View Single Post
  #719   Report Post  
Posted to alt.home.repair
Kurt Ullman Kurt Ullman is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,016
Default No comments from the GUN_Lovers

In article ,
"DGDevin" wrote:

It isn't a 1-2-3 formula, it could be that poverty leads to poor schools due
to a reduced tax base and that impacts employment which leads to more crime.
Or it could be that increased crime drives away taxpayers etc. Or it could
be that low employment leads to family and social breakdown which results in
more young men without guidance and that produces the crime. But it's kind
of silly to suggest that poverty and crime don't tend to live in the same
neighborhood.

There is ample evidence that (surprisingly anti-intuitive) tax base
has little to do with it. Some of the poorest areas toss in the most
money, get the worst results. The shining example being DC schools which
have one of the highest (if not the highest, depending on the year) per
pupil expenditure and one of the highest drop out rates, lowest college
attendance, etc. In the meantime, a couple of the western states have
low per pupil expenditures, high graduation rates, and send large
percentages of their grads on to post secondary education.


They are, in most sociologists view, caused by the same thing, but neither
is the cause of the other. For example, unemployment is now higher than
it's been in decades, the schools are certainly no better than twenty
years ago, and more people are below the poverty line than anytime I can
remember.


Yet crime rates continue to drop.


In which case there might be one or more factors we're missing. Have you
read Freakonomics? Interesting analysis there about crime rates and
abortion.


--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz