O.T. More inequality leads to more crime

Ummm... "we found that higher inequality in the outcomes of an economic game led participants to take greater risks." Income inequality leads to more risk taking. Crime, debt and ill health generally result from poor decision making.

So, let me get this straight, employer X exposes employees to carcinogens, and uses lobbying resources for the same industry suppress knowledge that substances are carcinogens. And this is poor decision-making on part of the employees how, exactly?

Or J. Random citizen Y, sitting in his living room watching a football game. A drunk driver crashes into the house, injuring him. This is poor decision-making on part of the J. Random citizen Y how, exactly?

And I could go on with the same kind of examples all day.

Where you have economic inequality you tend to have higher crime, simply because the have-nots have to put food on the table, have to pay rent or loans on the house. And there are easy ways for politicians to increase the crime rate further.

Where you have economic inequality you tend to have poorer health because of the stress the inequality causes. A lot of diseases have a strong correlation to stress...

Same with debt. But I won't bother you with a full example, because your mind is already made up, I'm a Soros-funded marxist out to destroy the world... Actually verifying if there is any real basis to the silly notion is something you won't do until you are forced to by external circumstances, if even then...

/Teo.

Did you even bother to read it?

• "large studies may still have biases and these should be acknowledged and avoided."

• "Diminishing bias through enhanced research standards and curtailing of prejudices may also help."

A common problem in certain fields, like selection bias, i.e. people cherry-picking data to get what they want. There are ways to avoid prejudices, logic fallacies and cognitive biases in research, as well methods to detect them.

Yet using them has fallen out of fashion, especially in some circles...

And that's the main point of the article, how bias creeps in.

And then there's different effects of bias. In some instances, it may invalidate findings totally, while in others, it can have the effect of achieving validation but failing miserably in quantification (the classic "these findings warrant further study"). Like, you can have a study saying "this shit is bad, yo", but failing in telling how much or how little the turd reeks. Nevertheless, one has to remember turds always reek in certain situations. See what I'm getting at?

There is a lot of research which is waiting for that "further study", but where getting funds is practically impossible because the field isn't sexy or because those who sit on funds are afraid of the implications should the findings be proven right.

There's also a lot of opinion pieces masquerading as research. These fail even a cursory examination, about one-third or half-way into it you go "what the f*ck were the writers smoking when they came up with this coprolith?" The real nastiness comes when such opinion pieces form the basis of theories and further research.

There are fields in science where you have the situation that there is no evidence whatsoever for some of the base assumptions.

And a thing which you totally disregarded. One of the ways science works is by research being reproducible. When research and analysis consistently turn up the same results despite wide variance in methodology, you know something is up, even though you don't have the "something" in sharp focus.

You know how many times over how long a period of time the observation that inequality, especially economic such, leads to crime and social instability?

/Teo.

Alternate explanation: some people find crime easier (or more fun) than work.

These "studies" neglect the fundamental question of *why* the have-nots have not. In the U.S., the answer is almost entirely not from external circumstances beyond their control, but from a few of their simple, personal choices. Teens having kids out of wedlock means they'll all be poor. Dropping out of high school to do that makes it worse. Etc.

If they're doing it to pay the rent, then crime should be lower in public housing projects. But it's not, is it?

Cheers, James Arthur

Social research is the worst. And correlation is not causality.

Read "The Bell Curve" and get back to me.

When the same correlation crops up time and time and time again over the span of almost two thousand (2,000) years, it clearly indicates there is causality, even if you don't know the exact mechanism of the said causality. It's not until recently there has been an effort to figure out the mechanism. But the correlation and the causality it suggests have been known for millennia. We know inequality and crime hold hands, we just don't know /how/ they're holding hands.

You really think I'd go "post hoc ergo propter hoc"? Sheessh.

/Teo.

Not anymore when they get guaranteed basic income in addition to exorbitant minimum wage. Everybody has a *right* to government assistance in raising an outsized large family.

Why should it be lower in public housing projects, really? You have to pay for the roof over your head, no matter how little it costs, you have to put food on the table, no matter how little it costs, you have to put clothes on your body, no matter how little it costs.

You're making the erroneous assumption that crime pays well. It doesn't for most people, especially those down low on the social ladder.

/Teo.

Or the direction!

Got any links to those 2000 year old sociological studies?

of inequality to look at.

game led participants to take greater risks." Income inequality leads to m ore risk taking. Crime, debt and ill health generally result from poor deci sion making.

I don't think that's the kind of ill-health the article is talking about. M y impression is the big problem is chronic disease resulting from substance abuse, poor diet and just plain bad living.

That's a case of the random citizen being victimized by his own kind.

