Friday, January 6, 2006

Culture and Crime cause Poverty

Blaming others for a community's failure is typical Marxian nonsense

by StFerdIII

Socialists, liberals and those who hate individual responsibility always cry the same tired refrain, ‘poverty causes crime’. This is utter nonsense. Poverty has nothing to do with crime. Consider this: in the past 50 years in the industrialized countries the poverty rate has fallen by 50 % or more, whilst the crime rate has more than doubled. The increase in recent years of white collar crime and larceny indicates that income levels have little to do with the inclination towards crime. The ‘poverty causes crime’ cry is just another example of Marxian thinking in which individuals and groups say, ‘nothing is my fault so if there is a crime problem you solve it.’ If want to solve poverty look at the underlying causes which are mainly; a broken justice system that does little to punish crime; not enough police and first line officers in the affected areas; broken families; immoral cultures; gangs; and drugs. All of these factors cause crime, not poverty.

Statistically in the US the following is a fact: 67 % of all violent crimes are caused by blacks and most of those crimes are committed by young blacks from broken homes. This crime wave is from a black population that is 15 % of the total population. In fact since the big government cry-baby’s became involved in black society in the US during the 1960s the following has occurred to the black community; births out of wedlock now comprise 75 % of black births up from less than 20 %; ¾ of black homes are missing a parent; and blacks are less likely to finish high school and go to college than whites by a factor of about 100 %. Thanks to welfare, government intervention, and the low standards of black culture in which gang violence, drugs and violence are elevated over school, achievement and hard work; the black community in the US is in crisis.

In Canada and in particular in Toronto it is the same. The Jamaican community in Toronto [largely from Kingston Jamaica which is the murder capital of the world on a per capita basis], is in complete crisis. In Toronto gun violence and violent crimes of all categories is increasing by about 30 % per annum – largely due to Jamaican gangs. 90 % of the shootings in Toronto in 2005 were by Jamaican blacks, oftentimes against other Jamaican blacks. Yet the media in Toronto as it does in the US ignores the obvious and screams that ‘we’ must do something. Who exactly is ‘we’ ? Yes it might be a city wide issue but certainly the ‘root cause’ is obvious? The Jamaican community has a set of criminal, cultural and family problems that have to be fixed. Like in the US the Jamaican black community in Toronto has to assume responsibility. Their broken families; broken gang culture; broken rap culture; and denigration of women, work and study are the reasons why the Jamaicans in Toronto and many blacks in the US are poor, left out and marginalized.

Culture and crime cause poverty not the other way around.

Here is another piece of information. Socialists usually cry that their societies are safer, quieter and less crime ridden than capitalist societies. Wrong. One can compare for instance the socialist Canadian crime scene with the American. Only in 2 categories is American crime higher than Canadian crime – homicides and theft per capita – yet in both instance the US rate is falling rapidly whilst the Canadian is rising. In the US homicide rates have fallen by 40 % on average in the past decade. In Canada they are rising by 25 % per annum. Gun deaths in Chicago for instance run at about 400 per year – this on a population base of 5 million. Toronto with ½ the population has a gun death rate of about 80 per annum and rising. Within 10 years, given current trends, the Chicago rate will be just over 200 and the Toronto rate close to 220. In Canada a lax, socialist, and ‘caring’ legal system [not a justice system but a legal system, with justice being something different], does little to punish offenders, deport illegals or give the impression that it much cares about stopping crime. For instance the Canadians will spend $2 billion on an ignorant gun registry forcing non-criminals to register their guns, instead of putting the money into more front line police and patrols and punishing gangsters. But this is to be expected from moralizing socialists who are never very good at intelligent analysis.

In other categories of crime the socialist nations are worse than the US. Europe and Canada have higher non-homicide related crimes per capita than the US. In fact in Paris and other large cities in Europe the homicide rate is even higher than in New York. In serious assaults and theft per 100.000 population we have:

-Sweden; 667 and 7484
-Belgium; 553 and 4258
-US; 319 and 3804
-Holland; 242 and 5302
-France; 211 and 4224

You have more of a chance of being robbed or assaulted in many EU countries than you will in the US. Part of the reason is that the US legal system differs by region and locality and in many areas is far more stringent than EU and Canadian legal systems. US areas which are tough on crime have of course lower crime rates whilst the more liberal and ‘progressive’ states and localities suffer from EU-like crime waves. In Canada car thefts, break-ins, petty theft and non gun related crimes are higher than in the US and only getting worse.

There is thus no evidence that socialist nanny states are more moral or cultured, or less crime ridden than the US. Nor is there any evidence that poverty causes crime. One of the great intellectual crimes of the past 50 years is ‘relativism’. This dumb ideas emanates from former Nazi intellectual sympathizers [De Man, Fouccualt, Derrida], that all cultures, ideas and concepts of reality are equal. In this vein the community causing the crime can scream ‘it is not our fault, it is society’s fault, you have let us down! Of course this is utter nonsense. Nothing is relative in life and with crime - culture informs all. In Toronto the Jamaican culture has failed and its failure manifests itself in gang violence and death. In the US thanks to governmental and political pandering a black underclass raised on the stupidity of welfare, entitlements, gang violence, racist rap, and immorality continues to cause crime out of all proportion of its population.

It is clear that to solve poverty you must solve crime.