CRIME PREVENTION

Dear Citizens Concerned with Crime:

Only one thing will reduce the explosion of crime. It is not any of the following:

More police or prisons: Career criminals avoid police, and crimes of passion occur even within the police community. How can we help habitual criminals or stressed workers?

Youth programs: Adult policy-makers forget how they disliked their parents' idea of fun. Yet, we waste billions of dollars trying to entertain kids with ideas they find boring and ridiculous?

More tax-supported jobs: Rather than teaching the work ethic, these phony programs teach "give me something for nothing!" Where are the real jobs to teach real respect for self and others?

More self-esteem programs: If you teach a person self-esteem, you affirm him for a day. If you teach him to work and give him a real job, you affirm him for a lifetime. Where are the jobs?

The above, failed tax-addicted programs imprison us to more taxes and fewer jobs. People suffer more stress and have less hope. As taxes increase, businesses layoff people and reduce services: more unemployment. A 1% rise in unemployment causes 33,000 suicides. What is the cost in abuse of drugs, children, spouses and alcohol? Of 1994's year's college graduates, 35% will never work in their career field. Our employment economics are the killing laws--necronomics.

By merely being alive, everyone now plays the increasingly popular crime lottery. Big winners lose their lives. The less fortunate? Robbed or raped. Ignored players count their blessings. The relevant question is not Why me? but When me? Let's stop this deadly lottery!

The 24-hour workweek is the key to not only less crime
but more time and money for self, family and community.

Both public and private agencies are laying off people. From where are the real jobs going to come? They can come from only one place, sharing the available real jobs. Either we share the declining jobs or share the rising crime, violence, taxes and inflation!

When you work more than a 24-hour workweek, you deny others a chance to work. You license and encourage them to correspondingly reduce your job chances. They return in kind with taxes, muggings and murders to reduce your workweek.

When you work more than a 24-hour workweek, you deny others true self-esteem. Not getting high on life by honest labor increases highs from drugs. If you want less drugs, let people work some of the hours hogged by you.

The solution to the crime wave is a 24-hour workweek. The basic steps to it are

(1) a one-time refinancing of most loans to 1% interest rate,
(2) wage-based benefits instead of employer-mandated benefits,
(3) healthcare with community service, and
(4) overtime being double-time beginning at 24 hours.

For young people, work them at an earlier age, for they are safer at work than they are either in or out of school. Letting kids learn the work ethic is a babysitting service that doesn't cost the parents or public a single cent. Letting kids have a childhood free from work is the most dangerous thing for a child to have. The worst child abuse? Not letting kids have jobs. Would you rather a teenager be on the job for money or in prison for murder?

While full employment will not end all crime, the crimes for more money and from low self-esteem will decline. In the one life you have, which workweek will give you more money and time, less taxes and crime: 40-hours or 24-hours? It's too late to offer an unemployed person a job after he robs, rapes or murders a loved one.

Sincerely,

Robert S. Barnett

P.S. I apologize for the harsh tone of this letter but the subject matter is harsher.

Crime Prevention
Answer is not more police and prisons? Y N
Youth programs are not the answer? Y N
Tax-supported job programs are an artificial waste of human potential? Y N
Jobs for the willing and/or able are the answer? Y N
24 in 4 is the key to quick, permanent job creation? Y N

Warning: Anyone found stealing lifehours will be forever banned from participation in and rewards of Better Democracy and Capitalism.
 Homepage
 Index