> If that were true, wouldn’t crime rates be evenly distributed among income/circumstances?

Just because some people from lower income brackets choose to risk their livelihoods by doing crimes doesn’t mean there isn’t boundless opportunities.

If a person would rather gangbang or sling meth instead of doing something productive then that’s their choice.

There aren’t exactly a bunch of dudes desperate for cancer treatments they can’t afford so they turn to criminal enterprise to fund it. They choose the lifestyle.

Again though, if that were the case (that it's simply a choice and opportunity has nothing to do with it), we should see the same rate of people choosing crime among affluent people.

It's simply not true that people in lower income have the same opportunities. They don't have access to the same quality of education, people who care about their career prospects or the ability to afford higher education.

You’re changing the argument again. I never said the “same opportunities”. I simply said there are opportunities available in sufficient numbers that crime is no excuse.

Poor people aren’t as stupid as you think. Most don’t turn to crime.

To reverse your logic, affluent people should never commit crimes but yet sone do too. People make choices.

I think this was once called the soft bigotry of low expectations. You are a bigot by your logic. Looking down on poor people is offensive.

> To reverse your logic, affluent people should never commit crimes but yet sone do too. People make choices.

I'm not arguing that people make choices. Also, we are talking about the rate of criminal activity, not absolutes. Nothing in my argument says affluent people never commit crime, that is a straw man.

> Poor people aren’t as stupid as you think. Most don’t turn to crime.

I don't know how to be any clearer that I am talking about the _rate_ of criminal activity.

> I think this was once called the soft bigotry of low expectations. You are a bigot by your logic. Looking down on poor people is offensive.

I appreciate the ad hominem, but the one thing you won't answer is why then do poorer communities commit more crime on average? It seems pretty clear that less opportunity/resources makes it _more likely_ to turn to crime.

How do you explain the difference in rates if it's just choice?

> How do you explain the difference in rates if it's just choice?

Broken cultures and bad values. If it were really about money then violent crime that has nothing to do with money wouldn’t be higher as well.

Single motherhood is the leading cause and it’s endemic in poor communities. This value is not only tolerated but celebrated somehow by affluent liberals. It’s astonishing.

America is so incredibly boundless with opportunity that people wait years to move their lives here and others risk their life to come here illegally so they can take advantage of the opportunities and send money back home. Many of these people come from places that are actually poor (America doesn’t really have poverty compared to other places) and could probably be justified in stealing bread. But they don’t.

If that’s not clear evidence it’s a choice then I don’t know what is.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree then.

We don't get to choose where or to whom we are born. If you are then born into "bad cultures and values", as you say, that has a huge influence on your "choices". If you drop the same kid randomly into a more affluent family, I highly doubt he makes the same choices.

I just don't think that the cause can be simply boiled down to choices, when environment clearly has an outsized effect.

An affluent person can certainly sustain themselves more easily where bad values are concerned like single motherhood, etc. So much they can actually promote it as a value which eventually gets picked up by middle and lower classes and is destructive there.

Poor communities had as a value the 2-parent family and their crime rates were far lower than today. As our social values have changed our crime rates have generally increased. We like to point out that since the 90’s they’ve gone down but not overall the last 100 years.