David Simon, creator of The Wire, says new US drug laws help only 'white, middle-class kids'

[ananda]

This is a very great article! (Also, The Wire is a fantastic show. Everyone should see it.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/25/the-wire-creator-us-drug-laws?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-4%20Pixies ixies osition1

Simon said he "begins with the assumption that drugs are bad", but also that the war on drugs has "always proceeded along racial lines", since the banning of opium.

It is waged "not against dangerous substances but against the poor, the excess Americans," he said, and with striking and subversive originality, posited the crisis in stark economic terms: "We do not need 10-12% of our population; they've been abandoned. They don't have barbed wire around them, but they might as well."

As a result, "drugs are the only industry left in places such as Baltimore and east St Louis" – an industry that employs "children, old people, people who've been shooting drugs for 20 years, it doesn't matter. It's the only factory that's still open. The doors are open."
[...]
"Capitalism," Simon said, "has tried to jail its way out of the problem" with the result that "the prison industry has been given over to capitalism. If we need to get rid of these people, we might as well make some money out of getting rid of them."

[galileoreloaded]

1. this is so true.

"We do not need 10-12% of our population; they've been abandoned. They don't have barbed wire around them, but they might as well."

[bvar22]

3. 10% - 12% seems awful low.

Since our "leaders" have sold all the Manufacturing Jobs to overseas interests,
I would estimate that 50% - 60% of the US population is now superfluous.

Really, how many Service Jobs do we need to keep the 1% comfortable?

[galileoreloaded]

4. quite honestly

if you look at our society, there is a huge cull coming.

if you were managing a planetary farm for humans, this would be the optimum time for a harvest. peak people, technology pretty much automating production except for menial labor, and a rich infrastructure that can support another boom in population with minimal maintenance.

question is.....who profits?

[Newest Reality]

2. Highly Rec

That's on spot. His view corresponds with the overall picture I've been getting from various sources and of course, not from major media simulations of reality.

I agree that this capitalistic system does not need 10-12% of its population, (and it may actually be higher) and that number is very likely to increase with time, not lessen. Automation will assure that, as well as other factors in play.

While, in non-bizarro world, that would considered a national crises that trumps many other concerns we seen pushed to the forefront for ulterior reasons and manipulative purposes, this chunk of the new "untouchables" here in a country with such wealth is not going to get any attention worth mentioning because, like everything else, they are disposable people. that runs counter to the superficial idea that America's values, collectively are anything other than profits and the wealth of a few. The rest is just feel-good, conscience balm for those who find themselves participating in the debacle.

So, rather than changing our social policies and benefits out of a real, tangible and critical need to do so to assure the relative safety and comfort of those impacted by change, we get a human dumpster approach and profitable ways to sequester the collateral damage in the economic theater of exploitation taken to its zenith.

That's the real definition of America now. It is a bastion of capitalism and that economic system is, by definition and practice, quite at odds with human values, "morals" and all those pink, pretty fluffy things infesting the minds of those who want to believe otherwise and have no problem sharing in the booty while one in every ten people become castoff, anathema, and nothing more than trash and prison fodder.

America! Yeah!