Assuming the data is true (Which I STRONGLY DISAGREE) So what's your alternative to putting more cops on the streets? Distribute flyers about the benefits of abortion? Hasn't the left been killing/mocking China for its one child policy for years? What is the better decision? Open up more abortion clinics? Offer discounts? Even if this data was true, I don't see any way it would change crime fighting tactics. So you're for racial profiling then? Statistics say that the vast majority terrorists are Arab Muslims, so what's wrong with the police racially profiling them? Or what's wrong with racial profiling on blacks since statistcally they commit the highest number of crimes.
If it's true (and agreed, it's a big if), then if you're a city police department looking for the best ways to spend your budget to reduce crime, instead of investing headstrong into NYC-style police programs, you re-evaluate and look at other options and see if there was some other smaller, less-publicized program that had a greater effect. The policy implication doesn't have ANYTHING to do with abortion - that's the point. It has everything to do with not crediting programs with having an effect they might not have had, and wasting a bunch of money as a result. Where did I suggest that? You just missed the point entirely again. If the vast majority of terrorists are Arab Muslims, that's very useful information to know. That does not correlate to "we must racial profile". But if we're looking at the sources of terrorist training, we know to focus on the Middle East instead of China. Knowing that blacks commit the most crimes tells you that maybe there are problems with inner city schools that need to be worked on. Or that maybe there is a cultural divide that needs to be researched. If you never did any analysis on that and never knew that there were a higher race of crime with minorities, you can't do anything about it. It would not only be absurd to ignore that data, but it would be negligent and bad for the country.
But the point of the discussion is that we're basing the drop in crime on the assumption that legalized abortion had something to do with it. If you're a big city commissioner, and you just got confirmation that abortion lowers crime rates, that isn't going to change things. You're not going to suddenly start directing abortion advertising at poor neighborhoods. You're still going to invest in your PAL youth leagues. You're still going to have funding for D.A.R.E. or whatever version of it is running now in elementary schools. All the factors that contribute to the majority of crimes are still there, whether it be poverty or otherwise. Your suggestion is that its bad governing to ignore statistics. Your suggestions do not deal directly with the situation presently going on. The terrorists are already here and active in America. Even if you cut off their funding, they will find a way to hurt us. Knowing this, and that the majority of them are Arab Muslims, if you got a tip that something was gonna happen soon, would you say it is bad governing to ignore the stats that most likely the attack will come from Arab Muslims? EDIT: I won't lie, I'm extremely afraid of what those in power would do should Freakonomics ever becomes accepted theory. Considering how easily the citizens of this country accepted the gradual loss of our hard fought freedoms... If I'm coming off as too loud or hysterical over it, I apologize, I admit part of my loudness comes from my fear of the implications of this since this country has not exactly shown the will to hang on to our freedoms.
I'm a little surprised that there were only a couple of us who had a problem with it. I'm even more surprised that there didn't seem to be that much voiced discomfort with it.
In New York City a man gets mugged every 10 seconds.... we're going to meet that man.... (SNL skit from the '70's)
But you're going to change your investments. Right now, cities all across the country think that the NYC changes had a huge effect on crime and are looking at duplicating it (or adjusting it for their own community). If that's NOT true, and it was in fact something else that caused that drop and those programs had relatively little effect, you don't think that's useful knowledge? It's not like police departments just keep doing the same thing. If you happened to start a program at the same time as the decline happened, you're going to believe it made a HUGE difference and possibly expand it. If you learned that it didn't have that effect, you'd do something diffferent. Of course knowing that your programs might not have been nearly as effective as you thought is important. I don't disagree with this at all, and making abortion policy based on it would be stupid. But from an academic viewpoint - and the authors are academics - the research is important, and it could be helpful in terms of making crime policy.
But, based on the assumption that abortion has contributed mightily (does the book assert or hint that abortion has contrbuted mightily or just somewhat?) to lowering crime, don't you think it would be, in your words, "bad governing" to ignore that the biggest factor of lower crime rate is higher abortion rates amongst minorities (from Planned Parenthood's annual report)? http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm According to this site, our murder rate per 100k inhabitants in 2005 was 5.6, the same as in 1966. What do the reserachers say about the years before 1966? I didn't read the book, so I don't know where their reserach starts and ends.
No, you're not alone. It is sick that anyone would even suggest a causal relationship between abortion and declining crime rates. Doing so, even without suggesting action, gives fodder to those promoting class-based or even race-based eugenics. It would be exactly the same as Trader_Jorge suggesting that civil rights led to increased violent crime in the sixties and seventies.
The book asserts that the statistics correlate very well between the two - and as noted in the link earlier in this thread, it correlates beyond just an overall basis: States that were the first to legalize abortion, including New York, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, were the first to see a drop in crime, and states with the highest abortion rates had larger decreases in crime than states with low abortion rates. Based on that type of micro-correlation (I don't know the proper term), it suggests that it's more of a causal relationship and than just simple random correlation. I'm not even sure what you're asking here. If the data is statistically sound, it would be bad governing (and frankly, stupid), to pretend the data isn't there and make crime policy decisions based on incorrect facts would be bad policy. That doesn't have anything to do with abortion policy though. That doesn't mean you have to start promoting abortions. All policies have to be weighed against their benefits and drawbacks, and promoting abortion is probably bad public policy. Statistics show that if we make the speed limit 25 miles per hour and institute the death penalty for speeding, fatalities from car wrecks would drop. It doesn't mean that we should do either of those things. You still haven't answered my question. Do you think it's GOOD public policy to ignore data and pretend programs were more successful than they really were, and have other cities waste money on those programs? (this all assumes the data is statistically valid) The researchers dealt specifically with the sudden, unexpected and hard-to-explain crime drop in the 1990's in that book.
It's even more sick that people would rather simply pretend the facts don't exist. It does no such thing. It all people were dead, crime would drop to 0. Do you think that promotes nuclear holocaust? If there were stats to suggest a direct and strong correlation, I would love to see them.
I think that if the data dictates that the way for you to achieve a similar drop is to make abortion more accepted in the poor community (in effect eugenics), it might be morally (perhaps not logically) wiser for you to ignore such data and find another way around it. Ok I'll give you your point that, assuming the relationship exists, the police can divert more funds to perhaps PAL and other youth programs instead of promoting abortions or focusing on quality of life crimes (a staple of NYC crime fighting tactics of the Giuliani era), however all those are indirect ways of dealing with crime. The present police methods are all for dealing with the crime that has already occurred or will occur or is occuring. The only thing that can possibly be gained from acceptance of this abortion to crime rates relationship is the ability to prevent future crimes. It still cannot do anything for us when it comes to crimes that have occurred or are occurring, and wouldn't you say that the best method for those two instances is more cops on the street? My point is that even if it is true, it does not change anything that the cops would do differently. If you are willing to accept such relationship as fact, then you need to be prepared to answer questions about if being a criminal is genetic, and if it is genetic, is it race specific? And you know some academic with visions of making a name for himself will publish a book that espouses that theory. Much like the authors of the Bell Curve, sometimes a scholar needs to exercise constraint and realize the effects of what he's looking for. The following could be construed as a casual relationship (much like what you attribute the crime rate-abortion relationship to be). http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm Accoring to the above. Murders per 100k inhabitants (usually a good indicator of crime rate overall), which had hovered around 5.1 and lower from 1960-1965 jumped suddenly to 5.6 in 1966 and then started increasing every year till till 1975 when it experienced an astounding .9 drop.
This thread is jumping to conclusions all over the place. All I did was offer a thesis on a really controversial topic, and what happened was exactly what I expected. People blew up because its so controversial, probably because they are very afraid of the evidence that suggests it is true. But for the record, I think it's stupid to try to promote abortion for the sake of preventing crime, and even dumber to assume I wanted to do so. There is a very close connection (as opposed to correlation, like blacks and crime) between the time when abortion was legalized and the crime rate today. But just because it was a connection, it doesn't mean it can be implemented in policy. Those trying to pull racial or whatever arguments are assuming that there is no evidence to back up the connection. BTW, I do believe abortion is murder.
This doesn't suggest a causal relationship outside of a big leap of logic. Did murder rates rise more in areas less accepting of civil rights? Was there an increase in racial violence? The time period you refer to was also the end of the Vietnam war. Was there a correlation there? Were there other societal factors involved? Changes in demographics or economic situation? Introduction of new drugs? New government policies? This is the type of analysis that has to be done; it's the type that was done by the Freakanomics people. It's a study, not just a set of data that happens to have the same time period.
Like I said, if TJ had made the same statement you did, there would have been 50 instead of 2 people jumping on him at once. The hypocrisy that is D&D
The problem is that you made a statement on a hot button issue and offered no elaboration or support for that statement. Obviously people are going to jump to conclusions since it appears as though you were making a huge assumption offering nothing to substantiate it.
It was just tossed up there as an initial casual thing. It isn't anything I would be interested in studying, honestly. I don't see any good that can come from it. Like the study about abortion to crime rate. I see absolutely no benefits, and if there are any, then it is severely outweighed by negatives.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 The New Urban Politeness Index: New York City Wins!? In making cross-country comparisons, the Economist has given us the Big Mac Index and now Reader's Digest has given us the "rudeness" index. The people in New York have better manners than the people in Moscow. Similar to recent field experiments in economics, Reader's Digest conducted the same experimental design in each city (see below) to test whether different responses were observed in different cities. Intuitively, if somebody needs help --- does the average person nearby help the person? If the answer is no, then the city is marked as "rude". There is so much cross-country research that compares "apples to oranges" (such as national income accounts or corruption indices) that I actually much prefer this cross-country comparison. New Yorkers are polite? Yes, says mag By PAT MILTON, Associated Press WriterWed Jun 21, 8:27 AM ET New Yorkers are a polite bunch. No, really, they are. So says Reader's Digest. The magazine sent reporters "undercover" to 36 cities, in 35 countries, to measure courtesy. New York was the only American city on the list. In a city with a reputation for being in-your-face, New Yorkers seem to be expressing themselves with a new one-finger salute: a raised pinkie. In fact, they seem to have even better manners than people in London, Toronto and Moscow. In its admittedly unscientific survey, the magazine's politeness-police gave three types of tests to more than 2,000 unwitting participants. The reporters walked into buildings to see if the people in front of them would hold the door open; bought small items in stores and recorded whether the salespeople said "thank you"; and dropped a folder full of papers in busy locations to see if anyone would help pick them up. New Yorkers turned out to be the most polite: 90 percent held the door open, 19 out of 20 store clerks said "thank you," and 63 percent of men and 47 percent of women helped with the flying papers. In short, four out of five New Yorkers passed the courtesy test. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he's not surprised. He told reporters Tuesday that whenever he travels abroad, he hears nothing but praise for the Big Apple's good manners. "We are so jaded," he said. "We want to think the worst of ourselves, and people from around this country and around the world think exactly the reverse." The rudest continent is Asia, Readers Digest said. Eight out of nine cities tested there — including last place Mumbai, India — finished in the bottom 11. In Europe, Moscow and Bucharest ranked as the least polite. Reader's Digest, which has readers in 21 languages, is publishing the results in its July issue.
