lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

I know, I know, math seems to be a recurring theme with me, and it is, because numbers don't lie. People lie about numbers, of course, but the numbers themselves don't. The best way I know to cut through the morass of rhetoric and partisan maneuvering, is plain old math. Here are some of the numbers:

There are approximately 2.4 million inmates in America, each costing us about $32 a day on average. That's 81.6 million dollars a DAY, which is 244.8 million dollars a month, or almost 30 billion dollars a year. These inmates get free healthcare, free dental care, free meals and free education - all on our dime - as punishment for crimes committed. Is it only me, or does this seem more like a reward than a punishment? Be that as it may, the cost is actually higher than that. Adding in the cost of investigations, catching the criminals and prosecution, the cost is more like $112 a day per inmate. That's 268.8 million dollars a DAY, which is 80.064 billion dollars a month, or 981 billion dollars a year. That's a lot of money in anybody's book.

The estimated cost of providing healthcare, dental care, food and education for all American children, is $60 per child, per day. Now, the reason this is an estimate, is because not one State in the union actually does all that. They help here and there, hit and miss, and briefly - but no State guarantees every child these things. For the sake of this exercise, let's pretend that they do, or will at some point, and move on. That number gives us an estimated 600 million dollars a day ( assuming there are 10 million children ), which is 18 billion dollars a month, or 219 billion dollars a year. Let's say we add in housing costs as well, that would give us a grand total of approximately 450 billion dollars a year. That's just for kids, mind you, not their parents or caregivers. For the sake of argument, lets assume that this would decrease the incarceration rate by 50%, as there would be far fewer children falling through the cracks and finding crime an amusing pastime.

Now our inmate costs are down to about 491 billions dollars a year. Adding in the new costs for children, gives us a total of 710 billion dollars a year. Yikes! That's a lot of dough! Yes, it is, but consider this, we're already spending 981 billion a year on inmates AND Nation wide, we're spending an additional 120 billion on children, giving us a total of 1.1 trillion dollars a year. In any form of math, 710 billion dollars is a smaller number than 1.1 trillion. Not by much, but enough. Given those numbers, wouldn't it make sense to double our investment in children's welfare, (or 'well being', if the word 'welfare' gives you hives), thereby SAVING money in the long run?

To be sure, the numbers I mentioned can be attacked, but not much, at least, not enough to make the result change very much. There are a 100 different disciplines that would like to weigh in, adding their two cents worth, but their input would only cost us more money. The overwhelming point is this; the numbers don't lie, people lie about the numbers - and do so to make THIER point seem valid. All of this can be googled, for those that want to do the math themselves, which is what I recommend - don't take my or anyone else's word for it. We cannot expect politicians to learn any math, or to tell the t***h about the numbers out there, so we'll need to do that ourselves - that is - if we want to react to numbers, rather than rhetoric, which may have a grain of t***h but no more than that, a tiny grain.

Numbers don't lie - people lie about numbers.

solarkin

Drain the Swamp.