We're In the Jailhouse Now

You know how I’m always raving on about every government program being a jobs program? And people say, well, there must be exceptions – things like, say, prisons. So here’s a recent article in which it is contended that there is “little, if any, economic spinoff in jobs, businesses and new housing” when the Big House comes to town – i.e., when a sizeable prison is built in or near a community. This, of course, contradicts the major premise by which state legislators in particular continuously lobby prison bureaus; there’s nothing like a nice new jail to at least temporarily satisfy the cravings of a porkoholic and supposedly win him enough votes to stay in office. So the meme (that word again!) that “a prison is good for the community” stays in place, and data be damned. Of course, at no time in the usual dialogue is the question ever raised, why do we need so many prisons anyway? No one cares who is locked up or why, only that the jail generates jobs – or so they think. This basic outline could be applied to nearly all other government programs – the people who have the jobs, or want jobs, are the ones who put all the pressure on legislators and bureaucrats, and the ones who pay (including those same people, by the way) are too dispersed to have any impact. This is, in fact, the principal cause of growth in government, and there is virtually no limit to how far it can go as long as the Constitution is ignored by everyone involved.