In the NYT, Nicholas Kristof writes:
Professors Wilkinson and Pickett crunch the numbers and show that the same relationship holds true for a range of social problems. Among rich countries, those that are more unequal appear to have more mental illness, infant mortality, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, homicides, and so on.
They find the same thing is true among the 50 American states. More unequal states, like Mississippi and Louisiana, do poorly by these social measures. More equal states, like New Hampshire and Minnesota, do far better.
So, it's not the ice hockey that's behind Moynihan's Law of Proximity to the Canadian Border, it's the inequality.
Now, it could be that the Rich Getting Richer is, overall, a bad thing. I don't know. But, the single most obvious quantitative example runs in the opposite direction.
Here's one historical experiment in the effects of the Rich Getting Richer that ought to be familiar to subscribers to the New York Times: homicides in New York City.
New York City always had a lot of income and wealth inequality, but it really took off with Wall Street's boom that started part way through 1982. The rich in New York City became unbelievably rich in the 1990s and 2000s. And what happened? Homicides in New York City hit 2,245 in 1990, then dropped 79 percent by 2009.
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That point goes much more broadly. Inequality in America has been rising steadily since the early or mid-'70s, right through the '90s and 2000s.
Not only has the homicide rate been plummeting since its 1992 peak, but also the rates for all violent and property crimes. So much for the theory that auto theft, etc., is caused by inequality (through envy or whatever).
Drug, alcohol, and tobacco use began declining a little later, like the mid-late 1990s among high schoolers. But it's still way down.
Teenage pregnancies for all races have been falling since circa 1990 (can't remember the peak year). Etc.
Why does inequality not matter? Because human beings aren't strongly adapted to a society where vast disparities in accumulated wealth are possible. Neither are "our primate relatives" who are the subject of other inequality studies.
No, those primates are at the bottom of the hierarchy because of the threat of physical violence by the dominant ones, not because some have accumulated more monkey money than others. Violence is what they and we pay attention to -- does the world seem to be getting more dangerous or safer?
Human societies have always had lots of violence, as well as periods when it was rising or falling, whereas highly inegalitarian ones are much more recent. So our mind will pay more attention to violence, and less to inequality.
So Nicholas Kristof doesn't notice what is different between states like Mississippi and Minnesota? It never occurs to him that the real "inequality" is the behavioral differences among the populations? He can't be missing that.
Mr Sailer, you need a word or short phrase for "issues on which it is forbidden to play the race card".
It seems an interesting experiment is going on in Minnesota, whereby a solid dose of Somali immigrants is being injected in the general population.
As Minnesota won't be pulling away from the Canadian border anytime soon, let's see if this new development will invalidate Moynihan's law.
You can add and subtract to infinity. Especially regarding equality.
It's not so much the inequality, but which side is responsible for it.
On the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, Mississippi has not one member, while Minnesota has six.
If not exactly to scale, it gives a decent picture, I'd guess, of the numbers of extremely rich people living in Minnesota versus Mississippi. Even though the Forbes 400 members are all billionaires there are also probably, in relative terms, a whole lot more people worth $10 million or $100 million in Minnesota than in Mississippi.
So why is inequality in Mississippi higher? Because of the people at the bottom, not the ones at the top.
That's not to say that income inequality doesn't matter. There can be too much wealth accumulation at the top, especially since what's often important is not absolute wealth but relative wealth.
Higher income disparity means that a smaller number of rich people can squeeze out a larger number of poor people when it comes time to buy a home or to influence a politician.
But it's not the disparity causing the dysfunction in Mississippi, but rather the reverse.
Oh and by the way, I would also point out that proximity to the Canadian border appears to have been a liability when it came to winning New Year's Day Bowl games - Miss St beat Michigan, Alabama beat Michigan St, Florida beat Penn St, TCU beat Wisconsin, Texas Tech beat Northwestern, and Oklahoma beat Connecticut.
I'd put my money on Auburn beating Oregon, too.
"As Minnesota won't be pulling away from the Canadian border anytime soon, let's see if this new development will invalidate Moynihan's law."
Didn't Detroit do that already?
If people (mostly liberals) are worried about inequality in this country, then the first thing they should want the government to do is stop importing poverty.
Wilkinson and Pickett's evidence has been comprehensively debunked by the London think tank Policy Exchange. Their pamphlet is at http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/publications/publication.cgi?id=195
It's a good hundred pages, as I recall, but it's well worth a read both by those who like statistics and by those who don't know much about them but are interested in learning.
UK inequality (by Gini coefficient, including housing costs) was declining from the end of WW2 up until around 1978. Yet crime rose dramatically over that period.
From 1978 to 1995 UK inequality increased dramatically, from Gini 24 to nearly 37. Crime rose dramatically over that period.
From 1995 to today, inequality has increased before levelling off. Crime has fallen.
It is interesting how statistical studies whose conclusions would be laughed out of a good first-year statistics course gain reverential attention from media institutions when their conclusions accord with the policy preferences of these institutions.
Let’s break this one down. First, the correlation-versus-causation problem: can we think of other variables, especially demographic variables, that might promote both more income inequality and more crime and social malfunction? Yes, I think we can. Furthermore, crime and misbehavior can themselves be causes of income inequality, as they render the misbehaving population either incarcerated or incompetent to advance much beyond survival.
But suppose, after adjusting for other explanatory variables and untangling the role of misbehavior as both effect and cause of inequality, we are still left with some possible influence of income inequality on crime and other malfunctions. Then the question becomes what to do about it: reduce inequality or address the social side effects directly by other means.
The answer partly depends on why the inequality exists. No one seeks inequality for its own sake. We would seek more equality if that were the only choice. But it is not.
Suppose inequality exists as the heritage of exploitative economic arrangements, inherited property which was acquired by conquest or theft, as was largely true in much of 18th Century continental Europe. Then there is a case for redistributing property, taxing it into less concentration or allowing a free market to dissolve its importance in determining current income.
