Our local metro area has had a problem with copper thieves for a few years now, cutting open and stealing the wiring from street lights.
People are why we can't have nice things, apparently.
People are why we can't have nice things, apparently.
There was a story probably once a month about someone breaking into a power substation or some other high voltage area to try and steal copper and electrocuting themselves.
Seems like a lot of work for low money.
Always has been. With that said, this is incredibly impressive from a logistics perspective. Hire these folks for demolition and salvage work.
There. Is. Always. An. Asshole.
Always.
Around here, it's mostly organized gangs doing the stealing, not random poor people... If that were the case, the city wouldn't have a single light fixture left unscathed.
Of course not. It would be absurd to assert otherwise. You always get some scofflaws, but I don't see a reason to assume you get more scofflaws in a weak economy than a strong one. More lawbreakers, yes, but breaking laws for economically rational reasons isn't the same as doing so for its own sake.
I would be curious to know where the people who join such groups come from, and what other prospects they might have had such that difficult, dangerous, and illegal work still ends up looking preferable.
Gangs start recruiting young. It's a fast way to get "friends" who have more than you do- the illusion of power, material wealth, so on.
Furthermore, attempting to do well in school means your fellow students will bully you for "acting white".
If your parents didn't do well in school, they are less likely to pressure you to do well. They might be working long hours to make ends meet, or living on disability or either form of welfare. This will exclude you from many extracurricular activities which require parental support as well.
If you see your parents barely making ends meet, and gangbangers offer you the illusion of more, and everyone around you says you'll never amount to anything by studying or trying to get good grades, it isn't hard to see the allure.
So, for these students at least, poverty is a culture and the trap becomes lifelong once you get a record and can't get a job anywhere that pays better than minimum wage. Rinse and repeat with the next generation.
My friend was fortunate enough to have a father who pressured him to do well in school, and to go on to secondary education. He escaped the trap, but few of the people he grew up with did the same.
I can think of some other less mainstream news sources that would have a problem with that idea.
Also, the "people need the governments help to escape it" was very much not the moral of this particular parable. All it took was a father who gave a damn.
Easy. Ann Hsu, a school board member in SF: https://sfstandard.com/2022/07/19/racially-insensitive-schoo...
Here are her exact words: "Especially in the Black and brown community, I see one of the biggest challenges as being the lack of family support for those students... Unstable family environments caused by housing and food insecurity along with lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning cause children to not be able to focus on or value learning"
> It's one of the core ideas of progressivism that poverty is a trap and that people need help from the government to escape it.
Except that somehow it also adopted a notion that certain groups are forever victims. Black communities are struggling? That's because of white supremacy and systemic racism. So we need to double the struggle against the white supremacy.
Investigating the causes of Black struggles? That's racist.