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Originally Posted by jamesqf
There's also a lot of self-selection. Do you grocery shopping at say Whole Foods (a US supermarket chain selling "natural"/organic food), and you will see very few obese people. Shop in the WalMart grocery section, and you'll see few non-obese ones.
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How many people shop at Whole Foods compared with Walmart?
The statistics don't lie:
40% of women are obese. Not just a lot overweight, but obese to the point of having serious health threats.
Here's the overweight chart:
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
This is just biology: predators congregrate where the prey is plentiful, and attack the weakest members of the herd - in this case, the ones without money to hire lawyers.
The problem with that is that most of the things that will get you arrested (in the US, anyway) are morally neutral.
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Police aren't running the lawyer calculus when they are arresting people who are breaking the law, and they aren't randomly throwing people into jail.
It's morally deficient to rationalize criminal behavior as an inevitable consequence of low economic standing, and broadly asserting that law enforcement is a gang of predators looking for easy prey is disgusting.
I'm no fan of many of the interactions I've had with LEOs, and I acknowledge that power has a corrupting influence on individuals, but it's unreasonable to believe most LEOs go to work with the main intent to bring injustice to the land.
Do you know what the strongest predictor of economic status is? It's single parent families. We can't blame single parenting on some capitalistic boogyman. It's not that simple. Attempting to explain a complex issue with a single line explanation does a disservice to everyone.
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Contrary to what most people think, property crimes are by far the most reported crimes in the United States
Larceny / Theft
Larceny-theft hits the top of the crime list, far outweighing any other crime. The numbers of larceny-theft in this country are staggering – more than 7 million reported each year, making up almost sixty percent of all reported crimes.
Burglary
The next most prevalent crime is burglary, another property crime. Burglary reports total around 2 million each year, making up about 18 percent of all crimes reported.
Motor Vehicle Theft
Thieves do a thriving business in stolen cars, apparently – there are more than a million stolen cars in the U.S. every year. Car theft accounts for more than ten percent of all reported crimes annually in the United States.
Aggravated Assault
Violent crime comes into the top 5 most common crimes in the United States at number four on the list. According to Princeton.edu, aggravated assault is defined as an attack with intent to cause grave injury to another, and can involve a weapon. With or without a weapon, aggravated assault accounts for about 7 percent of all reported crimes.
Robbery
Robbery comes in at number five on the top five most common crimes in the United States. Robbery is not simple theft – it is a violent crime, and theft performed directly on a person or place. If you are ever mugged, that is robbery. A stick-up of a grocery or liquor store clerk is robbery. There are close to half a million robberies each year in the United States, and they account for about 3 percent of all crime.
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Which of these top 5 most reported crimes are morally neutral?