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Another smug empty political slogan that means nothing at all except that certain people are too lazy to do even a bare minimum for themselves, too entitled to accept anything less than a Maserati, and too manipulative to stop exploiting something that ended long ago and has no connection with present time.
A lot of people are very poor sometime in their life, or all their life, but they never do anything criminal. The great majority of poor people are like that. In the US, even the worst poverty is quite okay compared with many other places (as I can remember extremely well). It all circles back to the culture of crime. No American citizen needs to commit crime in order to survive, considering all the jobs, plus social programs. People in the US commit crime because they want to, not because they need to.
More than three quarters of all demographic groups on this planet could say that conditions for their troubles have been created and should be fixed. Except that most demographic groups on this planet eagerly make an effort to fix those problems for themselves - because, as I already said, growing up is something everyone has to do for themselves, nobody else can do it for you. As the best known and probably most severe example (but there are many others), the entire world had been creating "conditions" for Jewish people for 2,000 years, yet they asked practically nobody ever to fix those conditions for them - they latched to any scrap of opportunity they could find, and generally did well for themselves as a demographic group. Jewish folks surely never had any Affirmative Action in the US.
The only relevant conditions that the US has been creating for decades are excellent conditions for everyone to get out of poverty. Of course, you can't do that with four kids and no desire to work, but these particular conditions are entirely self-created.
That's what you think. I don't see rich kids joining gangs.
That's what you think. I don't see rich kids joining gangs.
It is a far more plausible explanation than your blatantly fake ones. I don't see all, or even the majority, of poor kids joining gangs either. Only those who think it is cool to be a gang member.
And regarding your added link about the Hasidic Section 8, obviously they are manipulating the system (which is disgusting), but they are still not asking anyone to fix their conditions. They are not claiming that their disgusting manipulation of the system is justifiable because their ethno-religious group had a hard history. Jewish folks never pull that card.
It is a far more plausible explanation than your blatantly fake ones. I don't see all, or even the majority, of poor kids joining gangs. Only those who think it is cool to be a gang member.
But out of the ones that you've seen that "think it's cool," are they rich or are they poor?
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
But out of the ones that you've seen that "think it's cool," are they rich or are they poor?
Judging from what they wear or drive, many of them are rich. When I walk out in Parkchester, I am not worried about scruffy kids, but about the "fly" ones.
But out of the ones that you've seen that "think it's cool," are they rich or are they poor?
When I replied to this yesterday, I didn't have much time for a more detailed reply, but here it is today. As you might imagine, I don't live in thug circles, and don't know any such people personally, but there is the entire literary(?) genre called urban novels, and one of the writers in that genre is a certain Damon R. Green who wrote a novel titled "Somethin' to Think About". You can find it on Google Books, maybe on Amazon too. I don't consider that kind of stuff literature, but I do consider it informative. So, the novel depicts urban life of crime. The cover shows two fly guys with two hot babes chillin in front of a project in Harlem, with the fifth character exiting the building with what looks like a machine gun.
I cannot cite directly from the book for the copyright rules, but I can recount it. In Chapter 15, one of the projects' role models picks up, with his Maserati, his love interest named Jasmine from her apartment in Parkchester, and they go to an upscale Japanese restaurant where they order some expensive dishes with Krug champagne (a good part of this chapter consists of mentioning name brands... a really peculiar "literary style" :-). Then they go to his luxury condo in Bronxville, where there is a six foot painting of his daughter (who is presumably with his baby mama), the wooden floor is covered with some nice designer rugs, there is a Natuzzi leather couch, a Pioneer Pro 1410 HD 61 high definition display plasma tv (note, the novel was written some years ago when this kind of stuff was still extraordinary), and there is another tv and sound system at the head of his bed where the upscale brands are also listed in great detail (I must admit that this is the first, and I hope the last, literary work where I have ever seen any, let alone such extensive, listing of brand names of foods, furniture and electronics :-).
So there is the answer to your question. Gang crime in NYC (and similar places) is not driven by need to get out of poverty (where getting out of poverty is extremely easy in the US for anyone with physical ability to work in any kind of job) - it is driven by desire to drive Maserati, to drink Krug champagne, sit on a Natuzzi couch while watching the best plasma tv, and screw somebody who is not your baby mama to the sound of a top of the line sound system. FYI, people in my profession work very hard in an essential line of work (after extremely long training, which includes years of lowish salary), for a solid upper-middle class reimbursement, and people in my profession send their kids to good schools, but nobody owns a Maserati or the rest of the c*ap listed above - we don't have such materialistic values, the kids of those of us who have kids don't have such values, and that is why those kids don't join gangs but pursue professions, not because they are "rich".
When I replied to this yesterday, I didn't have much time for a more detailed reply, but here it is today. As you might imagine, I don't live in thug circles, and don't know any such people personally, but there is the entire literary(?) genre called urban novels, and one of the writers in that genre is a certain Damon R. Green who wrote a novel titled "Somethin' to Think About". You can find it on Google Books, maybe on Amazon too. I don't consider that kind of stuff literature, but I do consider it informative. So, the novel depicts urban life of crime. The cover shows two fly guys with two hot babes chillin in front of a project in Harlem, with the fifth character exiting the building with what looks like a machine gun.
I cannot cite directly from the book for the copyright rules, but I can recount it. In Chapter 15, one of the projects' role models picks up, with his Maserati, his love interest named Jasmine from her apartment in Parkchester, and they go to an upscale Japanese restaurant where they order some expensive dishes with Krug champagne (a good part of this chapter consists of mentioning name brands... a really peculiar "literary style" :-). Then they go to his luxury condo in Bronxville, where there is a six foot painting of his daughter (who is presumably with his baby mama), the wooden floor is covered with some nice designer rugs, there is a Natuzzi leather couch, a Pioneer Pro 1410 HD 61 high definition display plasma tv (note, the novel was written some years ago when this kind of stuff was still extraordinary), and there is another tv and sound system at the head of his bed where the upscale brands are also listed in great detail (I must admit that this is the first, and I hope the last, literary work where I have ever seen any, let alone such extensive, listing of brand names of foods, furniture and electronics :-).
So there is the answer to your question. Gang crime in NYC (and similar places) is not driven by need to get out of poverty (where getting out of poverty is extremely easy in the US for anyone with physical ability to work in any kind of job) - it is driven by desire to drive Maserati, to drink Krug champagne, sit on a Natuzzi couch while watching the best plasma tv, and screw somebody who is not your baby mama to the sound of a top of the line sound system. FYI, people in my profession work very hard in an essential line of work (after extremely long training, which includes years of lowish salary), for a solid upper-middle class reimbursement, and people in my profession send their kids to good schools, but nobody owns a Maserati or the rest of the c*ap listed above - we don't have such materialistic values, the kids of those of us who have kids don't have such values, and that is why those kids don't join gangs but pursue professions, not because they are "rich".
This book....is it fiction, or a true story?
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
It is fiction, but people read fiction because it gives a summary view of reality. Fiction does not equal fantasy, and realistic fiction often paints a truer picture of reality than a true story of a specific event, because fiction can summarize thousands of similar specific events. There is a lot of fiction set in the WW2, which does not mean that the war did not happen. Maybe you'd know that if you did not have such a contempt for libraries, and such admiration for bank statements (or checkbooks, or whatever you thought all Americans admire just because you admire it :-). I came across this novel when I was searching Internet after the police blog reported some months ago that an unlocked Maserati was stolen in Parkchester.
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