• osannaEnglish
    3·
    3 hours ago

    I mean, Bernie Madoff, the creator of the largest ponzi scheme in history, got 150 years.

  • turtlesareneat@piefed.caEnglish
    28·
    6 hours ago

    One of the voices in my head is my FIL who’s an ardent capitalist who’s not afraid to say really horrid shit, so I always run these things by that voice.

    He said the rich guy has to take more risks (to create the jobs we all depend on to survive and eat) so over time, he’s more likely to take financial risks that might be less than black and white. He doesn’t think it was really fraud anyway. This guy might just have been swept up in Biden’s crazy red-tape bonanza, like all the financial regulations that well-meaning Democrats implemented that will destroy our economy. Meanwhile the homeless guy has slipped through the cracks so many times, arrested and walking free the next day, at taxpayer expense - committing a crime every other day in the process, also at our expense - and that these homeless guys, when you count up how many there are in every city in town, cost us far more than the white collar crime in total anyway - so getting him off the street into a correctional facility where he can get sober and learn some occupational skills is really a kindness to everyone involved. Anyway some bleeding heart judge will let him out after a few months, like they always do, so it doesn’t really matter. But if you REALLY want to get thinking, if that homeless man hadn’t been the victim of a public school system that taught him to be lazy, and society reinforced that by giving him enough welfare that he never had to have a job, but took taxes when he did… Well, would he be homeless today?

    And that’s why I don’t hang out with my inlaws.

    • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip
      5·
      8 hours ago

      Nah, more like “they’ll cut a deal (the lawyers and judges can get chummy sometimes)” whereas the poor man has no deal to cut (basically, “who’s this guy”/“prison might actually give them a hot and a cot”).

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 hours ago

        prison still is a hell of a lot worse off than going through the shelters. shelters may have restrictive rules (not as bad as prison), but they allow you dignity.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    9 hours ago

    The fraud/theft sentencing disparity is pretty fucked, but if you pretend to not know that’s what’s causing it, we’ll never get it fixed.

  • Sibshops@feddit.cl
    6·
    9 hours ago

    If I had to guess. Probably violent crime vs non-violent crime. The government probably fined the CEO to pay back everything and he’ll have to work to do it.

  • huppakee@lemmy.world
    2·
    9 hours ago

    Not saying this is fair, but prison could be better then prison. Dont know the details, obviously.

    • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
      3·
      6 hours ago

      You mean prison could be better than the streets… I’d say that’s not entirely false. Kind of based on the raw numbers etc… bottom line we spend more money on dealing with problems caused by people in homelessness (both crimes of despiration, making hostile architecture and policing to keep them swept under the rugs and shoved into the outskirts of town, saving their lives in the ER when they collapse from hypothermia, than it actually would cost to house them).

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 hours ago

        there’s something to be said for a roof, a bed, and a hot meal. And I’m with you 100%. The problems of homelessness, especially in the US, should be solveable. We’ve currently got more units than households. Rent should be cheap, but they’ve been colluding (and there have been court cases about it).