Thursday, February 28, 2008

Crime

This is somewhat related to the previous post. There is a huge number of people in prisons in the USA (about 1 out of every 100 adults). These people aren't there for "fun", even though some drug laws are clearly stupid. Most of them are there because of some more or less serious crime. Why?
Why there is so many people committing crimes in the USA other than in, say, Europe?
Well, apart from other obvious candidates, I could imagine that it is the economic inequality, which is simply hard to believe. In LA, you get from extremely rich area to extremely poor in minutes(!). People in the poor areas (allegedly) suffer from (occasional) hunger, lack of health care, illiteracy etc. Rich people are among the richest in the world.
We don't have that in Europe - not at this level. And I guess it may be hard for young, angry man to do stupid things. They are angry for being born in the wrong family. They might make a decent human being if their mother did not have 2 jobs and actually had more than 10 minutes a day to make them behave.
I will write later how the poverty leads to higher economic efficiency (both in growth and levels) and this is just one of the side-effects. It seems quite costly side-effect, though.

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