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posted by n1 on Friday July 29 2016, @04:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the opportunists dept.

The crime rate, especially drug crime, decreases significantly when more 16-44 year olds have access to affordable Vocational Education and Training, (VET) according to a new University of Melbourne report.

Drug crime rate decreased 13 per cent when more people had access to a publicly-funded place in VET. The research also recorded a five percent and 11 per cent decrease in personal and property crime respectively, including assault, theft and burglary.

Report author, Dr Cain Polidano from the Melbourne Institute found that the extra public funding of VET (TAFE and private colleges) reduced the costs of crime.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @04:40AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @04:40AM (#381426)

    Citizens who can't find work steal wireless internet access.
    Citizens who can't find work steal cable tv from the neighbors.
    Citizens who can't find work steal electricity from the grid.
    Citizens who can't find work steal food from supermarkets.
    Citizens who can't find work steal your car and sell the parts.

    Keep hiring those H1Bs, and eventually unemployed citizens will fucking kill you.

    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @06:23AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @06:23AM (#381442)

      steal internet access

      iodine is a gateway drug

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Friday July 29 2016, @08:18AM

      by anubi (2828) on Friday July 29 2016, @08:18AM (#381451) Journal

      And they become *extremely* price-sensitive.

      So that means if you are running a restaurant, and decide to bump your soda prices, you will see an immediate cut in your clientele.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @08:29AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @08:29AM (#381453)

        Not exactly. You see a demographic shift in your customers from white to brown as you increase your prices.

        For fun, charge $2 for extra cheese and see who breaks your windows first.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @06:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @06:31PM (#381655)

      I'm halfway there. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few bodies to dump.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday July 29 2016, @05:07AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Friday July 29 2016, @05:07AM (#381429)

    You get welfare. It sux, but you can feed yourself and get basic cable + internet. You get a minimum wage job. It sucks, but you can feed yourself, you didn't need basic cable anyway. Especially now that you're working $WageAndBenefitsIncreaseHours - 1 per week, so you don't watch as much TV. You get promoted to head fry cook. Now you have a title, so $WageAndBenefitIncreaseHours goes up, so you're now working more hours for more money per week but your money/hour went down.

    Then little Joey down the street says "hey bud, sell some weed, make a week's salary in a day.". Everybody you know smokes weed, seems a no brainer, till little Joey turns out to be working for the feds and you're now looking at 10+ years in the joint.

    Give people options to work honestly and make a decent living, or work dishonestly and get farked. Never lived in an inner city, but I can sure as hell understand why those drug dealers take the chances they do.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:35AM (#381440)

      I knew a guy who used to sell drugs. He actually stashed a lot of his money, and lied and claimed the other stuff was his cut of the Social Security check his mom got for him. Doing so got him through high school until he got busted and had his cash confiscated (he hadn't thought to stash any of it because he was smalltime.) Ended up getting job placement as a janitor once he got out on parole. Haven't heard what happened to him since.

      Another story from that same HS: Kid dropped 50k on an STI as his own graduation present after dealing drugs for the length of high school. Not sure if he stopped then, or kept going, but he still had the car at least 6 months later, so the cops didn't crack down on him immediately.

    • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 29 2016, @09:57AM

      They have options, they're just too lazy or stupid to learn a skill/trade on their own. The solution isn't to pay more for minimum wage jobs, which were never meant for adults supporting themselves in the first place, the solution is to require a minimum of one year of vocational/technical training in school. Having basic skills in a trade is a fuckload more valuable to anyone than highschool English ever will be.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @10:58AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @10:58AM (#381482)

        They have options, they're just too lazy or stupid to learn a skill/trade on their own.

        Yes, those lazy fucktards working three minimum wage jobs, barely surviving on the edge of starvation. They should use all of that free time, disposable income, and excess energy they have to go back to school and learn something more useful then cleaning or flipping burgers.

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 29 2016, @11:17AM

          Yes, they should. You think it's easy for those of us who did? Should I tell you how I used to get two hours of sleep twice a day while I was in college all day and jockeying a register all night? Would you like to hear how my large family lived off the income of one waitress while my dad went to school? How about when he finished and she went to school? Cry me a fucking river.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @12:40PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @12:40PM (#381500)

            "If I could do it, everyone can" argument. That's a bit ignorant.

            So please tell me, oh Mighty Buzz, of the time you broke the 10 second barrier for a 100m sprint. Speak to me about your thought-provoking theories about the nature of space-time. Please, grace us with your world-class singing skills.

            Or if you didn't do all those things, explain to me why not? After all, other people could.

            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @03:03PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @03:03PM (#381557)

              Buzz is really proud of how he was the smartest kid in school. Not just smarter than all the other kids, smarter than all the teachers too. He'll tell you how he didn't learn anything from them because teachers are useless. He's such a special snowflake.

              And now here he is pretending to be nothing special at all.

              Which is it buzz? Are you exceptional or are you run of the mill?

              • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @04:41PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @04:41PM (#381599)

                I'd say it's more likely that he didn't learn much because our schools are and were utterly useless and without decent standards.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @11:30PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @11:30PM (#381797)

                  Easy to say. But far from true. You don't get to be the most prosperous country in the world if your public education system is total shit.

          • (Score: 5, Insightful) by rondon on Friday July 29 2016, @12:44PM

            by rondon (5167) on Friday July 29 2016, @12:44PM (#381502)

            Serious question - regardless of the arguments before this, the sum of your argument seems to be, "because my family had it hard and made it out ok, everyone else that has it hard should do the same." Is that accurate?

            Because I would think that having it hard would lead to some empathy, instead of disgust, which is what it appears that you have for poor people.

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday July 29 2016, @04:25PM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday July 29 2016, @04:25PM (#381591) Journal

              Look up his post history, please. Uzzard is one of those pathological cases whose mental world is a bubble of predatory, self-regarding darkness. About half a dozen of his best (hah...) should convince you what I'm talking about. There is a kind of toxic solipsism at work here.

              We are speaking here of a person whose entire political outlook begins and ends with "taxation is theft," which is how overgrown rebellious teenagers with beer guts and mesh caps say "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me." Remember that quote about the difference between Atlas Shrugged and LotR? It may not have been written specifically with carrion-face here in mind, but it could very well have been.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @11:39PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @11:39PM (#381798)

                > There is a kind of toxic solipsism at work here.

                Its a defense mechanism. As a kid he was a social outcast. So he reacted by deciding that his social failures were not a function of his poor skills but rather that everybody else sucked. He aged physically, but intellectually he never matured out of that mindset. Whether his parents enabled that or not, he's a cautionary tale for all those parents who tell their children they are superior in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Which is especially ironic since he's the first to complain about that sort of attitude.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @10:29PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @10:29PM (#381776)

              Its a common rraction from people who have worked their way out of bad situations. Pretty sure there is some demographic layout to who feels that way as well.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday July 29 2016, @02:29PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Friday July 29 2016, @02:29PM (#381543)

        The solution isn't to pay more for minimum wage jobs, which were never meant for adults supporting themselves in the first place

        That argument, which is quite popular in right-wing circles, is complete and total hogwash meant to justify their policy of keeping minimum wage below the point where an adult could support themselves. Also relevant is that most of those putting forward this argument would actually prefer that no minimum wage existed, because apparently making people live on $1250 a month is too generous.

        The stated purpose of the federal minimum wage was to ensure that adults making minimum wage would to be able to support themselves from the moment it was created. Here's Franklin Roosevelt explaining why he was instituting a minimum wage as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933:

        In my inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living. Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe.

        Also, I have to question this part as well:

        They have options, they're just too lazy or stupid to learn a skill/trade on their own.

        According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report [bls.gov], there are approximately 3 million people making minimum wage in the US. Of those, 250,000 or so have a bachelor's degree, another 200,000 or so have an associates degree (including 75,000 with occupational degrees, which probably means they learned a skilled trade of some kind at their community college), and another 900,000 have some college under their belt. That's about 1 out of 3 that's been accepted to college and gotten at least some college-level coursework under their belt. Which means they probably aren't stupid.

