As you may have heard, Los Angeles is undergoing a rash of unusual crimes. Gangs from South LA have been sending crews specifically to target rich people, tailing them from fashionable hotels, restaurants and clubs and then stealing their watches and purses.
At first glance, this might not seem mysterious. For one thing, it's been going on for a while. Second, gangs are targeting rich people for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: because that's where the money is. But apparently that's not reason enough to satisfy everyone:
One of the things that’s getting glossed over at the moment? The role of straight-up economics....“There is a sizable body of research that finds a positive relationship between income inequality and crime,” said Magnus Lofstrom, policy director of criminal justice and a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
That's from Erika D. Smith, an LA Times columnist, but it's dead wrong. There's evidence that crime rates are higher in countries with greater income inequality, but there's virtually no evidence that it's higher within the US in places with greater income inequality. A recent meta-analysis puts the effect at zero. Another finds a negative correlation. Another finds a very strong negative correlation at the state level. And yet another finds "little evidence" for a link when county- and time-fixed effects are accounted for.
The link between income inequality and property crime goes back to 1968, when economist Gary Becker proposed an economic model of crime which posited that criminals acted like everyone else, committing crimes if it seemed like the reward was likely worth the risk. In this model, it stood to reason that income inequality would lead to more crime since, in areas of high inequality, criminals would be poorer than average and rich people would be richer than average. That makes for a relatively larger payback for the risk of committing a high-profile crime.
But Becker's model was just a model, and a very broad one at that. When economists started testing not just the basic model, but some of the details, they didn't all pan out. One of the casualties was the theory that income inequality leads to higher crime rates. This becomes obvious if you just take a look at LA County crime rates vs. GINI inequality scores:
There's obviously not much there. You can force a result for the data from 2010-present if you want, since you basically have two fairly flat lines, but it still won't get you anywhere. I did it just for laughs and got an R-squared of 0.12.
Be careful with crime stats! There are lots of theories out there and lots of seemingly sensible links between poverty and crime; policing and crime; family structure and crime; drug markets and crime; inequality and crime; incarceration and crime; lead and crime; and so forth. Some of them pass muster once you put them to a rigorous test, but a lot of them don't. They seem reasonable, but often they turn out to be little more than myths. Don't just repeat stuff "you've heard" without checking to see if it's really true.
Pet theory: The lower middle class and even a lot of the poor who were traditional crime victims don't carry around much cash anymore, so for stuff like muggings, your pay-off is going to be electronics and jewelry. Since these are alot harder to turn into cash then, well, cash, it only makes sense to target people with lots of high-end stuff.
Towards that end, car-jackings are way up. And they are going out to suburbs to get nicer cars. Not huge numbers, but that really scares people who moved out of the cities to get away from violence.
And that $1000+ phone--they may get $100 for it....and "gangs" try to get kids to do the dirty work....
Crime doesn't pay much at all...
OKOI
l,m
This is definitely one of those there isn't enough data, or that it's just a confounding factor.
But if someone's life would be greatly improved by simple theft, the average neurotypical people will engage in it if they think they can get away with it.
And that's, I think the problem with inequality. It raises that bar of would their life be improved by theft.
"Lagom" is thus relative rather than absolute?
So, which are the connections that actually do pan out?
Sometimes I wonder if it's just trendiness. Someone gets away with something novel, others hear about it, and decide to copy it. The police certainly thought that was happening with car thefts near me last year - they were pretty convinced that the massive increase was due to kids from a particular high school trying to one-up each other for standing in their immediate social circle. They were stealing cars, joyriding, and abandoning them.
I agree with your point, otherwise it would have happened well before 2022. To make my point I use this statement:
"Gangs from South LA have been sending crews specifically to target rich people, tailing them from fashionable hotels, restaurants and clubs and then stealing their watches and purses."
Gee, nobody ever thought of that before?
And given what's going on, you can't tell me pandemic and how its upset what was considered "normal" life in this country hasn't had its impact on crime and how its carried out in this country.
Do a review on the correlation of property crime rates and universal basic income. Also, do another one on homelessness and universal basic income.
“There are lots of theories out there and lots of seemingly sensible links between poverty and crime; policing and crime; family structure and crime; drug markets and crime; inequality and crime; incarceration and crime; lead and crime; and so forth.”
I’m going with character flaw as the main cause, but we can’t admit that. There must be another reason! He was such a good boy before he beat the crap out of his girlfriend.
Well, look here… the culture of violence and domination.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/17/world/europe/ukraine-war-russia-atrocities.html
It really is the same thing. And it’s a basic character flaw.
