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Originally Posted by Achilles
These bums are now drinking less to extend their lives. This needs to be factored into the cost analysis, it might be more costy to house them if they are going to live a lot longer.
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It really depends on what you're comparing to what for any economic analysis to make sense. I mean if we're saying that we can either let them sit on the welfare benefits system versus sending them to prison then the former is dramatically less expensive (in the UK at least, I doubt it's too different elsewhere). If the third option is to abandon these people entirely then that tends to push up crime levels (which other studies have shown far more expensive than even prison). So what exactly is being weighed up?
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I don't see why you have to get all emotional on us phang. It's purely an ecomonic decision; How best to deal with the casualties of our civilisation in a cost-effective manner.
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Well, if we're ignoring morality entirely then I suspect mass execution will always tend to work out cheaper on a per capita basis.
It costs £35k per year for an adult UK prison sentence, I suspect once you got into the swing of things you could probably get executions down to a few hundred pounds per victim. We might be able to lower costs further by mass burials or the use of gas. In the longer term mass sterilisation of those at risk groups (e.g. poor people, certain ethnic groups) as a preventative measure might be cheaper still.
The point is if we're just looking at this in terms of economic costs, how far do we wish to take this?