Between 30 to 50 people swarmed the Nordstrom at the Westfield Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills, making off with thousands of dollars worth of luxury handbags and high-end clothing, an LAPD spokesman told NBC News.
Between 30 to 50 people swarmed the Nordstrom at the Westfield Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills, making off with thousands of dollars worth of luxury handbags and high-end clothing, an LAPD spokesman told NBC News.
“I’m poor so I’m not responsible for stealing luxury goods and bear spraying minimum wage security guards.”
I grew up poor. I didn’t do this. Your comment is dripping with the implicit accusation that poor people are basically just animals. Incapable of controlling themselves when they see nice handbags.
Poverty doesn’t affect everyone the same. To try to discount the fact that poverty increases crime just because you aren’t a criminal is ignoring the complexity of humanity.
To say that this particular crime was caused by poverty also ignores the complexity of humanity.
We can all speculate until we’re blue in the face, but I agree that lessening poverty will lessen crime of most types.
Thing is, there’s a difference between stealing a loaf of bread and looting a Nordstrom and assaulting the guards.
There is a difference, that doesn’t mean they don’t have similar root causes.
Everybody has different needs, but imo if you work as a security guard for a place like this AND take it seriously you not only signed up for violence but you deserve it. These companies are robbing us blind of good health, personal space and time on the planet- why defend that?
TFA even mentions that one of the getaway cars was a BMW. Undoubtedly, there were both impoverished people and people who jumped at an opportunity involved.
If poverty was driving crime rates, then most of the world (as most countries are much much poorer than the US) would be a crime infested shit hole. Somehow that’s not true at all. US crime is not related to poverty in any way.
All you have to do is look at the crime statistics and income statistics for cities across North America. Cities that have lower GDPs (less money, less opportunity) generally have higher crime rates. If despair is high, people will act out of desperation. What you are wilfully ignoring is the fact that “countries that are poorer than the US” also are drastically different culturally than the US. Almost nowhere else on Earth has the same kind of income disparity that the US has. You can’t take a developing nation where 50% of people live in poverty, and compare it to a developed nation where no one needs to live in poverty but are forced to do so by manipulated housing and job markets.
Lol what? Do you even hear yourself?
Of course poor people aren’t “basically just animals”, the OP didn’t imply that. What the OP is saying is that when genuine opportunity doesn’t exist, some people will find their own opportunity and/or weigh the consequences of their actions differently.
Wealth and income disparity have consequences and this is one of them. Public unrest is another eventual outcome. Something needs to be done about it or something will be done about it.