But suppose inequality is the result of having a free and vigorous economy that yields strong growth even if people vary widely in their ability and disposition to contribute to that growth. Inequality is then a side effect of accommodating variety and preserving freedom while allowing society to advance. These characteristics are worth maintaining even if they have (some possible) costs.
So the sensible thing to do is to try to reduce undesirable side effects. That means strengthening the customs and laws that deter misbehavior. For example, strengthening law enforcement, as New York City and other cities did in the 1990s, or dismantling a perversely destructive welfare system, as we began to do the mid-1990s.
That is roughly how the free states of America worked in the 19th and early 20th Century, when inequality was inevitable, given massive differences among our own people, not to mention the flood of new immigrants, and the wide opportunities we offered the for all to seek their own fortunes on their own terms. It is much less easy now because so many options for dealing directly with crime and other social problems have been removed by either Court decision or the nationalization of all social policy in Washington.
The genius of modern ‘dictatorial liberalism’ is that, be eliminating many sensible alternatives, it leaves us with massive problems and apparently no choice but to adopt its latest recommendations. And there will always be tendentiously sloppy studies to support this recommendation.
"issues on which it is forbidden to play the race card".
"taboo" will do, as there are no others now.
"Not only has the homicide rate been plummeting since its 1992 peak, but also the rates for all violent and property crimes. So much for the theory that auto theft, etc., is caused by inequality (through envy or whatever)."
Aggravated assault's gone up, as I think Steve showed. People are still getting stabbed and shot, they're just surviving more because trauma medicine has improved. It's not a murder if the victim lives. ;)
Seriously this is one of the things I never liked about conservatives, much more than any hypothetical Nazi stuff. Three people get all the money and they think it's OK. I know maybe Wendell Berry and the Southern Agrarians wouldn't approve, but that's what 'conservative' means now to most people--if you're socially conservative and against massive inequality, you need a new word. Distributist? Communitarian? Anyone?
Maybe capital letters will do the trick. You could refer to "The Impermissible Explanation".
Steve, as you must know the big drop in homicides in New York city was down purely to the reversal of the previous 'liberal' criminal justice policy that held sway in the 1970s, to be replaced by a hard-nosed zero tolerance regime.
The fact of the matter was that the US prison population burgeoned massively in the '80s.The net effect was the general removal and 'warehousing' of black and hispanic males off the streets (where they are liable to rob,rape, maim and murder)and into 'da big house' where the worst they can do is bugger some poor naive 18 year old long-haired whitebread silly-bastard dope smoker - and bugger up his mind psychologically for life.
I know I won't win any popularity for writing this, but it's more or less waht happened.
Steve, you're getting away from the basics here. Kristoff's article is bs. Simply put, the more blacks, and to a lesser extent latinos, in a given area, the more social problems. End of story.
Unlike, I suspect, Mr. Kristoff and many who will read his column, I've lived in a poor neighborhood. I didn't find that poor people resent the rich for being rich. Even a modest middle-class lifestyle is not only beyond their grasp but beyond their comprehension. The TV shows and commercials featuring middle- and upper-class settings and belongings seem like fairy stories or science fiction to them. They do resent the small differences in wealth between themselves and a slightly better-off neighbor but that's the kind of income inequality that Mr. Kristoff himself dismisses.
One of the most salient features of the way poor people think is their almost total disregard for anything happening outside their own immediate neighborhood. They pay some attention to local news, almost none to national or international events. They do pay constant attention to the smallest details of what's going on right around them. My world was never smaller or more full of drama (even if only by association) than when I lived in a poor neighborhood.
Oops, I think I misspelled what's-his-name's name twice or however many times I typed it.
Excellent observation by Wes above.
Attention academics and journalists: Give us figures controlled for race or don't waste our time.
So what you're implying is that there is a stronger correlation between racial makeup of a nation and the negative outcomes mentioned? That is, the rich white and asian nations that have greater wealth inequality also have a lower proportion of other races?
Would this mean that perhaps the cause of the inequality in wealth is that the other races don't compete as well and make less money?
If these are the case, then that article is kind of silly because it says the bad outcomes are due to inequality, but it doesn't examine where the inequality comes from.
The simple explanation is that both the inequality and the negative outcomes derive from the cultures that don't compete well in the marketplace and that at the same time are the cause of most of the crime and other negative outcomes.
Am I right in thinking this?
you are quite very much confusing me:
one the one hand, you are disgusted with minorities who have an entitlement complex yet
you feel that the working-class (mostly Whites) should be entitled to a middle-class wage and benefits.. you are in favor of all kinds of protectionist rackets to benefit this group of people.
why the discrepancy other than race?
such hypocrisy, you don't believe in principles at all, just racial allegiance.
Gee, what are some other differences -- besides a large Gini Index on income inequality -- between say Mississippi and Louisiana on the one hand and Minnesota and New Hampshire on the other? I'll give the self-proclaimed Brit epidemiologists a clue: To paraphrase Wilde, it's the independent variable that dare not speak its name.
Since these soi disant epidemiologists claim Britain as their homeland they should be aware of the Whitehall study. This is a real piece of epidemiological research that studied health patterns within the British civil service. It demonstrated that the necessary and relatively minor status distinctions within the UK's civil service system had profoundly negative consequences for the health of lower level functionaries. It is these kinds of daily status inequalities among members of essentially the same social classes that have profound effects -- via higher primate status hierarchies and their psychological underpinnings -- on the health of human beings. The kinds of higher-order social inequalities that these epidemiologists pretend to focus on have health affects that are, by comparison, third-order at best.
As a homely example, the stress level - and hence health - of a worker in a McDonald's franchise, an oil company's executive headquarters, or a post office will be far more profoundly affected by demeaning interactions with his boss than by comparisons of his condition with some billionnaire with whom he will never have any contact.
I've had training as an epidemiologist, that is my current job title, and I have a PH.D. in a closely related field. It's a sad reflection on my discipline that crap like this is published so regularly.
i'm still convinced that the violent crime rate has fallen because there are more police, the police work is better, and criminals stay in prison longer. go back to 1980 levels of police presence, police work, and incarceration rates, and the crime rate goes way back up.
but if you really want to see the crime rate go back up, cut off the now preposterous level of government wealth transfer from the upper class european taxpayers to the low class americans of all races.
how many americans are on food stamps now? it's ludicrous. wipe out just that one program and see what happens. wipe out all these programs which basically make it so that like 50 million people never have to pay for anything and get a nearly free ride. then we'll see how peaceful they are. not paying any income tax, getting free or nearly free housing, take those away and see what the crime rate does.
Obesity, crime and family dissolution are but the better-known correlates of income inequality. Less known but so well illustrated here by Mr. Kristof is envy-that-makes-you-stupid. To Kristof, a super-rich guy is someone who, by buying a few newspapers and TV networks, can exercise more influence than any tweedy Times columnist.
lol. the US teen birth rate is "lower". lower than the old US teen pregnancy rate. and that's it. it's still the highest in the industrial world by a huge margin. teenage births per 1000 teenage girls:
39 US
24 UK
16 ireland
12 canada
7 france
7 sweden
5 italy
5 japan
4 netherlands
even worse, the rate by group:
70 "hispanic" americans
59 african americans
26 european americans
even euro americans are having more teenage births than europeans in europe.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/TeenBirths/2010/12/30/id/381484
i guess this is kind of like how the violent crime rate in LA is "down" to 1967 levels. what progress! now that euro americans commit almost no violent crime in LA, it requires bringing in mexicans to raise the violent crime rate so much that it's back to "the bad old days".
Homicides dropped in NY because city gov flooded he upscale cosmopolitan areas with cops while they cooked the crime stats in NAM hoods.
If inequality is so bad, why are we importing an underclass by the tens of millions?
Oh, right, thinking clearly is verboten. My mistake. Let's go on decrying inequality while importing a helot race from south of the border to serve to make the overclass here richer, and to make sure it never has to do any manual labor at all.
I have written about this.
Deaton, a heavy-weight economics professor at Princeton, did the analysis with African-Americans removed, and found no effect.
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/02/spirit-level-dishonest-about-state-of.html
Wilkinson and Picket are two lying charlatans, who don't even cite Deaton's paper.
Wilkinson & Pickett have been debunked not only by Tino but Lane Kenworthy.
Why is Mississippi so unequal compared to New Hamphshire?
I can't think of any possible explanation. This is so mysterious that even the best minds are baffled. Not even Sherlock Homes and Dr. Watson could crack this. We'll probably never know the answer, but, in the meantime, let's spend lots of money on a stimulus plan for Mississippi. That'll probably eliminate whatever differentiates these two states.
All inequalities are not the same. What is the functional difference from say, the wealth and power of a millionaire (net worth $200 million) to that of a billionaire (net worth $50 billion)? I'd say, not much. That the rich in NYC got even richer, does not IMHO directly cause social harm. They already had enormous social and political power through their wealth, adding more zeros at the end of their net worth hardly changes that. And of course, fame and notoriety can trump mere wealth. Steven Spielberg and Michael Moore exercise more political and social power than say, Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE.
Rather, it is the massive addition of poor, non-White, mostly Mexican and Central American peasants into America that causes not just violence but serious competitive shortcomings. Humans are not monkeys or apes, we use tools and manipulate our environment on a massive scale, and our ability as Americans to compete for scarce resources with China depends not on massive manpower but net brainpower and cooperation (reducing social friction costs, police, social welfare, etc.)
In the end it IS all about the money.
You should check out Tino's blog where he spent a lot of time debunking these claims.
It also seems that nations or places with the biggest income gaps tend to be those that are racially/culturally most diverse. Compare the income of a white millionaire of Latin background with that of a pure-blooded Indian peasant of the hillside in Mexico.
Of course, a society doesn't need gaps to suffer form a host of social and psychological problems. Hong Kong has many who are very rich and many who are very poor, but it seems to be doing better than a place like Somalia or many African nations where nearly everyone is economically equal: poor. And a kind of income equality exists for most Haitians, who are equally dirt poor amongst one another. So, are Haitians any healthier or better off than people in nations with more striking income gaps?
The real problem is culture/racial gap than income gap. A people of ability and values will improve themselves and work up the ladder in system that's unequal; over time, they'll make themselves less unequal through success. In the early 20th century, the income gap between wasp elites and Jewish immigrants was immense, but after several decades, Jews not only closed but surpassed the level of wasps.
And if we take international income gap into account, China was one of the poorest nations in the 20th century, with there being huge gaps between itself and the West/Japan. But the Chinese seem to be catching up, but why? They seem to have the cultural atttributes which allow them to catch up.
So, some people can close the income gap, some people cannot. Two kinds of people who exacerbate the income gap are Jews and blacks. Jews are so talented and smart that they rise way above us, and it's difficult for us to compete with them. As for many blacks, they just don't have the intelligence/temperament to work at closing the income gap--except through wasteful and worthless government jobs.
Steve S. said:
But, the single most obvious quantitative example runs in the opposite direction.
Here's one historical experiment in the effects of the Rich Getting Richer that ought to be familiar to subscribers to the New York Times: homicides in New York City.
New York City always had a lot of income and wealth inequality, but it really took off with Wall Street's boom that started part way through 1982. The rich in New York City became unbelievably rich in the 1990s and 2000s. And what happened? Homicides in New York City hit 2,245 in 1990, then dropped 79 percent by 2009.
But NYC is the exception that proves the "equality is good" rule. Over the nineties and naughties Manhattan became fairly homogeneous - an island of white upper class privilege, instead of a huge economic and ethnic simmering melting pot. All the poorer and blacker people went accross the river to Newark, where the crime rate continued to be very high.
So in fact, Manhattan became more socially egalitarian in the sense that it now hosts no under-class people. Such people do not perpetrate violent crimes against each other, they have too much to lose.
White collar crime is a different matter, but apparently no on in the US regards white collar crime as illegal.
The answer is obvious: get rid of the poor people. Worked for San Francisco, seems to be working for New York. Make the city unaffordable for poorer people to live there, then watch the city's social problems greatly diminish. The cherry on top is, of course, that you get to be sanctimonious about it! All those places that don't get rid of poor people are obviously racist.
The crime decline of the '90s and 2000s was not due to more police or a larger prison population. Canada had a crime wave that was nearly identical to the American one in timing (when it rose and fell) and similar in magnitude up and down.
However, the Canadian prison population per capita barely changed during the '90s, and the number of police officers per capita slightly shrank. See the chapter on Canada in Zimring's book The Great American Crime Decline.
(He also shows that abortion couldn't have contributed to the decline in Canada since they had a different timing of legalized abortion than we did, yet the crime waves look about the same.)
The only usual suspect that explains a rise or fall in the crime rate is how many 15-24 year-olds there are, although even that doesn't even get half of the variation over time.
Racial composition obviously plays little or no role in changes over time, although it explains why two places during the same time differ in levels of crime. 14th C. England had a homicide rate 2 orders of magnitude higher than now, yet there were no blacks, Hispanics, or whoever.
And NAMs have only grown as a fraction of the population during the '90s and 2000s, yet crime rates have been falling. This was one reason why the crime decline after the '92 peak came as such a surprise.
Homicide, theft, drug use, teen pregnancy, and in general out-of-control behavior goes through its own natural ("endogenous") cycle, largely unaffected by outside variables like inequality, policy / legislation, religiosity, etc.
Income gaps seem to be much less problematic in more or less homogeneous societies. For one thing, if you're a poor Pole and look upon a rich Pole, you might feel a degree of envy but at least it's your own kind that seems to be the winner in society. It's the psycho-politics of identification. For example, poor blacks share, at least psychologically, in the wealth of Oprah. She's rich and black, so even poor blacks FEEL rich and powerful through her.
It's like Imelda Marcos saying she had to live a rich life so that Filipinos could 'share' in her luxury and wealth. She was like a national soap opera, the culture of which is centered around poor women watching the stories of rich women in the fantasy world of TV.
But if a poor Pole were to look upon a rich Jew, he might feel not only economically envious but cheated by or left out of the system controlled by an alien elite. Germany was ruled by the rich during the Nazi era, but many Germans didn't mind or minded less than having been dominated/manipulated by Jews during the Weimar period(or as the National Socialists claimed).
Similarly, Russia is still run by political and economic gangsters, but many Russians see them as 'our gangsters', whereas during the Yeltsin 90s, many Russians felt that their country had been hijacked by global Jewish gangsters. So, 'our crooks' are better than 'other crooks'.
Other than the politics of identification, there's also greater hope when people like oneself are at the top. A poor Pole who looks upon a rich Pole might think, "hey, if he did it, I can do it too." But, if most of the rich in Poland were non-Polish, many Poles might feel, "the system is rigged against us Poles or we dumb Poles are not smart enough to compete with those supersmart non-Poles, be they Germans or Jews."
Similarly, with certain sports being so totally dominated by blacks, white athletes don't even try. They feel, "black guys are gonna dominate all the running back and 100 m sprinting positions, so why should I even bother?"
In many areas like finance and hightech, many black and 'white trash' types feel, "those are beyond our mental ability, and besides, the system is rigged against us, so why should we even try?" That can lead to paranoia, rage, and bitterness.
Dear agnostic:
Have you looked at the role (if any) of lead in the environment? I looked at the lead --> crime theory a few years ago and found it hard to falsify, but also hard to come up with too much supporting evidence either.
Look at any list of countries sorted by income inequality and what you will notice is that, while there are plenty of crappy countries with less income inequality than the US, there are scant few countries with higher inequality that you would want to live in. By my count there are 45 countries with higher income inequality than the US on this list (sorted by column 2), and only maybe three or 4 I'd care to live in: Argentina, Chile, Singapore and Hong Kong. There are about 80 countries with lower income inequality, and that includes all of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
The connection may not be exact, but higher income inequality is by all appearances worse. The real question is if that disparity is a result of human capital differences between various ethnic groups, or whether some government economic policy besides immigration is helping with the disparity. It would be nice to know.
"Canada had a crime wave that was nearly identical to the American one in timing (when it rose and fell) and similar in magnitude up and down."
I didn't know that. A racial breakdown would help. We all know that among US blacks crime rose in the late 1960s, then kind of plateaued, then resumed its rise in the mid-80s, peaked in the early 90s and then fell through the rest of the 90s and through the 00s. What about crime among US whites? What about whites in Canada?
Since crime rates in Canada were always very low, is the history of their rise and fall even that important?
Another question: was the black US crime rate in the rural south ever as high as the urban black US crime rate? I doubt it. Well, in the last two decades gentrification has moved millions of blacks from the cities back to the rural south. What portion of the crime decline of the 90s and 00s can be explained through that? Perhaps it's simply harder to organize a gang in areas with low population density.
Hong Kong has many who are very rich and many who are very poor, but it seems to be doing better than a place like Somalia or many African nations where nearly everyone is economically equal: poor.
Doing better in everything except having babies.
"but if you really want to see the crime rate go back up, cut off the now preposterous level of government wealth transfer from the upper class european taxpayers to the low class americans of all races."
Great, so in your opinion this is good policy?
"Two kinds of people who exacerbate the income gap are Jews and blacks. Jews are so talented and smart that they rise way above us, and it's difficult for us to compete with them."
