On Crime and Consumer Credit

by Don Boudreaux on January 6, 2010

in Crime, Myths and Fallacies, Nanny State, Regulation

Here are two worthwhile reads from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.  The first is Heather Mac Donald’s argument that crime is not caused by poverty.

The second is by my GMU Law colleague Todd Zywicki on how ordinary Americans are harmed by government-mandated restrictions on credit-card terms.

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  • Gil
    Is this like saying there was supposed to be a trade-off between unemployment and inflation?
  • Crime is at a 15 year low in Los Angeles. Perhaps it is because there are 1000 legal "medical" marijuana dispensaries.
  • "Povery causes crime" is easily the stupidest idea in all of social science. A quick look at homicide rates, according to the CDC (they've gone steadily down since 2004 as well):

    http://pawatercooler.com/wp-content/uploads/200...

    No strong relationship either way, certainly not in the more poverty, more crime direction.

    Same holds for property crimes, although the data only go back to the early 1960s, not 1900.

    No one who believes poverty causes crime is arguing for a testable hypothesis -- easy to test, and easy to see it's wrong. It's an article of faith to signal that you care about the poor.

    Somehow all those Jewish and Chinese immigrants in lower Manhattan of the 1920s managed to avoid catching the plague of crime going on around them, despite living in dilapidated tenements and being vilified by the mainstream culture.
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