Incarceration Up, Education Down: America’s Cannibalistic Profiteering

[Donnachaidh]

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/01/16/incarceration-up-education-down-americas-cannibalistic-profiteering/

America incarcerates more of it’s citizens than any other country in the world. With only 5% of the world population, America has more than 25% of the world’s prisoners. America is either the country with the most criminals in the world, the country that has become the greatest police state in the world, or the country whom, with profit as the motive for all that is done, has found a way to exploit it’s population through incarceration for monetary gain.

The steep incline in the number of Americans incarcerated began in 1980. Since that time the number of Americans incarcerated has jumped from under 500,000 people to close to 2,500,000. The advent of private prisons during that time has created a powerful lobby, on behalf of it’s Wall Street investors, to lengthen sentences. Longer sentences means more prisoners. More prisoners means more prisons. More prisoners, and more prisons, means more profit. As a result, Americans now spend almost $70 billion a year on a corrections system (including prison, probation and parole) being run largely for profit.

A similar scheme by lobbyists has resulted in a system that exploits education, and has an equally negative affect on society. Lobbyists have repeatedly, and successfully, argued for the increase in financial aid to students. Rather than this assistance being passed on to students, privately run Universities have simply raised tuition.

“They are a business — higher ed must be a viewed as a business. Like any other business, what they are all about is making more money..,” states Dr. Marty Nemko, an advisor, career counselor, talk radio host, and prolific blogger, as quoted in the Daily Caller.

More at the link --