“Compared with the West, fewer people harbor any illusions of individual rights trumping raw power. “I think there is this kind of culture of violence,” said Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher. “Either you are dominating, or you are dominated.”
That is the mindset among these gangbangers and criminals.
It's the nature of the commons. Tribe over the individual. It's the way IE's were before the war with Rome/Christendom.
It's why identity movements contards call left wing, are really right Hegelian in dialect. Black activists, petty bourgeois elitists. When Engels said homosexuality was the enemy of the proletariat, what don't you understand????
There's evidence that crime rates are higher in countries with greater income inequality, but there's virtually no evidence that it's higher within the US in places with greater income inequality. A recent meta-analysis puts the effect at zero. Another finds a negative correlation. Another finds a very strong negative correlation at the state level.
Now, this is the interesting part, that it's only true for countries as a whole, but not true for individual locales. How much income inequality in a country does it take to tip the scale? Is it Russia or Nigeria, or is it France?
Different class of thieves....
But I don't thing what the leaders of some places do makes it into the official records...
The ironic thing is the crime issue is going to cost the Democrats nationally in 2022, but in the actual cities where this is happening there will be absolutely no change to the party in power.In my city the counselors still talk like Defund is a winning strategy and that there's nothing the police can do about people ODing in the public library bathroom (until we get To The Root of addiction). But they have instituted higher fines for people parking in bike lanes.
Nope, not when the crime issue was a Republican era thing. You need a eyeball ripped out and teeth pulled. Democrats are running locally on crime idiot. Several states, crime is not a issue(see, Ohio like always is domestic manufacturing). Matter of fact, your post is so bad, maybe your a retard. Why should you exist????
Can we delete the bigotry and slurs now, please?
...And what do you want the police to do about people ODing in the toilet?
Should the counselors give the police a free pass to harass anyone they don't like the look of, just like the good old days? The police in blue cities are basically staging a sick out as a silent protest against people criticizing them. They are the most delicate of snowflakes.
Who cares it it's dead wrong? Saying it's so promotes an agenda, which is all that matters.
Lol, nope. The agenda is them idiot.
"There's evidence that crime rates are higher in countries with greater income inequality, but there's virtually no evidence that it's higher within the US in places with greater income inequality."
There may be a simple explanation: Do you know income inequality in Orange county vs. Santa Clara county (or in California vs. Massachusetts)? I don't. The press never contains answer to this. What is reported is national data on inequality, compared with other countries.
It seems unsurprising to me that the crime rate does not depend on data that people--including would be criminals--are simply ignorant of.
However, inequality is a mighty abstract concept. I doubt it influences behavior very much; there would have to be a bridge, some consequence of inequality that is felt more directly emotionally and would have the power to motivate.
Photo of damaged Moskva on the verge of sinking,
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russian-navy-cruiser-moskva-seen-badly-damaged-in-unverified-image
Is enforcement and the arrest rate for these down as well? That might be a factor as well - they're just not worried they'll get arrested as long as they do it right.
Sure, but not in relation to funding.
We need Kevin to create one of his super graphs on this, but this chart seems to show a rough correlation between crime levels and inequality. At least some of the states with the lowest crime, like Maine, New Hampshire and Idaho are also on the low end of the income inequality scale. https://www.statista.com/statistics/227249/greatest-gap-between-rich-and-poor-by-us-state/
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state
Stats correlating crime with income inequality will in no case prove the poor are robbing the rich. More likely, they're robbing each other. Kevin concentrates on the ATTRACTION of stealing. The EASE is much, much more important. Otherwise everyone would be trying to rob banks, first, and Jeff Bezos, second, instead of little old ladies with purses.
If anything is changing in this field, it's that cash is being replaced by credit cards. Meaning there's nothing worth stealing in the purse of the little old lady for the poor kid from down the block. She'll be robbed by a rich cyberthief operating from abroad instead.
Well confront Lofstrom about it.
https://www.ppic.org/person/magnus-lofstrom/
M2 velocity overlaid w/ real M2 stock: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Omrl
Better to show m2 growth instead. After hitting a record 25% in 2021, it's free falling now. Bye inflation. Already hear wal mart telling food manufacturers to stop raising prices on brand names. They aren't selling while it's off brand great value is accelerating. They don't have the growth in money supply to try and bully retailers anymore. A food glut has begun.
You can inherently see M2 growth rate by the real M2 stock.
Not like growth. It leads inflation.
If (price) inflation/deflation is your interest, then the velocity of M2 is your focus. As velocity decreases, threat of deflation (and the ZLB) increases.
This, among other data points, continues to suggest that we're still stuck in an exogenous shock and that inflation is "temporary", because the M2 velocity clearly shows there is very little of the available money is actually being circulated.