Crime and jobs and racism.

This country has about 5% of the world's population but over 20% of the world's prisoners. The land of the free alright. Harsh sentencing laws are a factor. But this is not the fundamental source of the problem. The main reasons lie elsewhere and these are what the bosses and their boot licking media do not want to talk about.

Look at unemployment amongst teenagers. Unemployment for 16 to 19 years olds was 23.8% in July. That is one quarter of teenagers have no jobs. For white teenagers it was 22%. This was the highest since record keeping began in 1954. For Black teenagers the numbers are staggering and a disgrace to any society. 35.7% of Black teenagers were unemployed in July. That is more than one third. These figures alone condemn this society. It has forfeited its right to exist.

But then in the US you have the other factor which gives rise to the world record prison population. This country refuses to develop a welfare state such as exists in many of the countries of Western Europe. There if you are unemployed people get enough to live on. Here unemployed youth get nothing. Inevitably crime follows. What else would any of us do if we had nothing.

Or if crime is not looked to maybe it is staying at home and getting help from other family members. This undermines morale and self respect and increases domestic tension. I worked with a guy a few years ago. He had just started on the job that day. we got paid by the day. When he got his money he looked at it and said. " I have been living with my mother for months. I have had to borrow of her for anything. Do you know how that makes a grown man feel." Capitalism is a rotten corrosive system, it destroys the human spirit.

Crime, family life, relationships, these are all rooted in the crisis of jobs. Well paid, secure jobs for all would transform society. But under capitalism this is impossible. If everybody has a well paid secure job then they begin to feel their strength, the working class as a whole begins to feel its strength. The bosses have nobody out there to take workers jobs if they go on strike, everybody would be working at well paid secure jobs. This would be a nightmare for capitalism.

So what do they do? The manipulate interest rates through the Federal Reserve to make sure they always have millions of workers unemployed. This frightens workers who are in jobs. The unemployed might take their jobs. This keeps wages down and strikes down. The Federal Reserve reports to Congress regularly that they are keeping millions out of work. In doing so they are reassuring the capitalists and the stock markets that wages are being kept low by keeping millions out of work. And of course millions in prison. These suited criminals in Congress and Wall Street are the scum of the earth.

Unemployment is not an accident. It is a policy of capitalism. And by keeping unemployment higher amongst Black and Hispanic workers this helps them divide and rule over the working class and keep all workers down.

Life is not complicated. When I as a socialist am asked what I want above all else. I answer. A guaranteed well paid secure job for every person on the earth. On a democratic socialist sustainable basis this would transform our world and all our lives. Capitalism will only continue to destroy peoples bodies and spirits and the planet as a whole.

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Sean.