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Young adult males don't require anything so complex as 'wealth divide envy' to be socially destructive.


The only thing we do when we trot out these platitudes is give them some self-justification that they rehearse to sucker TV journalists when they loot suburban sportswear stores.


If left to their own devices young adult males will form loose but highly competitive social hierarchies where status is established by physical prowess, domination rituals and acts of casual violence.


If we want to address this we need to provide a better sense of direction, a sense of discipline, a development path and support that would require substantial social investment that we are loth to do.


'Wealth divide envy' has no bearing in this.

Marmora Man Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> LadyDeliah Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Wealth divide envy?

>

>

> May be a reason but not an excuse


I didn't offer an excuse. Someone asked why and I gave a possible reason.

I disagree Hugo.


Much of what drives the whole of western society is ownership of stuff to elivate relative status.


Some people who can't afford to buy this stuff, sell drugs and steal the stuff.


Others also look at people who easily afford the stuff, especially the really expensive, visible stuff such as cars and feel envy and anger which can be acted out by damaging the other person's stuff.


I agree that the lack of direction and investment is a major driver of the underlying reason they are ordinarily excluded from being able to purchase the stuff in the first place.

Except that your argument isn't supported by any of the data, which puts the numbers of of crime in society either the same or less than it was 30 years ago.


Since the population was 56m then, compared with 62m now, and the 'wealth divide' is greater now than it's ever been, that means that the only correlation you could draw is that 'wealth divide envy' is reducing crime, not increasing it.


That would clearly be a ridiculous conclusion for me to draw - so the only conclusion you can draw is that there is no connection between 'wealth divide envy' and crime.

LadyDeliah Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> So how many people who get their tyres slashed or

> their wing mirrors snapped off, do you think

> report these crimes to the police?

>

> Overall crime stats have nothing to do with this.


Only those who want to increase the SE22 insurance premiums.

Well LadyD, the obvious answer is that if people don't report those things in 2012, they didn't report them in 1982 either, so your point is largely irrelevant. The frame of reference is the same for both years.


As it happens, I was actually using the British Crime Survey (from 1981 annually) as my comparison, as it uses both reported and unreported crime identified by survey, so that gives you a clearer picture.


But more importantly if you reject any supporting data that doesn't reinforce your position, then really you're just expressing a prejudice, rather than an informed argument.

I didn't say there had been an increase so the stats are irrelevant to my point. I knew boys in my youth who did that kind of vandalism to the property of people they considered to be privileged and I know of young guys whose attitudes are the same today as the you g guys I knew back then.


I was offering an insight into possible reasons in response to the earlier poster, but you would argue with yourself if there was no-one left on earth, Hugo.

Very probably ;)


I believe the questions was 'why would people do this' to which I responded 'it's an attribute of young urban males'.


You disagreed, saying 'it's the wealth divide envy' which is a reference to modern left wing thinking regarding the widening gap between rich and poor.


I merely pointed out that this type of vandalism has always been around so your argument didn't hold water.

I can see a correlation between crime and attitude - there seems to be a long term correlation between rising crime during individualist right leaning governments, and reducing crime under socialist left leaning governments.


This is quite at odds with right wing claims to be 'tough on crime' - historically their attitude seems to drive crime, not reduce it.

I upset some builders working on a neighbouring house once and my car was vandalised in small ways off and on for the whole time they were working there. If these types of crimes are reported do they serve to increase our future insurance premiums, or would you need to claim on your insurance policy?

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