Don't tell me no one is going to step up and challenge ass-daft on this one?
"New York City cleaned up its crime problem by flooding a huge number of police on the streets and giving them the power to brutalize criminals. They also jailed, or put under supervision, a lot of bad guys for doing petty crimes, making it more difficult for them to then later commit major crimes."
Wonderful! (but why has crime dropped everywhere else?)
What do people really mean by income inequality?
Suppose there's three communties with a 100 people each.
In community #1, 5 people are fabulously rich, 30 are rich, 50 are middle class, and 15 are poor but not too.
In community #2, 20 people are very rich, 65 people are middle class, and 15 are very poor.
In community #3, 2 people are very rich and 98 are poor.
Which community of the three would be considered the most unequal?
I remember the first time I heard of Nicholas Kristof was in reference to a book that he and his wife Sheryl WuDun who is Chinese-American wrote about China in the mid-90's. I remember from that interview that Kristof grew up in lily-white rural Oregon. I just looked his bio up and sure enough the demographics of Yamhill, Oregon are 96.47% White, 0.25% Native American, 1.39% Asian, and 0.38% Other, and 1.51% two or more races. Very representative of the U.S. population as a whole and particularly similar to the Deep South. Oh, I guess not, in fact more similar to New England and Minnesota, I guess the expression " A fish unaware of the existence of water " would be apropos here. Wasn't this the guy who was claiming that the reason the Japanese didn't have riots after the Kobe Earthquake had do with the welfare state of Japan?
Anonymous Anonymous said... gentrification has moved millions of blacks from the cities back to the rural south. What portion of the crime decline of the 90s and 00s can be explained through that? Perhaps it's simply harder to organize a gang in areas with low population density.
And perhaps it's simply harder to organize a gang in areas with high levels of gun ownership and D.A.s that support self-defense.
"Aggravated assault's gone up"
No, all violent crime rates peaked in '91-'92 and are dramatically lower now. Check with this tool:
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/StatebyState.cfm
Do "United States-Total" and "Violent crime rates," then hit "Get Table."
About lead in the environment, I haven't looked into it, but it doesn't sound right since there would have to have been 2 full cycles up and down in lead levels during the 20th C, one up from 1900 to 1933, one down from 1934 to 1958, another up from 1959 to 1991 or '92, then another down since then.
Some ideas may sound plausible for just one crime wave, but they won't work when you look at longer-term data.
"The crime decline of the '90s and 2000s was not due to more police or a larger prison population. Canada had a crime wave that was nearly identical to the American one in timing (when it rose and fell) and similar in magnitude up and down."
this doesn't make sense. the demographics of the US and canada are pretty different. of course the decline in the US crime rate was due to more police and a bigger prison population. two things happening at the same time doesn't mean they are related. that's like saying masturbation causes acne. they both start happening at about the same time so i guess masturbating causes acne?
i mean, there are more africans in the US than there are PEOPLE in canada. no way could police enforcement and the prison system be backed off to canadian levels and the crime rate stays the same. police prescence increased dramatically in the US between 1980 and 2010, it did not decrease. it may have decreased slightly in canada, i have no idea, but that could only be an OK thing to do if the population was almost completely european in canada, which it is, and the european violent crime rate was naturally declining, which it might have been. there seems to be a similar phenomenon among euro americans, naturally declining violent crime rates. but that's not happening in the UK. the crime rate among europeans in the UK is increasing. the underclass is violent and dangerous now. they even have a name, chavs. after making handguns illegal, these people just switched to carrying knives so they can stab each other.
the only plausible comparison we could draw would be between the violent crime rate of the europeans in canada and the europeans in the US. similar phenomena may be in effect between those 2 populations with respect to violent crime. for instance, the violent crime rate of europeans in LA is now BELOW that of east asians. but we could not make a similar comparison between various other groups vis a vis the two nations, because canada barely even has them.
for instance, the violent crime rate in mexico has been rising, and a couple US cities have pretty similar demographics to mexico now. why isn't LA as violent as mexico? of course the difference is far more police and better police work, lower rates of corruption, and higher rates of incarceration. the amount of money the US spends on law enforcement now, due to NAMs, is crazy. hell, the ATF (an obsolete law enforcement agency by the way) spends like 80 million dollars a year trying to track guns moving from the US into mexico. i posted about this before. do any canadian law enforcement agencies have a budget that big for such a minor law enforcement problem?
the FBI now spends all day every day keeping track of thousands and thousands of muslims. it barely did any of this 30 years ago. to intercept all these terrorist plans, it has to devote more and more resources into intelligence. bigger budget, more personel, trying to stay 1 step ahead of the millions of muslims the state department is allowing into the US. it's such a big task that the FBI can today, sorta, justify invading all of our privacies and civil rights.
in another example, we should not pretend that the rate at which people are dying of DUI crashes is just "naturally" declining, rather than being a direct result of the pressure that MADD applies to various police forces and law firms around the US, encouraging them to develop positively draconian measures to combat driving under the influence. in some states your first DUI can easily ruin your life for 2 years with the amount of jail time, fines, insurance rate increases, and loss of priviledges they apply today. they had NONE of this stuff in 1980. now some states have these mandatory sobriety roadblock checkpoint things, where if you refuse to blow, you lose your driver's license for 1 year, no questions asked.
to think police enforcement is not dramatically more ubiquitous and invasive today is retarded. where there cameras everywhere in 1980? security cameras, traffic cameras, i mean in the UK it's a police state with the amount of cameras.
"Perhaps it's simply harder to organize a gang in areas with low population density."
Good job there, I think it has to do with the lack of cell phone towers.
Abstract,
Deaton [possible future Nobel winner] and Lubotsky (2003):
"A number of studies have found that mortality rates are positively correlated with income inequality across the cities and states of the US. We argue that this correlation is confounded by the effects of racial composition.
Across states and MSAs, the fraction of the population that is black is positively correlated with average white incomes, and negatively correlated with average black incomes.
Between-group income inequality is therefore higher where the fraction black is higher, as is income inequality in general.
Conditional on the fraction black, neither city nor state mortality rates are correlated with income inequality.
Mortality rates are higher where the fraction black is higher, not only because of the mechanical effect of higher black mortality rates and lower black incomes, but because white mortality rates are higher in places where the fraction black is higher.
This result is present within census regions, and for all age groups and both sexes (except for boys aged 1–9). It is robust to conditioning on income, education, and (in the MSA results) on state fixed effects.
Although it is remains unclear why white mortality is related to racial composition, the mechanism working through trust that is often proposed to explain the effects of inequality on health is also consistent with the evidence on racial composition and mortality."
http://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/cheawb/263.html
New York City sort of bottomed out in the 1970s. Remember, the movie Serpico was based on a true story. That's the decade NYC almost went bankrupt as well.
"Wasn't this the guy who was claiming that the reason the Japanese didn't have riots after the Kobe Earthquake had do with the welfare state of Japan?"
I think he said something like "the reasons are complex and partly cultural".
I am very sceptical when 'agnostic' claims that 14th century England had ' a murder rate two orders of magnitude greater than present'.
- Basically record keeping for that period (there was no census, no central government records of any kind and its doubtful detailed records of crimes comitted were ever kept), was sporadic to say the least.
Furthermore the vast bulk of any such record taken in those far off imes have simply vanished over the years.
"I am very sceptical when 'agnostic' claims that 14th century England had ' a murder rate two orders of magnitude greater than present'."
WHOA there, last guy who tangled with agnostic on crime over the centuries got called a homo. If that isn't a deterrent, I don't know what is!
Folks, don't bother debating "agnostic" on crime. If you win, like Devin Finbarr did here, agnostic will just slink away and write about how popular he is with girls (and yet it's not HIM that's "comically smug", it's anyone who disagrees with him?)
Interesting example, but 2 other factors might also have something to do with the decline in crime during an increase in income inequality. Frist, it has been widely reported that NYC responded to the crime crisis with some good police work. Second, most of those crackheads are either in jail, dead or reformed, while the younger members of their families are not making the same mistake. Some also suggest that the decline is due to drug dealers finally settling turf wars to everyone's satisfaction, but I find this last explanation difficult to believe.
@ SFG
"if you're socially conservative and against massive inequality, you need a new word. Distributist? Communitarian? Anyone?"
I like 'Communitarian'. That seems like the closest fit. I am in the same camp myself.
Among rich countries, those that are more unequal appear to have more mental illness, infant mortality, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, homicides, and so on.
By definition! The NYT sure has a knack for hiring geniuses.
Whiskey: That the rich in NYC got even richer, does not IMHO directly cause social harm. They already had enormous social and political power through their wealth, adding more zeros at the end of their net worth hardly changes that.
Depends on where the extra zeros are coming from. If they're the result of a smoke-and-mirrors FIRE economy replacing a broad-based, productive economy, the social harm is long-term and enormous.
And of course, fame and notoriety can trump mere wealth. Steven Spielberg and Michael Moore exercise more political and social power than say, Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE.
No, they don't. That ordinary people recognize your name or know what you do is not a measure of political clout.
Rather, it is the massive addition of poor, non-White, mostly Mexican and Central American peasants into America that causes not just violence but serious competitive shortcomings.
Which of course has no connection to all those extra zeros.
As for "competitive", it depends on whose competitiveness you're talking about. Nobody who ever shows up in the media babbling about "making America competitive" actually gives a crap about real-world American national competitiveness (see Jeff Immelt, supra). Obviously, enough people with clout believe that there are no serious competitive shortcomings in the above for them, quite the contrary. ("Competitive", as in "make America competitive", is now just another entry in our new Pravda-reading lexicon. To attentive readers it signals that the unemployment rate for citizens will be rising, or a massive expansion in some parasitic bureaucracy is afoot, or taxpayer subsidies for creating jobs in some other country will be extorted, or some combination of the above.)
Jody,
It's not the 'chavs' in England who are running around stabbing people.Unpleasant as the chavs are, they are usually small-time ass-holes (putting dog-sh*t through a local 'pakis's'- as they term it, letterbox seems to be the limit of their intellectual development, what with calling teachers nasty names, elaborately breaking wind and making 'haw, haw, haw' noises to accompany soccer matches on TV at their local pubs).
No, whenever a Londoner here's of an '18 year old youth being stabbed in a 'housing estate in Peckham or Hackney or Harlesden etc, he automatically waits for the words 'Operation Trident'*
*The Metropolitan Police's specialist black murder team.
In the era of LBJ the justification to take away the justly earned property of the well off was poverty. It is not too hard to see the superficial appeal of that, poverty hurts every day and the well off will not suffer if deprived of some of their porperty. Now that most of the poor in America have a flat screen tvs, cel phones and cars the justification for taking away the justly earned property of the well off is "income inequality". Income inequality replaces poverty. When I went to law school the justification for institutionalized racism was only prior institutionalized racism. When instances of prior institutionalized racism became rare the justification for its present practice became "diversity". I could not care less if income inequality causes an increase in crime. You do not do injustice to an individual just to get a social good. A police force that kidnapped amd beat up anyone thay suspected of being shady would probably have a very crime free town.
I understand why you have a subscription to the New York Times.
You're tired and your creative juices have dried up. You just can't muster the energy to think up a new observation or policy notion. What - you think in despair - can I put in my blog today?
Suddenly you realize that there is always The New York Times. You skim through the paper and just as you had hoped you find a ludicrous editorial that is equal parts stupid and infuriating.
Saved again.
