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TL:DR Poverty is the true problem, and we need to think about things more holistically. Here we are on HN, once again debating criminalizing poor people for no

TL:DR Poverty is the true problem, and we need to think about things more holistically. Here we are on HN, once again debating criminalizing poor people for not having opportunities, about if it's better to fine poor people or imprison them, treating those as solutions, instead of something just making the problem worse. The problem is poverty. How come when we try to incentivize the rich, we give them stuff like tax breaks, but when we want to incentivize the poor, we punish them and take their money or freedom away? People are so focused on if it's wrong to take something that doesn't belong to you, they don't ask if it's wrong to have something and not give it away to someone who needs it more than you do. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269557/gross-profit-and-net-earnings-of-walgreens-in-the-us-since-2005/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269557/gross-profit-and-... Because it's not comfortably middle class Americans who have good paying jobs who are repeatedly shoplifting, it's poor people who don't have a significantly better options. Treating their crimes as the most salient aspect of them by calling them thieves and criminals ignores their poverty, instead of treating it as a systemic societal problem which harms us all. This wasn't a natural experiment in any case, pre/post the law, you can't blame the law for shoplifting, other variables weren't fixed and thus confound the results. I expect rent increases, increases in the prices of food and other consumer goods and so on have a much bigger impact on shoplifting. Even if you could, if it wasn't shoplifting it would be some other means of making ends meet. Poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, these are problems our country absolutely has the means to address, and investing in stopping them pays dividends not just in higher tax revenues but in decreased crime. And with that in mind, isn't it smarter to take some of the money dedicated housing prisoners, policing the poor, managing them through the criminal justice system, and using it to help them so they don't have to steal?

logicchains 5y ago
>TL:DR Poverty is the true problem, and we need to think about things more holistically. Is there any empirical evidence for this? How come there are countries like Vietnam and China that are much poorer than the US, with much higher income inequality, yet have much less crime? How come in San Franciso there was less crime 50 years ago, 100 years ago, even though the city (and country) was poorer then?
- lsiebert 5y ago
  Yes? as I understand it the general correlation between income inequality and crime is fairly well known, and the debate is on why it occurs and what can be done despite it. That said crime rates themselves are often more to do with reporting than with prevalence... IE if crime happens regularly people don't bother reporting it. Okay, here's international correlations between income inequality and property crime .https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.863.3280&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.86... The best thing I could find for the time ranges you discussed suggests you are wrong about San Francisco, at least in terms of the last ~50 years and violent crime rates, which dropped 43% from 1975 to 2015. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/crime-in-context https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/crime-in-conte... The nationwide crime rate also went down during the same period, so I'm not sure that is really fair to your argument. That said, more broadly here's evidence of a correlation between crime rate and income inequality, including property crime, using US cities that isn't time based. https://www.zippia.com/advice/crime-income-inequality/ https://www.zippia.com/advice/crime-income-inequality/ Here's one showing that income inequality by neighborhood correlates to property crime rate. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098016643914?journalCode=usja https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004209801664391... Here's a study about people on probation in San Francisco that shows that housing insecurity drive recidivism, and that that's particularly strong correlation for low level offenses like property crimes https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leah-Jacobs-3/publication/340479616_The_Effect_of_Housing_Circumstances_on_Recidivism_Evidence_From_a_Sample_of_People_on_Probation_in_San_Francisco/links/5ef1030792851ce9e7fb7bf5/The-Effect-of-Housing-Circumstances-on-Recidivism-Evidence-From-a-Sample-of-People-on-Probation-in-San-Francisco.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leah-Jacobs-3/publicati... Anyway, This paper suggests that increasing wages among low income workers decreases crime https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/90836/1/wp0017.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/90836/1/wp0017.pdf
ALittleLight 5y ago
We can't give the poor tax breaks because, mostly, they don't pay taxes. The bottom 50% of tax payers account for 3% of income taxes[1]. Of course, there are other taxes like payroll, corporate income, and excise taxes - but I'd guess that the genuinely poor, say the bottom 5% or so, aren't paying much corporate income or payroll taxes either. This doesn't account for state or sales taxes, but according to this calculator[2] a single person making 12k a year would pay 72 dollars in state taxes in California. You can get free health insurance if you're poor. You can get free food. You can get free shelter. You can get free education, including higher education. Being poor is, of course, no picnic, I'm not trying to say it isn't bad, but I think your post minimizes the extent to which our society offers opportunities to the poor. I think it's much to worse to say "Okay poor people, you can steal, no consequences" and then step back and let a relatively small number of thieves destroy local businesses. Jobs, stores, wealthier law abiding citizens go away and now you've trapped the remaining poor in a much worse place to live - but hey, at least you didn't punish thieves for committing crimes, right? 1- https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco... 2- https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator

