Krugman: America Is A Violent Country (just not as much as it used to be)

[pampango]

The blue line at the top is the US; the other lines are for other advanced countries.

What I find most striking here actually isn’t the higher US level of violence; it’s the remarkable turnaround. I grew up in the America marked by that peak in violence — the America in which Times Square was a nest of drug addicts and porn shops, and people were afraid to take the subway. Now it’s another world.

And that’s one reason I find all these laments about declining values among non-elite Americans hard to take seriously. If things like single parenthood were as bad as they say, how can social pathologies have declined so much?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/america-is-a-violent-country/

Two interesting facts: 1) We are way more violent than any other developed country and 2) our level of violence is falling dramatically.

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. Be quiet Paul, you're going to upset the fear-everything-all-the-time script that has been

so carefully fostered to keep the suckers distracted. If they notice how much more there is while their share has declined, they might get upset and demand an equitable division.

K&R

[Odin2005]

2. Minnesota's violent crime rate is as low as that of a Western European country.

Generally the farther south you go in the US the more violent crime there is.

[Mojorabbit]

3. It is heartening to see the decline. I hope it is a global trend that continues. nt