Life's Pleasures Quote by Matt Gonzalez

Gonzalez is doing something politicians often dodge: naming the market logic that makes the drug trade durable. By calling dealing “lucrative,” he refuses the moralistic shorthand that frames it as pure depravity or cultural failure. The line treats illegal work as work, and that’s the provocation. If the underground economy is offering competitive pay, then the “war” on drugs starts looking less like a battle against vice and more like a labor-policy problem the state has neglected.

The phrase “enticement… we have to break down” is careful. He’s not excusing harm; he’s shifting the target from individuals to incentives. “Break down” implies dismantling a structure, not simply arresting people out of it. That’s an implicit critique of enforcement-first strategies that raise risk without shrinking demand, often making the business even more profitable for those willing to take it on.

Then he pivots to the real political ask: “making opportunities and paying decent wages.” It’s almost blunt in its simplicity, and that’s why it lands. “Opportunities” is the standard civic keyword, but “decent wages” tightens the screw. He’s pointing at the unglamorous truth that many legal jobs don’t compete: low pay, unstable hours, limited mobility. In that context, criminalized income becomes rational, not romantic.

The subtext is a challenge to the public: if we want different choices, we have to fund different options. His argument isn’t that communities lack values; it’s that they’ve been offered a labor market with too few viable exits and too many well-paying entrances.