        What actually jumps out to me is that nearly half of minimum wage workers live in the southeast region of the US. That trend is more significant than race, age, and second only to educational attainment.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @03:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @03:02PM (#381556)

          Well now we have difficult choices, do we believe the facts, or the right wing news and barely warmed over talking points.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:48PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:48PM (#381628)

        i would disagree with the blanket statement that "they have options". that's not necessarily true. If you have no computer, no internet, no money, and maybe no food in a town where there are no jobs (unless you're connected) it can be damn near impossible for an immature, demoralized teen to find a trade to learn. The schools are prisons. The whole towns are battlegrounds. teens are more worried about surviving the gang/race wars and gaining power/security in said struggle than learning about some trade or business they don't even know exists or that they don't see any way that they could partake in. I'm not going to fund these socialist indoctrination centers when they can't even train kids to work any freakin' job at all. just preparing them for prison, to be a sycophantic leech, or a treasonous pig.

        i guess studies like these are what it takes for dumb ass politicians/curriculum planners to learn that real world training and skills(exposure to the working world and a chance to succeed in it) is what "schools" need to be providing since they don't have the common sense to figure it out on their own.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday July 29 2016, @04:34PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday July 29 2016, @04:34PM (#381596)

      You get welfare. It sux, but you can feed yourself and get basic cable + internet.

      I don't know where you got that idea, but no, you can't afford basic cable + Internet while surviving on welfare, at least in my state.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by quintessence on Friday July 29 2016, @05:09AM

    by quintessence (6227) on Friday July 29 2016, @05:09AM (#381430)

    When the path of least resistance is not to commit a crime, people opt for that.

    More than vocational training though is the jobs, to which I wonder with mechanized everything on the horizon, what happens when votech withers with the lack of employment opportunities.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:21AM (#381433)

      what happens when votech withers with the lack of employment opportunities.

      Duh. Some fool writes a report entitled Basic Income Reduces Crime.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:25AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:25AM (#381436)

        Counterpoint-

        Areas with a high population of welfare recipients also tend to be high crime areas.

        Not that I'm opposed to basic income necessarily, but having the entire nation on the plantation might not work out as well as anticipated.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:30AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @05:30AM (#381439)

          Entire nation on the plantation is exactly where we're headed if the 1%ers want to continue hoarding money and still keep their heads.

        • (Score: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday July 29 2016, @09:27AM

          by TheRaven (270) on Friday July 29 2016, @09:27AM (#381460) Journal

          Universal basic income doesn't mean that you won't work, it just means that you'll have a stronger bargaining position with potential employers. If you don't need the job to live then you can walk away if the conditions are too bad, but if they're okay then the extra income still increases your quality of life.

          One of the big problems with a lot of current welfare implementations is that going from not working at all to working a little bit can decrease your net income. UBI has the big advantage that if you always make more money by working than by not working, no matter how little you work. You also always make more money by working more than by working less (though with a progressive tax system, the marginal increase may be lower as you work more).

          --
          sudo mod me up
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @09:59AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @09:59AM (#381467)

            All of that is splendid and has absolutely nothing to do with the point- areas of increased welfare (i.e.- lack of job opportunities) typically have higher rates of crime.

            If there is no work, basic income means squat towards the crime rate.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @10:14AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @10:14AM (#381469)

              If you are getting a basic income, it makes it much easier to move to a better place where they may be jobs.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @01:36PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @01:36PM (#381524)

              And that's splendid but fails to account for every UBI trial ever done.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @11:08AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @11:08AM (#381486)

            The proposed Switzerland basic income was over $2,500 a month per adult. Even accounting for higher cost of living, that is massive.

            Many in the US can live comfortably on $800-1k a month and never work again. For extra money to spend on luxuries, committing opportunistic crimes once in a while such as mugging Pokemon Gotards is far easier than holding a job. If your crimes catch up to you, all your basic needs including health care are met in prison.

            You can also afford to be your own pimp and sell sex services with relative safety. To be fair, that can be called a job, but you don't even have to leave your government paid-for rented home or get off the bed to be a camwhore. Finally, the best manipulators will get clients to pay to watch them eat, or pay for the thrill of being financially dominated. That's right, there are men who pay "fin doms" to take their money and get almost nothing in return except maybe verbal abuse.

            The future is universal basic income, total unemployment, VR games, and absolute surveillance. Not so bad right?