Albertosaurus
Jody makes a very good point. In the Bay Area, e.g., it's been fairly obvious for at least ten years that there's a system of freebies in place for blacks. For example, it seems like every third car driven by a black person sports a handicapped placard, which entitles the driver to free parking. The same is true on public transportation. Bus drivers frequently just wave blacks through. So the real story, for a journalist with balls, would be the extent of this freebie system.
can we use this on our own border with Mexico:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/01/AR2011010102690.html
One of the most salient features of the way poor people think is their almost total disregard for anything happening outside their own immediate neighborhood. They pay some attention to local news, almost none to national or international events. They do pay constant attention to the smallest details of what's going on right around them. My world was never smaller or more full of drama (even if only by association) than when I lived in a poor neighborhood.
Remarkably true. For young people (at least NAMs and proles) they also seem hype up the amounts of violence within their area and how it is thus understandable when people turn to violence and gang membership themselves, a phenomenon I have never understood.
It is these kinds of daily status inequalities among members of essentially the same social classes that have profound effects -- via higher primate status hierarchies and their psychological underpinnings -- on the health of human beings.
Flatness is local hierarchies and of local inequalities, as many steps and as much inequity as you like in global hierarchies? At least judged only from results on this variable. Not to discount the possibility that some level of hierarchy and inequality may be beneficial in local terms.
"The crime decline of the '90s and 2000s was not due to more police or a larger prison population. Canada had a crime wave that was nearly identical to the American one in timing (when it rose and fell) and similar in magnitude up and down."
Who knows what really did the trick, but Clinton's prison expansion helped some. He was a savvy politician who understood that one of the main reasons why so many white Americans were conservative(or reluctantly conservative)was that they were 'mugged by reality'--most often, black crime or violence. If there was less to fear from black crime, many whites who might be conservative might turn liberal; and indeed, Clinton was proven correct. With reduction in black crime, more whites breathed more easily and became liberal. Many educated middle class whites prefer to be liberal for it is associated with openness, tolerance, compassion, & other POSITIVE emotions whereas conservatism is associated with distrust, fear, and anxiety(with outsiders). Americans wanna feel at ease with all of society, and many whites had turned conservative in the 70s and 80s mainly because they got 'mugged by reality'. But with more blacks in prison, cities got safer, which means white people could afford to be liberal again.
So, Clinton used a 'conservative' tough-on-crime policy to hurt conservatism. He reduced black crime, therefore reduced white fear of black crime, therefore increased liberalism among whites.
As for racial integration, which politics mostly failed to achieve, it's finally happening due to pop culture. The impact of HIP HOP and JUNGLE FEVER-ism in pop culture is immeasurable. It has made so many white women horny for black men that we are seeing a huge jump in interracism, especially among the lower orders. Especially in poorer communities, you see tons of white women go with black males while white men look on with helpless envy or try to emulate blacks themselves. And in colleges and dance clubs, you often see the best looking white women date black guys.
This is a HUGE social change happening all over. What government policies couldn't do, pop music is finally doing(along with sports culture). There was a time when interracism was denounced. And then there was a time when it was ignored in a live-and-let-live way(until the late 80s). Since the early 90s, it's been given a huge boost by TV, music, sports, etc. and all those white bimbo women are running after black men, wanting to have their Obama babies. US is becoming as miscegenationist as Latin America, with white males becoming the primiary victims of this.
Tino, the paper you quoted is a breath of fresh air. It's nice to know that not every social scientist is fraud.
One of the most salient features of the way poor people think is their almost total disregard for anything happening outside their own immediate neighborhood.
Isn't Sailer's point that rich elites like Kristof aren't that much different from poor people? They really have no idea about anything going on outside their own immediate circle. The fact that they think they do makes them a lot more dangerous than the poor.
And in colleges and dance clubs, you often see the best looking white women date black guys.
No I don't. I'm too busy working for a living and taking care of my family to know what's going on in dance clubs.
This is a HUGE social change happening all over. What government policies couldn't do, pop music is finally doing(along with sports culture). There was a time when interracism was denounced. And then there was a time when it was ignored in a live-and-let-live way(until the late 80s). Since the early 90s, it's been given a huge boost by TV, music, sports, etc. and all those white bimbo women are running after black men, wanting to have their Obama babies. US is becoming as miscegenationist as Latin America, with white males becoming the primiary victims of this.
An interesting aspect to this is that blacks tend cheer it on, mostly because they think it hurt whites. But they don't seem to realize it hurts the black community, because those light mulattoes will (a) feel less connected to the historical black experience and thus less connected to the black community, and (b) tend look down on darker blacks, which tends to hurt blacks not because there's anything actually wrong (in an "in the eyes God" sense) with blackness but because dark blacks tend to be so sensitive to others looking down on them for their darkness, so they experience it very negatively. Blacks should think twice before giving their full support to mixing because it will negatively impact their future -- but it's doubtful they will because the thrill they get from sticking it to whites is too delicious.
Let's see what Truth has to say. The foregoing logic is unassailable but it's always interesting to see blacks try to wriggle their way out of it.
"No I don't. I'm too busy working for a living and taking care of my family to know what's going on in dance clubs."
POW!
You'd better hold a steak to that eye ass-daft.
"Let's see what Truth has to say."
When you guys want to ask me a question, how come you don't ever just come out and ask it, but you always want to send a bat-signal from the roof of the police headquarters building?
"And in colleges and dance clubs, you often see the best looking white women date black guys."
Who is it that seems to think that lots of great looking white women date black guys? Other than rich and famous black men (OJ Simpson, Quincy Jones, Seal, Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter) I probably wouldn't need more than one hand to count the number of attractive white women I've seen with black men. I've seen far more attractive white women with dorky-looking white guys than with blacks.
Maybe white women like to dance with black guys, but that's only because both women and black guys like to dance. White guys in general don't. All stereotypes aside, you will never see a more barren dance floor than at a club full of white, gay men. Even junior high dances are busier than gay clubs.
Home keys guy, where do you live? So much of your observations on black-white relations seem anecdotal, and wildly different from what I see, that you've made me curious.
