Very weird that I am so old and have literally never heard this mentioned in a TV show or book or movie or anything.

In four out of five states, if you go to prison, you are literally paying for the time you spend there.

As you can guess, this results in crippling debt as soon as you’re released.

The county gets back a fraction of what they hold over your head the rest of your life until you commit suicide(or die naturally and peacefully with the sword of damocles hanging over your head).

$20-$80 a day according to Rutgers.

Counties apparently sue people and employ wage garnishment to get back the money that majority of people obviously cannot pay back.

https://www.rutgers.edu/news/states-unfairly-burdening-incarcerated-people-pay-stay-fees

    • can@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      Yes, but the more I live and hear things about the states it starts to sound like satire or as if it’s a joke to see what other people will believe.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        6 months ago

        You’re just getting older, haha. The longer we live, the more we can’t help seeing what’s right in front of us.

        • Raffster@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Nah, it’s exactly the other way around. Except for a tiny minority. All the others have to ignore what’s around them in order to not go insane.

          • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksOP
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            6 months ago

            I can understand why it seems that way, but the broad American public supports civil and labor liberties, green energy, healthy and equitable policies in general; it’s the vocal minority that is subverting the will of the more fair-minded, rational and compassionate majority(sure would be nice if more than one out of every three or four people voted).

            And I don’t even think most conservatives believe in the policies they support so much as they don’t comprehend what they’re supporting and they are afraid of relinquishing control over what they narrowly perceive as “power” and “freedom”.

            The ones I’ve talked to don’t.

            • Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              I feel like most of them only vote R because they’re getting bamboozled into believing that the Rs stand for conservative, Christian, family values.

              • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                6 months ago

                Anecdotally, ignorance and fear seems to be significant factors supporting conservative beliefs.

                When I tell a liberal something that they aren’t expecting or that they didn’t know, they’ll respond with “what? How do you know that? Really?”

                Then with a conservative, I usually get “No, no. Really? Well, I don’t know about that, anyway…”

                And that’ll be some hard truth or contradicting statistic that the conservative doesn’t want to address or learn about because it will fly in the face of a fear or ignorance based belief.

                • can@sh.itjust.works
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                  6 months ago

                  This is probably not the point you intended, but I basically read that as Conservatives are against growth, personal or otherwise.

                  Which is just sad. That sounds like an unrewarding life. I doubt they want my pity but they kind of already have it when I look past the hatred and think about how they’ve been swindled.

          • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksOP
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            6 months ago

            Media did a great job before that, and humans tend to get conservative as they age, so I think there’s a lot of factors working together to make people more cynical than they ought to be.