Income is just one of many factors that impacts criminal behavior. Look at studies that control for income and income inequality (such as the many published by Professor Robert Putnam) and you'll begin to understand the enormous complexity of social problems in general and crime in particular. Professor Putnam studies causation. Your charts only measure correlation. If correlation = causation, then killing turkeys causes winter.
Causation is correlation, perfect correlation, not the other way around, of course, and no one is saying any differently. At any rate, the authors of The Spirit Level are also looking for causes. Inequality is, at the present time, the single most predictive correlate. Any other "causative" factor you care to graph against violence will display even less correlation than this. No one is saying inequality is the only cause.
If you replaced "Income Inequality" with "Racial/Ethnic Diversity" on your chart you'd end up with similar results. There's a very high correlation among the countries on the chart. I wonder what the chart(s) would look like if African and South American countries were also included.
Huh? Wait a minute? Are you telling me that YOU are not disturbed by this? And what exactly is my agenda? No, you made the accusation so complete your thought. Be a man and tell me. And phase 2? Dude, let me walk you through this. Almost everything I post comes from mainstream websites and is usually front and center. Most of this shit is also making the rounds on other sites like CNN, yeah that ultra-right wing news organization. Yes, for the record, this shit disturbs me. If it was a member of your family who was a victim I don't think you would be so dismissive here. And explain to me this, why is it when one gay teenager gets beat up in some middle America town it draws outrage all over the news and your friends on the left. And when I say one, I mean one guy, not en epidemic. Yet people like you see these crime videos as you just blow it off as that's part of life. So which is it? Is violence just a part of life and we'll stop showing tea party videos where one guy is holding a racist sign or gays getting beat up is just part of life or.......or are we going to take this shit seriously. Because dude, we can't have it both ways. For the record, I don't want to see anyone beat up, attacked, displaying racist signs at tea party rallies and I sure as God don't want to see people killed or stomped on in public restaurants. So yes RCG, it DOES bother me. That's my agenda. What's yours?
Hey Zzz, you never answered me why you lied about this? Do you lie all the time? Or this just an isolated incident?
My agenda is to get you, and others, to determine what should be done next, where do we start? Because no one else seems to be able to figure it out. Apparently this bothers you enough to post about it daily. If you are trying to be an activist, fine. Lets activate.
The video PERFECTLY DEMONSTRATES the dumbing down of america and the trend towards the "have nots" of lower income realm in a very destructive TREND (all by design)! You can thank the timid and docile masses (parents of the children involved), the public schools (and all the social engineering taking place through curriculum dictated), and completely FAIL govt social programs that KEEP people in the subservient class by design. The US culture has been DEGRADED by design.....this was the only way to take the one superpower on earth CONTROLLED by the citizenry and transition it towards the chinese model (large corporations in ties with corrupt govt and a socialistic style of lower class masses. Welcome to the TRANSITION to the new Globalist "directed" model.......you will be arriving soon! :eek:
Let me address the last point you made first. I do not post about it daily. I have been on this forum for 9 years and over 8k posts and I think maybe I have started 5 to 10 threads tops about this stuff. In 9 years!!!! I would hardly call that daily. But anyway, back to your earlier points. Let's walk through possible solutions shall we? 1) Throw billions of dollars at poor black people. That's right, let's just give them billions of dollars and see if it's true that money solves all problems. I suspect this will not work. In my life I have found that money solves little to nothing. Money didn't save Barry Bonds. It didn't help Nic Cage. Money doesn't seem to help lottery winners. Money doesn't seem to help people on Wall St. So I am one to think that just giving poor blacks money will not solve the problem. 2) Gun control. I am one that believes that removing guns from the street only keeps them out of the hands of those dangerous soccer moms and nascar dads. Criminals will always get their guns and they rarely get them legally. Would you want to register your gun if you knew you were going to kill someone with it shortly after?