De-funding police

Writes Greg Privette:

Hi Lew,

I have read some of the posts about the idea of de-funding police that has originated in Minneapolis but seems to be spreading. The common questions seem to revolve around who will people call when they are robbed and so on. I also thought about this from a little different perspective. If the city councils haven’t thought through the security ramifications, they should at least have the ability to think through the actual fiscal realities since “managing” the city and its budget is supposed to be their main purpose for existence. When they talk about redirecting the police budget to social programs it seems they are only looking at one side of the balance sheet. I am not sure about Minneapolis, but in most municipalities the police are a huge revenue source. Maybe even to the point of being a “profit” center. In many cities they represent one of the largest expenses but also one of the largest sources of revenue. So if they end the police through de-funding they save on the expense side of the ledger but also suffer on the revenue side. It reminds me of the final Clinton budget where we supposedly had a “surplus”. Congress and the media engaged in an endless debate about how to spend that “surplus” when the reality was they were still spending more than they took in. In the same way these city councils are wanting to redirect a budget savings that likely won’t exist.

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.