Economic inequality does not mean doing without. Where are you getting they don't have enough to eat or can't afford basic housing?

You come down to talking about really ignorant people. The income inequalit y story is just an excuse.

f wizards,

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ts of inequality to look at.

ic game led participants to take greater risks." Income inequality leads to more risk taking. Crime, debt and ill health generally result from poor de cision making.

ork.

That's not specific to the US - freeloaders are always with us.

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They don't. The study takes it as a given.

The question isn't why the underclass is poor, but rather - given that they are poor - how can they be expected to behave?

Having them get religion and acquire a suitably respectful attitude to thei r betters is what the over-class would like to happen, but it's not a strat egy that has ever been all that effective.

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Countries that spend more on education - not by gold-plating the education of the children of the rich, but by making sure that children of the poor g et a good education - do have fewer teens having kids of of wedlock.

for a broader picture, coupled to measures of inequality, see

which is full of this and similar statistics. More equal countries are bett er behaved in a lot of respects, and the more nearly equal states of the US A are better behaved than the less equal ones - the differences aren't as d ramatic because the whole of the USA is pretty unequal, but the differences within the US are still statistically significant.

You don't like "The Spirit Level" and posted links to some right-wing comme ntators that expressed the same sentiment, but medical epidemiologists don' t make the kind of mistakes that the critics you cited thought that they ha d found.

outsized large family.

Mmmmm... Ye olde "get off the government teat" argument. *yawn*

So you rage against minimum wages... Do tell, what happens when an employer pays less to an employee than the employee needs to stay alive, let alone any dependents? He has to go get another job. A job which now is not available to someone else, a someone else which ticks up the unemployment figure.

And I'm not going to open up the can of worms which is the stress it causes on the employee and the effects it will have.

So you rage against welfare and social security... Do tell, you happen to know how high the monthly turnover of a welfare or social security case is? More often than not, it is 100%. That is 100% which goes directly to local businesses and services, i.e. "the economy."

How well the economy is doing is not simply measure by its growth or how much profit it produces, but also how much it turns over. Eliminating welfare and social security cases will have one result, and that is removing most of what you save from the turnover in the economy.

And if I believed you would actually read what I say as opposed to what you want to read, I'd ask you to consider what the effect of braking the economy in a recession will have, however little it is. But I won't.

/Teo.

Observations, really. And the same observations have been made numerous times during those 2,000 years, beginning with Plutarch.

/Teo.

"The Bell Curve" isn't worth reading - unless you really get off on being flattered by the book you are reading, as John Larkin seems to.

A lot of people thought that "The Bell Curve" was right-wing nonsense, aimed at the John Larkins of this world.

is probably the best of the demolitions. The academics involved got hold of the statistical data that Herrnstein and Murray claimed to have analysed, and found out exactly what Herrnstein and Murray had skated over to get to the conclusions they wanted.

But education is the best way to encourage people to limit family size.

The US spends a lot on education, but it spends a lot more on educating rich kids in rich school districts than it does on educating the children of the poor who happen live in school districts where property taxes can't raise as much money.

Even the state average expenditures cover a wide range - from about $20,000 per secondary school student in New York State to $7000 dollars in Utah and Idaho.

James Arthur does miss the point - being low-ranked in a very unequal society does give you a lot of visible status symbols to lust after, and not living in a public housing project is definitely one of them.

The US does have a lot of really ignorant people. 63 million of them voted for Trump.

US education - like US health care - can be very good, but - again like US health care - parts of it are less than adequate.

The average spending per head on secondary school students is $11,009 per head

but this covers a very wide range of spending from one school district to the next.

Even within states the average expenditure varies from about $20,000 in New York States to about $7000 in Utah and Idaho (where Trump did about twice as well as Clinton).

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ots of inequality to look at.

tant minimum wage.

The problem is people wanting to make a career out of jobs that were never intended to be careers. How in the world is someone so dumb to think they c an make a career out of working a counter in fast food? The whole minimum w age controversy is really about people wanting to get paid more than their worth, this permeates all of American society, not just minimum wage worker s. I'm astounded at the low productivity less-than-mediocre nobodies in the professions that expect top dollar for their sorry excuse for output.

We're not going to turn the world upside down just so some emotionally crip pled weakling can better handle the stress in their life.

Social security is retirement plan paid for by the recipients, it is not we lfare, it is not a handout. Medicare is government health insurance for peo ple the private insurance outright refused coverage. It is also paid for by the recipients.

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f wizards,

From what I understand, the majority of that cost goes to bloated school administration and not directly to educating the students. This gets back to the American culture of entitlement to a well paying job for doing nothing.