logicchains 5y ago

>TL:DR Poverty is the true problem, and we need to think about things more holistically. Is there any empirical evidence for this? How come there are countries like Vietnam and China that are much poorer than the US, with much higher income inequality, yet have much less crime? How come in San Franciso there was less crime 50 years ago, 100 years ago, even though the city (and country) was poorer then?

lsiebert 5y ago
Yes? as I understand it the general correlation between income inequality and crime is fairly well known, and the debate is on why it occurs and what can be done despite it. That said crime rates themselves are often more to do with reporting than with prevalence... IE if crime happens regularly people don't bother reporting it. Okay, here's international correlations between income inequality and property crime .https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.863.3280&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.86... The best thing I could find for the time ranges you discussed suggests you are wrong about San Francisco, at least in terms of the last ~50 years and violent crime rates, which dropped 43% from 1975 to 2015. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/crime-in-context https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/crime-in-conte... The nationwide crime rate also went down during the same period, so I'm not sure that is really fair to your argument. That said, more broadly here's evidence of a correlation between crime rate and income inequality, including property crime, using US cities that isn't time based. https://www.zippia.com/advice/crime-income-inequality/ https://www.zippia.com/advice/crime-income-inequality/ Here's one showing that income inequality by neighborhood correlates to property crime rate. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098016643914?journalCode=usja https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004209801664391... Here's a study about people on probation in San Francisco that shows that housing insecurity drive recidivism, and that that's particularly strong correlation for low level offenses like property crimes https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leah-Jacobs-3/publication/340479616_The_Effect_of_Housing_Circumstances_on_Recidivism_Evidence_From_a_Sample_of_People_on_Probation_in_San_Francisco/links/5ef1030792851ce9e7fb7bf5/The-Effect-of-Housing-Circumstances-on-Recidivism-Evidence-From-a-Sample-of-People-on-Probation-in-San-Francisco.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leah-Jacobs-3/publicati... Anyway, This paper suggests that increasing wages among low income workers decreases crime https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/90836/1/wp0017.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/90836/1/wp0017.pdf

ALittleLight 5y ago

We can't give the poor tax breaks because, mostly, they don't pay taxes. The bottom 50% of tax payers account for 3% of income taxes[1]. Of course, there are other taxes like payroll, corporate income, and excise taxes - but I'd guess that the genuinely poor, say the bottom 5% or so, aren't paying much corporate income or payroll taxes either. This doesn't account for state or sales taxes, but according to this calculator[2] a single person making 12k a year would pay 72 dollars in state taxes in California. You can get free health insurance if you're poor. You can get free food. You can get free shelter. You can get free education, including higher education. Being poor is, of course, no picnic, I'm not trying to say it isn't bad, but I think your post minimizes the extent to which our society offers opportunities to the poor. I think it's much to worse to say "Okay poor people, you can steal, no consequences" and then step back and let a relatively small number of thieves destroy local businesses. Jobs, stores, wealthier law abiding citizens go away and now you've trapped the remaining poor in a much worse place to live - but hey, at least you didn't punish thieves for committing crimes, right? 1- https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco... 2- https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator