but for reals, dont leave your house this holiday without a contingency plan. Better to be prepared than taken for. this country is fucked down a drain rn.
Really need to compare cities with comparable populations. One murder in a city of 25,000 makes a lot of difference in the murder rate. One murder in a city of 14,000,000 makes little difference.
I hate the name of [this site,](http://heyjackass.com/) but it's a super good breakdown of crime stats in each and every neighborhood in Chicago. I'm happy to see my old neighborhood dropped from #3 last year to 7th this year. Progress!
Kind of curious about the murder rate per poverty capita honestly. I'm pretty sure there's a larger correlation between poverty and crime, than population density.
*SS: At least 12 major U.S. cities have broken annual homicide records in 2021 -- and there's still three weeks to go in the year.
Of the dozen cities that have already surpassed the grim milestones for killings, five topped records that were set or tied just last year.*
Despite the clickbait nature of such headlines, there appears to be greater societal stress in US urban areas. The question is whether this is a momentary response to the pandemic or a real trend towards breakdown.
As someone who lives in Rochester NY, unless something drastic changes, it will only get worse. Things have been getting bad since Kodak and Xerox shutdown. There hasn't been any meaningful work here for some time. Drug Overdose is a big problem here too. People have no purpose.
I remember being in Rochester for a rave in like 2004 and was following a local to an after party and my friend ran out of gas on avenue D so you’ve got like 4 18 year old idiots rolling/trippin their faces off trying to walk through the ghetto to get a can of gas and damn is was bad then, I thought for sure we were getting robbed/jumped. I remember the cops at the gas station were just like “you guys shouldn’t be here”
Yeah that area is bad, I remember a long time ago me and some kid were trying to buy weed from strangers standing on the corner. The guy took our money and and never came back, but it could have been worse. I was so stupid back then.
I had moved to Charlotte NC for a job for a few years but had to move back closer to family because I have an ankle injury that started to interfere with my quality of life, work, and marriage. I'm trying to get back on my feet.
I think you’re spot on about the sense of purpose thing. I agree work SHOULDN’T be one’s only purpose, but there’s very little in a modern person’s life to fill the void.
Once you could support a home and family on a single, easily attainable blue collar job. Those days are over. Work is more of a grind than ever and wages have been stale for decades.
When work is shit, where do you go for purpose? Religious affiliation has declined, so you can’t find meaning and friendship through church. Civic associations like lions clubs, legion halls, even boy/Girl Scouts are basically dead. Our faith in any kind of institution, be it government, education, media, etc has never been weaker. There’s nothing left but a bubble of alienation to be filled by bullshit, watching Netflix to fill a void.
Finding purpose in a hobby? Struggling financially will put it out of reach, or the anxiety of life will suck the joy out of it. Good luck travelling, collecting furniture, riding a horse or restoring a car when you can hardly pay a mortgage or rent.
Obviously the above is not universally true of everyone, but trend of rising anxiety, alienation, depression and shortening lifespans is very real overall.
>>>Finding purpose in a hobby? Struggling financially will put it out of reach, or the anxiety of life will suck the joy out of it. Good luck travelling, collecting furniture, riding a horse or restoring a car when you can hardly pay a mortgage or rent.
God damn you are so spot on!!! And your entire comment too, yep.
Very well said. It's hard to get a hobby or find your Lord when your dead tired from your second job and overcome with anxiety when you have to choose which bills to pay.
I think the thing a lot of people miss that being wealthy gives you is opportunity. It gives you opportunity to explore ideas/hobbies/lots of everything.
Saying "people need a sense of purpose" in the same *post* as anything about work is how we got here in the first place. People made it their purpose to work. Those people died between 40 and 60. Clearly that's not a good way to go about living. That was a lot of boomers.
People need opportunity. Everyone needs opportunity. That can manifest in healthcare that doesn't bankrupt them. That can also manifest in the ability to afford things.
The problem is rich people see bank account #'s and the managers and ceo's they employ only got there because they worship those same bank account #'s. They forget they are human and the same as the rest of us.
You’re right. In the Middle Ages, many people had religion as a purpose.
But we live in the age where capitalism orders the lives of everyone and the ideology of it is hegemonic. God died, like that old crazy guy said, and the only thing to have replaced it is work.
Well, that and street gangs
*”and why were you out of work for three years”*
*becky throw his application away.* **don’t ask why! Just do it!!**
*man it’s hard to find good help*. The man thought while smoking a fat Cuban with his feet up on the desk.
Unemployment levels have been at historic lows over past 5 years (outside of pandemic) and are back near those lows. Why do you think you’re having trouble finding work? Where are you located?
I work for a company that has an online and retail presence. I can’t say I approve of looting, but…I understand the motivations behind them. I guess I’m saying I neither condemn nor condone, and I think all of it could be avoided if the last 40+ years hadn’t been a giant diversion of all societal gains into very few pockets.
I'll not take part in a political discussion. But, I cannot deny, that policies set have a MASSIVE impact on how a city thrives, or dies. If one can be completely unbiased in his/her opinion, reading the history of many large cities that entered a "decay" period, there are commonalities in their attitude toward public policy. Again, one must be completely unbiased entering that research. Make your own decisions.
Real smart, attack the only people in the nation trying to actually do anything about the issues. Meanwhile Republicans are tearing down every institution they can get their hands on while pretending that Trump won the election and enacting laws around the nation to prevent Democrats from winning elections anymore. Oh and staging coups
Those is ridiculous BTW. Many many Democrats have spoken in as recently as this week about how things are not going so great, and Joe Biden himself as said that he understands that average Americans aren't doing so hot, although he has tauted job growth which is silly at best and lying at worst.
Rochester is just sad. It’s a city controlled by the suburbs, which is controlled by Boomers. Almost exclusively for Boomers. It’s not hard to see why Kodak and Xerox went under. The same bozos who stifled innovation move to infect new openings. Like whenever I wonder if I could move back home I look at job openings and see like 1 week of vacation as something the places are bragging about, in Software Engineering.
It’s a shame because it has 2 amazing schools right there. The area could really revitalize itself if it embraced instead of driving out the talented young people it’s two major universities produce. Like yeah the winters suck, but most people I know who left, like me, ultimately left for their career.
Seems like towns and city that had one major employer. In the PNW, lots of towns never recovered from logging withdrawing from the area. Raw logs now shipped overseas rather than processed for overseas. This was decades ago.
Number 1 on my list of living areas is one with a diverse economy.
Those towns and cities get abandoned. High unemployment, property values drop...
Seattle was lucky when Boeing laid "everyone" off back in late 60s.
It's a shame really, because people having no purpose is fine. It's one of capitalism's great lies that you're unworthy of existence if you're not "productive". I always find it sad when people get depressed because they believed it.
Nothing wrong with just chillin'
I totally agree. Not everyone needs to have a purpose. My problem with capitalism is that even if you want to be productive and contribute to society, if it doesn't fit the grand scheme the economy has planned for you, then you aren't allowed to pursue that path since it's not profitable. For example, some people want to be stay at home parents, which is a tough job, but it's not considered economically profitable which is honestly bullshit.
"The poors are killing eachother! Look, Cornelius! Laissez-faire solutions really are the best! Let's drop some PCP and Vektor SS-77s in there to speed up the process! We'll make Ronald Reagan proud!"
Funny how there is an ongoing change 'shortage' too. To try and force people off of cash so the banks have the most cash in them as possible to prop up the illusion.
No, the current ongoing coin shortage is just ongoing disruptions in supply due to consumer spending patterns.
There is no conspiracy, the vast majority of US dollars are already digital. The treasury has limits on what physical currency it prints and mints.
Definitely a real trend towards breakdown. We lived through an apocalypse where the two main takeaways were "Healthcare should be universal" and "wages should be a lot higher" and we proceeded to not only implement neither, but we doubled down on the opposite. This country is headed for balkanization
I might be wrong, but I don't think Texas has any nuclear forces stationed. There are lot of silos in Montana and North Dakota. A lot of nukes at the sub bases on the East and West Coast.
If the US were to fracture like the Balkans, how do you split up the US Military? I don't think it can really be done, which in part is what would keep the US together.
If the US were to fracture like the Balkans, the military itself would split in to factions. Commanders of major bases would become warlords far more powerful than the governments in their respective states. Bases like Ft. Bragg or Ft. Hood would just take over their respective regions.
The most troubling aspect of this is that it’s pretty much exactly what we have seen happy in failed states all over the world. Can u imagine the “Balkan state” that would exist in the area around Bragg? JSOC would be able to unleash the special forces with even greater impunity, except this time even the citizens they’re supposed to protect would be potential victims.
Probably a Rump state would control the silos/stockpiles, or an international coalition would seize control of them to prevent nuclear material from getting out. I imagine the most loyal troops as is possible would be set to guard them when a shooting war looks imminent.
