In our opinion: Saving American men

Submitted by Mastodon on Tue, 2014-02-11 06:02

Article here. Excerpt:

'What is happening to young men?

The question may take you by surprise. Indeed, few things have been as under-reported as the way a rising generation of American men is failing in every important measurement, from obtaining a higher education to establishing a foothold in the labor market and taking responsibility for the children they father.

In his recent State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama spent a bit of time decrying a well-worn statistic that reportedly shows women in America earning 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. This, he said, “is an embarrassment.”

But while it is true that women ought to be paid equally for the same work as men, the real embarrassment may be that the 77-cent figure is misleading.

If you account for differences in education levels and the choices people make to pursue lower-paying professions, the wage gap closes to about 91 cents on the dollar. But if you look closer, the gap may not only disappear, it may exist in the other direction. A number of factors indicate trends will put males, not females, in danger in the workforce of the future.'

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Money screams. Despite resistence to marijuana legalization all over the US, it has become so in Colorado, despite it being illegal on a federal level. Clearly, the states are not worried about federal DEA agents swooping in and making big busts over the issue. The federal gov't seems either powerless to stop their own drug laws from being enforced particularly where marijuana is concerned or they really don't care, or both.

States that legalize and tax habit-forming drugs are like states that legalize some kind of gambling, also habit-forming. The result is revenue, and lots of it. In the US, it's the lottery, state and multi-state lotteries. While other forms of gambling are illegal in a given state, if there's a way to finesse it in, eventually they will, so long as the state gets a cut. In New York and other states, for decades it's been via casinos on Indian tribal lands. Not long ago, New York started to allow tribes to buy off-reservation land and build casinos. As long as they were run by the tribe, it was legal-- and as long as the revenue got split with New York State.

Marijuana will be no different. Soon, it'll be legal in more states than not, and DC will throw up its hands (it already has) and look the other way as it collects more $ from the states-- money from dope sale taxes. Or, it'll happily reduce redistributions from federally-collected tax revenue back to the states, since now, miraculously, those nasty Medicaid shortfalls are gone!

Problem is: who's most likely to develop a dope habit? Is dope mostly a "boy drug" or "girl drug"? Well maybe things have changed since I was in college, but it was guys most likely to smoke weed and also get hooked on it. Anyone who says dope isn't addictive either hasn't met a dope addict (yet) or isn't too informed on the nature of addiction. Anything can be addictive. Some things more than others, but really, anything.

So our problem of having so many dropping-out-of-life young men will not be improved by the move to dope legalization. The only young men whose condition may be bettered by it are those who go into the business of dealing it. Does the typical parent think that such is a desirable future for their son?

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2014-02-11 17:42