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Unemployment itself doesn't cause crime, but unemployment and a weak social safety net will definitely cause crime. I've lived in Western Europe countries with

• squidlogic 6y ago
  As a US native I’ve never had someone threaten to shoot me or show me they were armed to intimidate me. I’m not exactly living a sheltered life either. I have a few questions, sorry if this sounds like a lot I’m just really curious. What city are you in where this happens? What are you doing to provoke this kind of behavior? Why haven’t you moved away to somewhere safer?
  • WalterBright 6y ago
    I have. Seattle. I was mugged by 3 armed teenage hoodlums. It was a long time ago, but I still have a bad reaction when people come up behind me.
  • mattlondon 6y ago
    In my experience it happens a fair bit at the long, long, long immigration lines at US air ports if you are not a US citizen. Guards fondling their gun holster and shouting at people for using a phone or sitting on the floor after queuing for 3 or 4 hours. Welcome to America. I guess you don't experience this if you are a US native. And also obviously it happens frequently in SF from the homeless people. That is probably more worrying as they potentially have "nothing to lose"
    • BrandoElFollito 6y ago
      I have traveled extensively to the US (I am French), probably 10+ times a year. The way people are "welcomed" to the US is horrible - I felt like this only in Russia. Once the border officer asked me (or rather - barked at me) "why are you coming to the US?", to what I said "for business". "For how long?" - to what I answered "for 3 days" He then asks "why so short?" to what I answered "I swear if I could squeeze it to one day I would gladly come and go not to spend money in a country that is so welcoming" (it was a very long, tiring flight and I really wanted to go to the hotel, afer having queued up for 2 hours) He told me that I should not reply like this, to what I said that this is the truth. We had a small staring contest and he let me go. The other similar case in Russia was when the border guard was yelling at me for not having my passport number printed on my ticket (yes, I do not know either), to which I yelled back to kick me out of their country with a "never return" stamp because I am fed up enough to have a week-end ruined with tha travel. I showed him my hands together (as in "handcuff me") and he pushed me into Russia. The stay was great, people were great.
      • yardie 6y ago
        > "I swear if I could squeeze it to one day I would gladly come and go not to spend money in a country that is so welcoming" This is what greeted my family every time we came to the US. Which fucked up ICE agent will we get this time? Most of them were pleasant but it only takes 1 asshole in the bunch to ruin a great holiday. And no matter what they say, Canada's ICE weren't much better.
        • filoleg 6y ago
          Yeah, I (as a US immigrant) personally had way more problems with Canadian ICE than the US one. Semi-relevant anecdote: I was traveling in my car with my mom and sister to Vancouver BC from Seattle (back when I was not a US citizen yet). Canadian officer at the border was more than just inquisitive. He asked who i was, where i worked, which team i worked on, what specific product I worked on and what specifically I did (which was already making me feel uncomfortable, because the product wasn't public back then, so I wasn't really allowed to talk about it in general). The questioning itself took like 10 mins and was absolutely unnecessary. Not even mentioning how aggressive he was, I felt like I was an inch away from being escorted to their "office" for additional questioning. And I am saying that as someone who doesn't usually feel threatened much by any interactions with officers. On the way back into the US, however, it was buttery smooth. The officer confiscated the grapes my mother tried bringing back with her (despite me urging her not to do so), and he was extremely apologetic about it. Then he said "welcome home", and that was it. Took less than a minute overall. Not trying to generalize anything from this, as, of course, the experiences differ wildly between individual border officers and such. I just thought it was an interesting semi-relevant anecdote.
    • hermitcrab 6y ago
      Given that Americans are generally warm and approachable, it is quite surprising just how hostile their border officials.
  • Diederich 6y ago
    I grew up in south-central Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s and I witnessed several incidents of gun violence, one of which was fatal, and I was personally fired at on two different occasions. These were all gang related, random acts of violence, though neither myself nor anybody I happened to be near at the time was in a gang. > What are you doing to provoke this kind of behavior? Standing on the sidewalk, hanging out with friends. > Why haven’t you moved away to somewhere safer? I left when I was 18. I'd be happy to entertain any additional questions you or others might have.
    • selestify 6y ago
      That's nuts, thanks for sharing. Would you happen to know why gangs would bother doing random acts of violence against teenagers standing on the sidewalk? I'd heard that the Italian mafia at least likes to keep themselves out of the public eye, interesting that other gangs don't.
      • IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
        Because they can. Its a game, its a status symbol. Whatever. It doesn't matter what matters is... that it does happen. They have literal games , such as "knockout". The game is literally to come from behind and hit a random passerby so hard that they fall on the ground... knocked out. Its some real messed up stuff. I am sure you google.
      • koolba 6y ago
        Either demonstrating dominance or as part of initiation. Requiring recruits to perform illegal acts or even random violence is common. It’s to prove you’re willing to do what is asked of you by your superiors.
  • yardie 6y ago
    Miami. A city with notoriously bad drivers some of them armed. It's better now but was a hell of a lot worse when I was growing up, the 90s. But you can pick any major city and ask a local where not to go, and just don't go there. Driving, riding my bike, walking. When I was a kid simply walking to school was enough. But people will threaten to shoot you for turning, not driving fast enough, merging, stopping, not stopping. Riding a bike in the right lane. Growing up down here you get used to it. Far too many Americans have access to guns. Hopefully, they only use it on themselves. But even if only 1% of gun owners were certifiable crazy, that's still over a 1 million unhinged individuals. I moved to Europe for a time. But career and family brought me back here. And I like money :-)
    • kenjackson 6y ago
      Road rage is definitely the fastest escalation path I've seen in the US. Do other countries have road rage the way the US does?
      • IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
        Lebanon is notorious for this. Guns are illegal. Still, plenty of shootings and killings from random roadrage incidents.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
• subsubzero 6y ago
  >BTW, I'm still shocked by the casualness of people who threaten to shoot me. Or like to show they are armed in an attempt to intimidate me. What? Where in the US do you live? I've lived in the US my entire life and never, not once has anyone ever threatened to shoot me. Thats a felony in itself and I am really surprised by that.
  • Diederich 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26755014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26755014 The US is a big, diverse place with a lot of history.
  • ameister14 6y ago
    I had a guy threaten to shoot me in Kentucky once when I was working with him on the Ohio River - more of a 'I have a rifle in my truck' than a 'pointing a gun at you' kind of a threat though.
  • hdctambien 6y ago
    It's used as a joke in a lot of circles. "My daughter's old enough to date, I better clean my gun"
  • yardie 6y ago
    If you commute long enough through places of high poverty you'll have some stories. I'd get a gun pulled on me for driving. I'd also have friends and colleagues brag to me about pulling guns on other drivers. I'd tell them they were crazy but in their mind it's a completely valid reaction.
• dcolkitt 6y ago
  Except there are two problems with this theory. One unemployment is just as correlated with crimes of passion as it is crimes of opportunity. There’s no reason why a lack of job training should lead to rape. Two is that America’s high crime rates well preceded the advent of the modern welfare state. New York had much higher crime than London even in the 19th century at the height of Victorian social Darwinism and Dickensian work houses. If anything the disparity has actually decreased in the post war period. The short answer is America, and in fact the Western Hemisphere in general, is just a much more violent society at its roots than the Old World.
  • antonf 6y ago
    > much more violent society at its roots than the Old World I am originally from Russia, but live in US. I actually feel safer in US than in Russia. It is far easier to get assaulted as result of road rage or because somebody don't like how you dress in Russia. Hopefully Russia have stricter gun laws, so it's less lethal.
  • curryst 6y ago
    > One unemployment is just as correlated with crimes of passion as it is crimes of opportunity. There’s no reason why a lack of job training should lead to rape. I think there is a clear reason: nihilism and depression. If you have resigned yourself to being unemployed and impoverished forever, what difference does it make whether you're in jail or not? It's the same reason we argue that jailing the homeless is pointless. They don't care; life in prison might even be better in terms of quality of life. Sure, there's less freedom, but the poorer you are, the less the delta in freedom is. You don't have access to a lot of the freedom that financially healthy people have to begin with. Jailing them is like trying to drown a fish. We don't have any functional punishments for people who don't care about their life (I'm not advocating that we try to invent some). You mentioned rape specifically. The prevailing theory afaik is that rape is about control over someone else rather than sexual gratification. There are plenty of ways to have sex; the floor on sex worker prices is shockingly low. Doubly so in extremely poor areas. It's not shocking to me that people with almost no control over their lives would lash out in ways that grant them control, or at least a feeling of control. If you're poor and have no safety net, you have little control over your housing (can't afford to move), your job (don't have a rainy day fund to tell your boss to fuck off), your food (you eat what's cheap, or what the food bank will give you), your money (you're lucky if you even have enough to pay bills, much less have money left over that you can pick what to do with), etc. Your life becomes a constant chain of being shunted around and manipulated by people who do have money. Crimes of opportunity are an attempt to lift yourself out of poverty. Crimes of passion are an attempt to cope with the struggles of living a life that you have almost no control over. I'm not attempting to absolve anyone of responsibility for their actions, but I can see how someone would make that choice. Also, suicide is an act of passion, and it's highly correlated with unemployment.