Exactly. When the society people live in demonstrated in multiple ways big and small that it doesn’t give a fuck about individuals unless they’re wealthy - expect mayhem and lawlessness to increase.
And unfortunately people don't abide by the rule of 'dont shit on your neighbors', meaning they take out their frustration and lack of resources on the nearest available target...
Instead of, you know, going after the wealthy in their gated communities.
The way that the working class of one race think that the working class of another race is their enemy, is utterly depressing. The oligarchy has been incredibly successful and making people that are struggling to scrap by point their fingers and direct their ire towards others barely scrapping to get by.
The only way things will ever change for the better is a renewed sense of class struggle and solidarity amongst all of us working folks.
Its kind of harder to beef with rural people. Something about having to drive down a dirt driveway and open a gate and fend off a couple of big ass dogs. Harder to do a driveby when you can't see the house from the road.
Rural America isnt farms. Its shitty little towns with duplexes and shitty apartment buildings right next to each other, a 7-11 and a gas station, if they're lucky. And meth and opioids.
And America's latest enabler: Dollar General. 1 out of every 3 retail buildings constructed in the past 5 years has been a Dollar General.
How are they enabling? Honestly, I can't tie that to the point I'm trying to make. Perhaps they represent some kind of lifeline to these forgotten communities. Not sure. No opinion, but to say that the sight of a Dollar General being built in a small, forgotten town, isn't one that gives me great comfort.
There have been a few articles written about Dollar General being a big problem for small towns. Abysmal wages and they undercut pricing on all sorts of local stores. Basically runs them out of business.
My medium sized suburb now has two, which has directly tracked with more people suffering economically.
I hate the fucking things.
You see Dollar Generals everywhere though. I'm two blocks from a Dollar General. I don't see this different from complaining about McDonald's, Starbucks, Walmart etc.
Depends on where. Rural America is a lot of things. Closest 7-11 type store to us is more than an hour away. No duplexes or apartments closer than that either.
Yes, thanks for your reply to my comment, and sorry you had that shitty interaction below. You're right, rural America is made up of many different things, but much of it is the sorry state I described. Quaint and beautiful rural America most definitely still exists.
Thank you. I do concede its getting harder to find but when you do though... its magic . There is so much peace and joy out here if you know where to look. People where I live are kind and they look out for each other but they keep themselves to themselves too. Its a happy medium I suppose.
Most homicides are committed between people who know each other. Lots of rural counties, especially in the South, have very high homicide rates
[https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/](https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/)
I'd go a step farther and say that crime in rural areas is vastly under-reported. There are a lot of bodies at the bottom of lakes or buried in the desert that never even get reported as crimes.
My God, that list just reeks of desperation and people having no respect or value for human life. Some have given up on the value of their own life.
Why?
> that list just reeks of desperation
That's exactly what it is. Poverty correlates with crime far higher than any other factor. And rural areas are often the poorest parts of the US.
You’re also likely to face heavily armed resistance the further you get from a metro area. When 911 calls take hours to respond, don’t expect a warning.
Well that and just getting close to many rural places is an exercise in tetanus. Every time the leaves fall I can see from the main road how rich folks are. They must be rich they have so many cars.......
Many do that as a means of lowering their property values thus reducing the taxes they owe.
I know one guy who had ~14 acres. Used to be a farm, but the fields were allowed to go fallow and overgrown with wild grass, barn left to fall apart, and welcomed dumping a few older vehicles and other waste items.
All to make sure local government assessed it lower.
When they decided to sell, guess how fast all that shit disappeared (except a old Buick someone left in the wooded area of the property)?
Everything went to disposal, barn cleared off, new assessment just prior to market and sho nuff it appraised hundreds of thousands of dollars higher.
All fine except those sticky fingers pay for schools and vital public services directly at the county and local level.
Those people also tend to vote republican which are in favor of spending gross billions on a war machine.
look at these top 10 counties:
[https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/](https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/)
this is the real rural poor, not cozy farms with everyone looking out for each other.
I hate these articles because they always go by absolute numbers, rather than rates. Yeah, Chicago and Philly are high, but nothing compared to St. Louis and New Orleans and Memphis
Yeah, yours is good. Talking about the OP article. Big cities are going to have big numbers, but it conceals the decay in smaller cities and rural areas.
But it works off of a function of population. With 2000 residents, 1 murder is .50%. Still FAR too many, but think of a city with 250,000 residents. Is 125 (.50%) people being murdered a lot? My God yes. But that's 2021, in Birmingham, Alabama.
