OaktownBear said:
The rate of violent crime and homicides has been cut in half in the last 30 years, including in the big cities. Homeless were prevalent before, but they were not tolerated in town so they stayed on the outskirts of town and near railways. The poverty rate has been cut by about a third since the 50's. I find it hard to buy that race hating is higher now than in the prime of segregation and the KKK.
Don't confuse the rate at which these things are covered on television or the internet for an actual increase.
Up until 2015, violent crime had been steadily dropping for a quarter century, due to proactive policing, and the use of determinate sentencing to lock away criminals. In 2015 and 2016 the homicide rate rose by a total of 20 percent over two years, the highest rise in a quarter century. Overall violent crime rose at 7 percent for each of those years, the largest consecutive rises in a quarter century. In 2016, 4,300 people were shot in Chicagoone person every two hours. The victims were overwhelmingly black. Two dozen children under the age of 12 were shot in Chicago in 2016. Violent crime went down up to 2014, because it was targeted by police, as they took measures to prevent it.
In the meantime, with the police targeting violent crime, other crime rates went up. Property crime, particularly auto break-ins. My city SF has over 50 auto breakins per day. The police can not be everywhere at one time. I walk in the park every day, and it is a rare week that I don't see a car with the window smashed, or broken glass where a breakin occurred. Because police are targeting violent crime, they have little time to pursue much else. Simple stuff like running stop signs or red lights. Most drivers only stop at stop signs if there is another car there ahead of them or they see a cop, which in my town is almost never. There is a big increase in people breaking into the country illegally, and many paying cartels to rent children so they can claim asylum here. That is fraud. The Border Patrol is overwhelmed.
Identity theft is another crime which is rapidly rising. I had my social security number hacked last year, and I was 4 months getting my credit back, after the bank froze the credit line I was living on, and another bank froze a credit card. The Feds refused to issue a new SSN, so I will have a compromised SSN for life. They told me to make a police report. At the station, the cop there told me he wouldn't take my report, and I would have to work on the case myself. I went to a 2nd station, and the cop there refused to take my report. Two days later, she called back and agreed to take a report only, nothing else. I've paid $99 a year for 10 years to Lifelock, and they did nothing to prevent the theft, or to help recover my identity. I was fortunate (so far) not to lose any of my savings.
As for the homeless, you are off base if you think the homeless were prevalent in back in my youth. There were a few around, but not many. They lived in the cities, and in SF, it was the corner of 3rd street and Howard street, and as they grew in numbers, they branched out to 4th and Mission or 6th street, and later the Tenderloin, all very seedy areas. Many were mentally ill, many were winos, and practically none of them worked, or would work. They did not live in railyards. Those who did were called hobos, and there is a world of difference between hobo and a bum, or homeless person. Those men and women who hopped freight cars were hobos, not "homeless" in the sense of the word today. Hobos were itinerant workers, who rode freight cars from town to town in search of work. If a hobo wanted a meal or lodging, he would offer to work for it. Most usually carried a fresh clean change of clothes, in case they had a chance to apply for a job. What we call "homeless" today, were called "bums" back in the day of the hobo. They lived off handouts. Hobos lived mostly by working and by cooperating with each other, with less panhandling. Many did it for the romance and thrill of doing it. Many hobos were killed riding the rails, falling on the tracks, and other accidents. When diesel locomotives replaced steam, the trains became a lot faster, and the cars harder to get on and off.
Many of the homeless today are pretty well off. I was riding BART to Berkeley last year and passed a homeless encampment. They all had tents that looked brand new, like they just bought them at REI. I'm a sometime camper and backpacker, and those tents are better than the ones I own. Here in SF, many homeless own RVs, and it became a problem of where to park them. The city gave them a place. In Sunnyvale, they have the same problem. These people, except for the many addicts and mentally ill among them, are often deadbeats, derelicts, unwilling to work. There is supposedly full employment, but there are "help wanted" signs everywhere, and thousands of jobs available begging for the homeless guy who can, to clean up his act and apply for those jobs.
As for the poverty rate, we have spent what, some $20 trillion in the ghettos of this country, and what do we still have? Ghettos. Is it better for the poor now? They all have cars, TVs, and cell phones, right? Certainly better than third world poor at least, or they would not be breaking through the fence to get in.
Where did I say that race hating was higher now than in the prime of segregation and the KKK? As for segregation, it has taken different forms in its long history in the 19th and 20th centuries, with laws written to protect it and laws to end it, and it still exists to some extent. I really have no idea what you mean by the "prime of segregation". As for the KKK, their peak membership was in the 1920s, way before my time. What I meant was that race-hating is more than at any period I've lived in. I guess the 1960s would be close, maybe worse. The difference today is that blacks are expressing much more hatred of whites than in the 1960s, and many whites on the Left are expressing hatred toward whites who don't agree with them, a sort of self-hatred. And that is new.
How would you know what my sources of news are? I watch and read all that I can, radio, TV, Internet, but with me it is always the old Reagan idea, "Trust, but verify", so I am out and about looking at what is going on, talking with the public and listening to their stories. Neighborhood newspapers publish the police blotter from the neighborhood stations, so that gives an accurate local crime picture. The anecdotal experience is more meaningful than statistics whether it is basketball, crime, or the homeless. 36 people were shot in Chicago over Labor Day weekend, and 7 killed, one of whom was a young basketball player ready to start his freshman year in high school and play basketball, which he will never do now. His family won't listen when we say the crime rate is down.
