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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27454 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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How about some culture war? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/30/how-gang-violence-took-hold-of-sweden-in-five-charts

While I imagine the Guardian is persona non grata around here, this seems to me to be pretty stunning. Sweden, long the darling of the left, is now “… in the grip of a rise in gang violence and shootings that has taken citizens and leaders by surprise. In the words of the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, this year: “Sweden has never before seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this.””

I’m leery of rephrasing the article excessively, but it does note that gun crime and narcotics have been rising since 2013, and that the gun murder rate in the capital of Stockholm is now 30 times that of London.

The fairly standard claim (this is the Guardian, after all) is that this has to do with poverty, not migration.

“Socioeconomic factors are what mostly constitute the risks of ending up in crime,” not ethnicity, says Felipe Estrada Dörner, a professor of criminology at Stockholm University whose research centres on juvenile delinquency and segregation. “This is a classic and well known pattern, in Sweden and internationally.”

Estrada Dörner says accelerating this trend and reversing other aspects of socioeconomic decline should be prioritised. “In order to slow down the supply of new recruits to gangs, inequality must be reduced. Harsher punishments, which the government invests a lot of resources in now, will not overcome those problems.”

So… Is the solution, now that mass migration has been accomplished, to make sure that they have just as much money as the original Swedes? Given the Swedish welfare state was already extremely generous, which drove all the immigration, is that feasible?

Oh, that's rich. The problem isn't culture or absolute poverty but wealth inequality? Let them in, they're harmless...but then they become criminals because the natives are wealthier than them?

Sort of a double win if you're a social democrat: not only do you get diversity, but also a way to extort support for your policies via the threat that the alternative will lead to violence.

To play devils’ advocate, yeah, that’s definitely a thing that can happen. “Paycheck to paycheck” is riskier than a stable job with house and extended family.

Paycheck to paycheck doesn't describe wealth inequality, it describes poverty.

It doesn’t describe either of those things, but typically rather poor fiscal management/high spending relative to income.

Most people who live "paycheck to paycheck" do so of their own volition. It does not describe poverty, just poor financial ability.

That’s true. I was thinking of cost of living, and how that could lead to tighter margins.

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