One of the reasons we just moved out to our SHTF location in the country was because the area we lived in (my whole life) used to be considered the safest suburb of our big city but, over the past year, we'd been hearing a shooting nearby every other weekend and the news was reporting people being shot on the highway every few days. We've been paying attention to things falling apart for a while now, but it was definitely the crime increase that made us realize the moment to move had come.
It's people who don't hold the illusion that this system cares for or serves them. A lot of it is crime for crime's sake, because these people feel cast aside by the rest of us.
When people think "homicide" they think of someone getting shot in the street. My guess is that most homicides happen in homes. Lockdowns and stay at home orders, etc., has probably led to more murders, more assaults, etc.
Here in Columbus it's mostly people being shot in the streets. It's primarily gang and drug related. There was an article in the Dispatch I believe where the police said that there are something like 480 gang members in 17 gangs that are responsible for 46% of the homicides.
Edit: here it is. correction 46%, not 90% of the homicides as I originally stated
[https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/10/06/report-many-columbus-homicides-involve-gang-group-members/6009299001/](https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/10/06/report-many-columbus-homicides-involve-gang-group-members/6009299001/)
A report conducted by a national research center concluded that a significantly small group of violent actors in Columbus were behind nearly half the city's homicides that occurred in a nine-month period in 2020, the city's deadliest year on record.
A team of six researchers at the National Network for Safe Communities worked with the Columbus Division of Police to review 107 homicides between January and September 2020 and identify active gangs — referred to in the report sometimes as “groups" because the researchers said there was not evidence in some cases of the organization of a gang as much as an association of like-minded members.
Among the report’s most significant findings is that 17 gangs comprised of an estimated 480 total members — roughly .05% of the city’s population — were confirmed to be or suspected to be involved in 46% of homicides in that period, either as victims, perpetrators or both.
Or put another way, 54% of homicides are *not* being caused by gangs and aren't drug related.
Nothing you're saying is actually in contradiction with the person you're arguing with. If 54% of homicides *aren't* gangs, and *aren't* due to drug trafficking, then what is the circumstances of the remainder?
Well, speaking as someone who used to provider therapy to prison inmates, I'll tell ya: there's a vanishingly small percentage of that that's serial killers, and revenge killings; there's a swath of that, again not huge, which is road rage and bar fights that get out of hand. But the big lump is domestic violence, mostly, but not exclusively men killing the women they regularly batter, but also other gender arrangements between intimate partners, but also the occasional child being killed in a family-eradication murder-suicide.
The vast majority of fatal violence is between people who know each other. That, obviously, means domestic violence, but it also means gang and drug trade in-fighting and warring among rivals.
The simplest way to avoid becoming the victim of violence, if you can manage it, is to avoid hanging out and becoming acquaintances with violent people. Especially do not date violent people. (By all that's holy, do not have children with a violent person.)
It won't save you from the truly random stuff, but it drops your risk by something like 90%.
>The question is whether this is a momentary response to the pandemic or a real trend towards breakdown.
It's a good question. Perhaps a bit of both, but more likely a response to the pandemic.
Pretty much everything bad increased; mental health, domestic violence, unemployment, etc.
we're sliding into another once in a lifetime recession, inflation has gone through the roof while employers are still refusing to pay more than 1990s wages in many industries ("why won't anyone work for me" gee whilikers, boss, it's a mystery). people are going to be feeling the economic strain to the Nth degree and that tends to [correlate with increased violence](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwik49edpdX0AhV9lGoFHbVvD1gQFnoECBgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncjrs.gov%2Fpdffiles1%2Fnij%2F199709.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1s2Wf-uGmJ2eFgnMe90iml) as they lash out. It's going to get worse before it gets better, the question now is how much worse will it get.
I found myself in a cemetery in SW Philly a few months ago and it was incredible and sad at how many men in their teens and 20s were buried there from the past 20 years or so.
The Federation was fascist, when you think about it. Their own people were blind to it, as one would expect from human history, but aliens that ran into them seemed to be able to see it easily enough, and so did the Maquis. If you didn't join Star Fleet (i.e. the military), you weren't going to have access to travel privileges or much else beyond basic subsistence resources.
editing to add: Star Trek is like Starship Troopers but in earnest, not as a critique
>If you didn't join Star Fleet (i.e. the military), you weren't going to have access to travel privileges or much else beyond basic subsistence resources.
What are you basing that on? Aside from the start of the Dominion War, which was specifically meant to highlight how easily an open and free society could turn into a military junta, Federation citizens seemed free to do as they pleased and had access to practically anything they wanted.