I seriously doubt you're anywhere near the south, where the black population is largest, and the white population most ethnocentric.
"But they don't seem to realize it hurts the black community, because those light mulattoes will (a) feel less connected to the historical black experience and thus less connected to the black community"
They usually develop a tragic mulatto complex, and will overcompensate by over-identifying with the black half of their lineage, per President Barack Obama, NAACP Head Ben Jealous, Alicia Keys, or Halle Berry. Ms. Key's is the perfect example of overcompensation. She speaks with the kind of jive talk you'd expect from drop-out suburban wiggers, not well-educated, smart, literate, Julliard A-students from the racially diverse neighborhoods in NYC that aren't exactly the hood.
Few are as comfortably unified both sides of their lineage like a Derek Jeter. Half-breeds usually choose to side with their black half, and race mixing is a net loss for whites genetically no matter how you try and spin it.
"Home keys guy"
That would be home keys girl.
Currently, I'm in Kentucky, but I spent most of my life around NY city and parts of Tennessee.
Wow, you people are sheltered!
The huge thing missing in people's analysis, and something that the alpha/beta fetishists can't comprehend, is that evaluating the sex lives of mid-20's single women is focusing on a marginal group. Now, of course, for single guys around that age, that group is hugely important. But the girls who are wasting their childbearing years in clubs aren't the drivers of evolution - it's the girls who met their husbands in junior high, dated them exclusively in high school, and married at 19. These couples have 3+ kids; the clubbing sluts are lucky if they can squeeze one kid out by the time they settle down/get knocked up and don't decide to abort so they can keep living it up.
Of COURSE it's a lot easier to obsess over the clubsluts, because they're more visible - the quiet housewives disappear from our radar or never appear on it in the first place. By the time you get to college and start meeting girls, a lot of them are already in committed relationships; those are the ones having lots of kids.
I know it's hard to think this way! Trust me. The girls who were always "taken" were easy to ignore in the dating calculus, because it was obviously not worth the effort to try to break up those relationships. But, you know, there's more to life than who's available for a young guy to date.
How hard is this? Really. Come on.
They usually develop a tragic mulatto complex, and will overcompensate by over-identifying with the black half of their lineage, per President Barack Obama, NAACP Head Ben Jealous, Alicia Keys, or Halle Berry.
That's what used to occur. But back then their numbers were much smaller. You had a handful of light mulattoes against the backdrop of very black, near purebloods. So they had little choice.
But ongoing mixing will, first, even up the numbers, which is perhaps even the case today, and eventually (50 years? 100?) it will reduce dark blacks to a small minority. Sociologically, that's a very different kettle of fish.
and race mixing is a net loss for whites genetically no matter how you try and spin it.
There are a couple of ways to read that. If you were directing at me, personally, pal, I never intended to suggest otherwise.
A rightwinger can rationalize all he wants that he opposes interracism because it's bad for the black community, like some conservatives profess to oppose affirmative action because..uh..it's really bad for blacks. I suppose if one frames a debate in terms of "it's bad for blacks", it sounds morally better in our culture of PC, but if we wanna be honest, we should admit mulatto-ism is really bad for whites.
Firstly, your comments about who mulattoes "identify" with etc only applies to what has occurred up until this point. Ongoing Brazilianization will totally alter that dynamic.
In any case, I think you have aspects of it wrong. Mulattoes may do the black thing for public consumption (and political power), but behind closed doors, among each other, it's a different story, and the things I mention carry weight. That's pretty much what "Jews and Italians" do, too: put on the "fully assimilated" persona when "they" are around, concealing what is considered important and only discussed freely among ourselves. Don't get me started on this.
Now, as for "rationalizing" it, look, one can "oppose mulatto-ism" for any good reason. It's simply a fact that it's going to fundamentally so alter black community relations as to make the unrecognizable from anything they've been that it should be an issue to blacks, regardless of whether they realize it for themselves or not. Anyway, how is it "dishonest" to say to a black, I oppose race-mixing because it's bad for me, but you should oppose because it' actually bad for you, too, even though it may not seem that way for now? How's that dishonest? How's it dishonest to come at him with, you think you're hitting me where it hurts, but int the long run you're only hurting yourself? That's not dishonest; that's telling it exactly how it is.
Now, obviously mixing is an issue for whites, for mixing (not immigration) will be the means of white demise, point blank -- though here, whites, similar to blacks, have their own hang ups regarding thinking clearly about it (or even thinking about it at all, to say nothing of discussing it).
The real beneficiaries will be mulattoes themselves, though they can probably expect to be plagued with identity issues for some time yet. Of course this opens up an opportunity for the canny identitarian (white, or any other) to enlist their aid in getting what he wants by helping them get what may be of use to them.
Silver:
It's nothing personal, pal. I know you're trying really hard to find a silver lining.
"But the girls who are wasting their childbearing years in clubs aren't the drivers of evolution - it's the girls who met their husbands in junior high, dated them exclusively in high school, and married at 19."
But welfare mamas, black or white or brown, have lots of kids.
"and race mixing is a net loss for whites genetically no matter how you try and spin it."
I don't regard losing fat white chicks with bad skin and poor eating habits and 87 IQs to the black or Hispanic race as a "net loss."
One way in which Jews almost certainly got smarter over two millenia was by offloading their coreligionists who couldn't handle the mental demands of their religion and their limited professional options on the neighboring populations.
"But welfare mamas, black or white or brown, have lots of kids."
Flynn effect, look it up.
I know Idiocracy was intuitively appealing, but it ain't reality. Sorry.
If income inequality troubles you, you must despise people who buy lottery tickets. After all, they are engaged in a voluntary transaction designed to do nothing other than create huge disparities in the income of the participants. They are even willing to allow the govt to skim off a huge portion of the pool for the chance to make millions of people slightly poorer so that one or a dozen have an incredable income.
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