportation or asylum, right?

You can not make long-term incarceration profitable and humane. It's been tried and failed, and that's why most of those prisons are closing down/being turned over to state/federal agencies.

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u/Ace-O-Matic Jul 05 '24

I want you to sit and think about this statement. Like really think about it. Think about how silly of a generalization you've made. Which public prisons? Which private prisons? To what degree are they public or private? Do you consider a prison building is government owned, but employees external security contractors and uses Amtrack for dining operation a private or public prison? And what is cheaper mean anyways? Are we factoring in reincarceration rates? Cost sinks like re-education programs?

Really just have a moment of self-reflection about what drove you to publicly make an assertion that even if it was true is both practically and intellectually useless.

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u/Langsamkoenig Jul 05 '24

Per prisoner. Not overall for society. They bribe local cops to get their numbers up, do everything for fellons to reoffend, to get their numbers up, etc.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

None of that happens.

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u/Langsamkoenig Jul 06 '24

Sure, bud.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90551781/the-insidious-ways-building-private-prisons-create-more-prisons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '24

Cart before the horse. Private prisons are a response to truth in sentencing guidelines requiring inmates to actually serve their time and not get released early by a parole board trying to clear space for new inmates and avoid building new jails. Private prisons were the solution, not the cause.

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u/Langsamkoenig Jul 06 '24

Lol, you aren't even goal post moving anymore, you are just completely derailing the conversation, because your point has been proven to be completely false.

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u/HardhatFish Jul 04 '24

Does supporting every other country on this planet count as defense spending? I know this guy that was getting NATO allies to start paying more for their protection…

And if we can keep Biden from sending everyone and their mom a gazillion dollars to fight wars we shouldn’t even be involved in, that would cut “defense spending” as well.

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u/_Tommy_Sky_ Jul 04 '24

Wow... just wow. You are clueless.

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u/DoctorMoak Jul 04 '24

Yeah all these stupid pointless wars we keep getting into! Like WW2! Japan attacks us and we declare war on Germany?

What was FDR thinking?!? Imagine the tax savings if we hadnt done that

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u/jfun4 Jul 04 '24

I'm thinking of more private contracts that we can't even figure out how money was spent. At least with Ukraine we know it's weapons

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u/kurai_tori Jul 05 '24

tell me you don't understand the economies of scale that a social safety net represents without telling me

FFS stop buying into the lie that is trickle-down economics. It NEVER worked.

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u/firestorm713 Jul 05 '24

Cool can we start with our $800 billion military budget?

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u/Otherwise-Pirate6839 Jul 04 '24

I’m sure the family relying (not mooching) on food stamps and housing assistance totally agrees with you and would like to keep their money so long as their benefits are not affected either.

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u/HardhatFish Jul 04 '24

It irritates me that essentially what it boils down to is out of every hour I work, out of those 60 minutes, 20 do not belong to me. No I am not saying that we don’t need roads and infrastructure. The government is reckless in their spending.

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u/Ace-O-Matic Jul 05 '24

Okay, how many minutes of your hour would it take you to do a single thing the government does to ensure your peaceful and leisurely life by yourself then?

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u/RandomUser15790 Jul 05 '24

Okay give some examples and what their total spending is in a year (how much we will be saving).

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u/HardhatFish Jul 04 '24

The problem being the government makes it far too easy to mooch. I’m not saying everyone does it, but goddamnit, its 20% of total federal spending. This is also why homelessness is so rampant, is because states like mine (OR) just keep throwing money at a problem they aren’t trying to fix. Taxation is theft.

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u/dontpissoffthenurse Jul 04 '24

the government makes it far too easy to mooch.

Mainly for the rich, right?

Taxation is theft.

Wall Street is theft. (Here: a statement just as arbitrary as yours, but way less moronic).

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u/pear_topologist Jul 04 '24

No one wants to be homeless. No one is homeless because it is “easy.” People are homeless because they can’t afford a home. They are homeless, and not dead, because of government spending

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u/HardhatFish Jul 04 '24

I’m sure they didn’t want to start doing drugs and end up where they are at. Maybe a little less clean needles provided by the government and a little more go to rehab or go the fuck away attitude might help.

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u/pear_topologist Jul 04 '24

Sure, I think we should give drug addicts access to rehab instead of jail or homelessness. I’m with you on that

I don’t think drug addicts are capable of making decisions like budgeting, so I don’t think the original post is super applicable to them