/ Of course not. So gun control doesn't work. 3) Parenting. I've been a big be believer and statistics seems to back me up that there is a strong correlation between children having two parents that are together seems to produce a better more well rounded child. This is true in all communities...white, black, Latino, etc. The black community seems to have a terrible problem keeping families together. A poor black kid without a father in the home is statistically doomed. The same is also true although not to the same extent as whites, Asians and Latinos. This is a cultural issue and the government cannot solve this issue. The black community must recognize this problem and address it. 4) Tougher crime laws? I really don't see this working either. Blacks already have the highest incarceration rates in the country by a mile and we just can't keep building prisons. Sooner or later they are going to get out and if the problem is not solved they will pick up right where they left off. 5) Education. I really believe this is ultimately where the fix has to be. Educated people in general, tend to commit less crimes. Not wealthy people, educated people. The left seems to want to focus solely on class warfare and money but it's not money but one's ability to earn money that makes the difference. The problem is the left doesn't want to address education at the fear of putting teacher unions on the table. You can't address education without addressing the unions and the dept of education and moving to a merit based system. And that is a no go for the left. So the emphasis is just on money and throwing money at the problem after these black kids are already grown up with no skills and no education. I can't think of a worse thing to do with money then throw it at someone with no skills and no education. So my solutions would be to pull all the money we are using to fund section 8 and ghetto projects and use that money to putting those people trade schools to learn something useful. Fix the school systems. Get rid of the dept of education and use that money to fund adult programs for those already past their prime to teach them some viable skill. At some point the black community has got to fix their cultural problems of the bringing the family unit back together. I am absolutely convinced if these kids had a father waiting for them at home that their propensity to find trouble would diminish. Welfare is NOT the answer. Neither is tolerance or understanding. We need to stop making excuses and saying these people don't know any better or don't have a choice. That is a cop out. And stop blaming the rich, the tea party, right wing people, white people, anybody. All problems can be solved from within....ALL.
All these post of video attacks at fast food restaurants, and other places, represent criminal behavior which needs to punished, irregardless if it is racially motivated or not. In the meantime individuals must be prepared to defend themselves when they are in public places as well as when they are at home. You and your family members could be beaten senseless, raped and or killed at any point. This is just an unpleasant fact. When I was taking a class that is required to get a concealed pistol license here in Michigan, one of the police officers who teaches a portion of the class (in his off hours) told us about a real incident that occurred less than 2 miles from where the class was held. Two people (a man and a woman) came from Detroit to rob a local convience store. They immediately killed the workers at the store. Subsequently 3 different customers came in the store and were shot and killed, but one customer was able to get away and drove to the police station 1/2 mile away. The police gave chase and after many miles the male robber crashed the car and committed suicide and the femalerobber was arrested. The cop/instructor said that night in the local jail she slept like a baby. The customers who happened to stop at that store that night were probably going to get milk or lottery tickets and it cost them their lives. I drive past that store maybe 4 times a week, but had never gone in. Something like that happening there is totally unexpected...that store is in a good neighborhood. You need to be aware of your surroundings, even when you think that you are in "safe" neighborhoods and carry weapons or other itmes that you can defend yourself with. I prefer firearms, but things such as pepper spray or mag lites can also be of some use. Had the victim in the video used even pepper spray on those women she probably would not have ended up on the ground in convulsions. She would probably have been justified in pulling out a gun especially after they came back for the second attack. I know that some people fear guns and they argue about "shoot out" scenarios. I remind them that there is a difference between a "shooting" and a "shootout". There is a shootout only if both the attacker and victim are armed!!! If the victim shoots an attacker who does not have a gun, but is otherwise endangering the victims life...is that such a bad thing? Not everyone agrees on this...some believe that armed self-defense is so wrong that it is better for the victim to be beaten half to death, or raped maybe even murdered than to have a potential "shooting" or "shootout". They believe that just the possibility of bullets flying and hitting an innocent bystander means that its better for you to allow yourself to be beaten, raped or killed. They are entitled to their opinions, but the laws of many states do allow for armed self-defense. The thing is that you need to prepare yourself ahead of time...no matter where you live.