Quite frankly crime creates poverty and legalizing drugs would go a long way towards clawing back our freedom from the modern militarized police state and would significantly affect black incarceration rates. Getting labeled a criminal typically limits earning prospects for the rest of one's life even if one wants to grow up.
In all honesty jail and prison is just another welfare program, quite a costly one for everyone involved except for govt agencies and politicians. They use it as an excuse to always ask for more power and money.
Mav88, I am not sure you can apply accounting principles to render a valuation on 30,000,000 Americans. I won't argue with your recitation of statistics that support the view that an inordinately large percentage of blacks receive state benefits or are subject to relatively outsized state expenditures in the criminal justice system. However, your inquiry stated in your OP a little absurd and problematic. There are plenty of 'black" people who exact an economic cost greater than their input on a tax dollar basis. And there are some who contribute much more that they take. There are contributions and costs to the country that can't be evaluated in dollar terms alone. Louis Armstrong and Shelby Steele, for example were economically productive, but had great impact that resounded culturally and economically There are actually more white people in the welfare system than black people. I am white. Very white, I have freckles and I burn easily and I am quite sure that I don't wish to lumped together with low income white trash who are mostly unemployed and in out of the criminal justice system. I imagine Bill Cosby wants to be recognized for himself and not just his skin color. So if you feel you have identified a problem with black people, perhaps you should exercise some discrimination and offer a practical solution (as long as it isn't a Final Solution) Incidentally, I am not sure what your ethnicity is, but are you a member of a group that is economically a net asset? And if so, where does it rank in the hierarchy? And if you are for example, a German, or an Irishman, your economic value by your racial affiliation is probably inferior to that of a Korean, Jew, or Chinese. How should society treat you in this case?
I am defining liability or asset strictly on giving and taking from the public treasury since the only measure of wealth we have is money. If someone really did make a resounding economic contribution, it will reflect itself in GDP and in turn would mean higher tax revenues and lower dependence since it would have spawned economic activity. I did in fact mention that there is a huge social cost of black crime, but you really can't measure such things directly. If you want to make the case that they are worth the cost for something like say hip hop music, then that's a personal choice. If we want an argument in subjective terms then I can point out how tensions, acrimony, and crime make life worse and that multicultural societies are less happy since there is less trust in the community. barely true, but there are 5 times as many white people, what do you expect? as a percentage of the population, welfare is much lower for whites and whites pay the bill. I am white, scandanavian background. I grew up in an all-white community, we didn't care about blacks nor race at all, in fact we never discussed it. Then I moved out into the larger world and started paying attention to blacks since they were right next to me. They are the ones who insisted that I become racially sensitive. They talk about race nonstop, virtually their entire lives are spent viewing everything through a racial prism and they rant at me as 'part of the problem'. They want special racial privlidges such as AA, they want me to pay taxes so they can have gov't money because of their skin color, and it is they who had yesterday set aside so that I should think about race. When I do so in an honesty way however, then I am a Nazi according to them and their liberal enablers. I cannot identify how much scandanavians contribute or take because we don't insist on having anyone take special notice of us. We simply want to be americans, there are no special programs, no boxes to check on forms that say Norweigan-american, no days set aside for the rest of you to contemplate how you have wronged us- nothing. Hypothetically, if I could make the same calculation for scandanavians and found out that we took more than gave as a group, then I would be deeply ashamed. Personally I have paid far more than taken so I don't expect any sort of special treatment, but the way to respond to any mooch is to cut them off, it's not hard. They either change or die. Seems brutal, but that's life and that's how humans work. I am NOT saying get rid of all welfare, there are definitely legitimate cases. Paying young people to have babies and giving them cell phones is not a legitimate welfare case. If I were king, several ideas come to mind. I like legalizing drugs for starters as PT said. I would have a eal honest discussion, this diversity thing isn't working. Offer blacks a semi-autonomous large state just for them where they have have their racial nirvana but pay their own social welfare bills. Government work farms for people who will not change but demand handouts. As long as any self-identified group pays their way and makes us better, I don't have a problem. Jews are fairly wealthy, good for them, let them keep it. Asians contribute a lot, thanks asians. Just don't be a burden, is that too much to ask?
Of course you can. Aren't there far more whites than blacks to begin with? Maybe you should apply some accounting principles, like percentages for example.
I understand how it sounds when I say this, however... 1. Blacks in general, USED TO BE ASSETS... as slaves. 2. Blacks NOW are generally more likely to be LIABILITIES.. as parasitic tit-suckers. Unpleasant to consider it this way, but seems to ring true.