    • (Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 29 2016, @10:12AM

      Some jobs are easily mechanized, yes. Most skilled trades though are cheaper to keep paying hourly humans indefinitely for and some skilled trades will never be mechanized.

      Example, it will never be worth the cost of 3d printing yourself a plumbing robot vs hiring a skilled plumber for an hour.

      No, not even when your 3d printer is actually capable of printing circuits on computer chips (kinda necessary for any version of robot-topia), which will be a very long time from now.

      Also, resources are not infinite nor are they all home recyclable by any stretch of the imagination, so you will be paying for them. You'll also likely be charged a recycling fee for any printed objects you don't want to store indefinitely as well.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @10:49AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @10:49AM (#381479)

        some skilled trades will never be mechanized

        The job of court jester or staff troll will never be replaced by a toilet paper roll with a sharks+lasers joke printed on it.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 29 2016, @11:18AM

          Indeed, Bender aside, robots are not funny.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday July 29 2016, @04:18PM

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday July 29 2016, @04:18PM (#381590) Journal

            No, they're not, but I need to give you credit for trying.

            God, you're to fucking typical. I knew, just KNEW, your idiotic "well I did X Y and Z back when I was a young shit golem, why can't everyone else?" was going to get smeared all over this thread. newsflash, shithead: it ain't the 70s no more. Purchasing power of the dollar has dropped incredibly low, almost as bad as World War II era if I remember right. I have TWO jobs, and still make barely $25K a year pre-tax, and this is WITH a hard-science degree (which is being used in neither...).

            The times, they have a-changed. Yes, I'd have more money for myself if I weren't doing all that anti-human-trafficking stuff, but you know what? That kind of selfishness is what lead to all this in the first place.

            I realize that your kind are characterized by a kind of ahistorical solipsism, and that there is no saving you; I will, however, point out these pathological thought patterns for the benefit of all watching who know you're full of shit but can't, or can't be bothered, to articulate why.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @02:55PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @02:55PM (#381551)

        Why print one yourself if you only need it for an hour. Just hire someone else's robot.

        Maybe your building, street, town or whatever can all chip in 20c and get a robot drain cleaner. There goes a large percentage of plumbing jobs.

        Of course robots will never be able to join pipes together. It would take some kind of magic welding robot. And we all know how far into the future that will be.

      • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 29 2016, @03:47PM

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday July 29 2016, @03:47PM (#381569) Journal

        Example, it will never be worth the cost of 3d printing yourself a plumbing robot vs hiring a skilled plumber for an hour.
         
        For repairs to old houses, sure. But, once they start 3d-printing the whole house why wouldn't they 3d-print the pipes as well?

      • (Score: 2) by Bobs on Friday July 29 2016, @04:05PM

        by Bobs (1462) on Friday July 29 2016, @04:05PM (#381583)

        Yes, but...

        one of my neighbors is a plumber. He used to make good money during the construction boom a few years ago but not so much anymore, largely because of tech:

        Much of new plumbing is mostly simple, flexible screw (or worst case glue) together plastic tubes. You don't need a lot of skill / experience to deal with installing or even replacing it. The opportunities for high-skill, "well-paid" plumbers are shrinking rapidly. The work is being done faster (so pays less), requires no special tools and is often getting done by lower-paid, lower skill people.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @04:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @04:45PM (#381602)

        and some skilled trades will never be mechanized.

        We have no idea how sophisticated robots will even get.

      • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday July 30 2016, @12:37AM

        by Gravis (4596) on Saturday July 30 2016, @12:37AM (#381815)

        No, not even when your 3d printer is actually capable of printing circuits on computer chips (kinda necessary for any version of robot-topia), which will be a very long time from now.

        maskless lithography [wikipedia.org] is already a thing and yes, you can buy small kiosks that make chips, so "a very long time from now" is just incorrect.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @01:14AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @01:14AM (#381824)

        We have this thing called software now, and multi-purpose computers.

        Or if you're are real cheapskate plug in wireless comms and do it all in the cloud.

        It's a complete strawman anyway. Robot-topia can still have factories to make the robots. No need to do any of that by yourself, unless it's just for fun.