The Nation Needs Less Policeman

Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney caused an outrage with his comment saying that the nation needs less firemen, teachers, and police officers. He later qualified this by saying that certain municipalities needed less civil servants, as populations have decreased in certain areas. I agree with him here. If a municipality goes from say 50,000 to 15,000, obviously they've no choice but to lay off municipal workers as they don't even have the same tax base they used to. Overall, the government needs to go over the resources it allocates, and this includes the personnel the hire and the policies they have. Take marijuana use. A number of people are arrested because of marijuana use. If someone's sole crime is possession of marijuana use, then they should not be imprisoned. A criminal record reduces or eliminates chances of gainful employment, meaning that said person will be on state support. The time they spend in prison is time spent on state support, where the government has to feed them, cloth them, pay for their medical expenses, etc. If people are not interested in paying more taxes, then one major way of reducing government spending is to reform drug laws. This is already underway in some states, including New York. This is not to say addiction shouldn't be dealt with and drug use shouldn't be discouraged, but that there's no reason to use the prison system to do this. There are big public education campaigns on the danger of nicotine and too much alcohol. They work somewhat, most people don't smoke cigarettes, and while many people drink, its not cool to be an alcoholic. So education and social pressure work. I've no comment on teachers and firemen overall beyond areas with declining populations, as I've not gone over the numbers. But definitely, we need less cops and less prisons.