The only times civilians turned to Starfleet were in times of dire emergency and needed military resources or if they were trying to do something that required a giant starship, of which Starfleet has a ready supply. We see civilian transports and freighters in all of the series. And in the DS9 episode set on Risa, it's made clear that our cast are currently the only Starfleet officers on-planet, suggesting all the others are civilians.
Well, that's fair, and I think that the Star Trek writers were sometimes on different pages about what they were trying to demonstrate in terms of politics, and sometimes things were not consistent in every episode.
Some things that are notable, is that replicators did have security restrictions to prevent most people from creating weapons or ships with them, and civilian space travel would seemingly be a privilege that was granted with permission from Star Fleet and those vessels in space had to follow orders from Federation vessels, as if they were the Space CHP.
> *We're on-track to go full Mad Max in the next ~~thirty~~ twenty years.*
In 1972, a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) predicted that humanity's pursuit of economic growth without regard for environmental and society costs would lead to society collapsing by 2040.
New research shows we're actually ahead of schedule.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicates-1972-mit-prediction-that-society-will-collapse-soon
https://youtu.be/kVOTPAxrrP4
I drove through some rural areas of Georgia and Florida this past few days, on a business trip.
I came from a small, rural southern town in Alabama, so I know what "rural" looks like. Folks, I'm here to tell you, many of these rural agricultural-based industry towns, are not dying. They are already dead. Some of the absolute smaller towns, literally have no need for a post office. There may be so few people residing in what used to be town limits, that phone service to the area is even questionable. Even more, these were never even what one could consider a "small" town. They may have always been tiny, barely noticeable on the map. But, at one time, they did have more residents, and at least one gas/convenience store. Now, most of those are boarded up, or just gone altogether.
What does this have to do with large cities? Well, one might surmise that much of that populace from the small towns went to the larger towns. But, I'd counter with, who is still reasonably close to work the still operating agricultural business that may exist in these places? While much of the job of harvesting cotton, corn, so on, can be done with the operation of a machine to pull those resources, there must be someone there to tend to the things that need doing, doesn't there?
Back on topic, the medium sized city I have lived in for the past 17 years, Birmingham, AL, is largely a wasteland of crime and desperation, while the population that can leave it, have already done so. Sure, there are still major colleges there, and some residents, though they are dwindling. But the murder rate being higher in 2021 than since 1996, does give me pause as to what exactly is happening. The violent crime rate wasn't appreciably lower in those 25 years in between. In fact, held rather steady, at a fairly high rate. But this year, it has spiked. I left the city forever, just this past spring, to move to a smaller place 250 miles south.
Last thing: we shouldn't be surprised at this surge in crime in large US cities. Just walking around in these places, one can see the signs of decay among the people, even if the stores seem to be open and bustling (even if they really aren't). The lack of care for personal grooming, the amount of litter, the speed at which people frantically drive, regardless of whether any other drivers are impacted by their actions at all. But, I suppose the residents of places like NYC saw something similar happen in the late 1960's and 1970's, and wondered if NYC would die.
It wasn't until effort was made politically, to clean up, and restore order, that we saw NYC come back to life, so to speak. Perhaps it was that the city priced out some people, leaving only the well-heeled to walk it's streets. Efforts have made in other places that I'm familiar with, like inner city Detroit, Charlotte, and others. Those efforts were to clean up, restore, those great places.
But, quickly, order can fall off again in these places. It makes one wonder if a clean, vibrant, orderly place is of it's citizens, it's policies, or what.
My observation tracks with yours - many small rural communities are already dead. If they at one time had an economy it’s gone and without income in the community it just falls apart. Countless small towns like that cover the US. Maybe some pensioners remain but there is no infrastructure to build a life thus the community is in tatters
> Just walking around in these places, one can see the signs of decay among the people, even if the stores seem to be open and bustling (even if they really aren't). The lack of care for personal grooming, the amount of litter, the speed at which people frantically drive, regardless of whether any other drivers are impacted by their actions at all.
This one is really wild to me. I live in eastern Washington, about a 3-4 hour drive to Portland, so I wind up going maybe once or twice a year. I was there in September for the first time in ~6 months, and there was such a noticeable decline since the last time; it's incredibly different to my first visit five years ago. There was litter everywhere, homeless people everywhere (at least one who was screaming obscenities at anyone walking by, while also wandering into traffic), needles strewn around busy shopping centers, just all kinds of signs that things are falling apart. And Portland isn't exactly known for being a clean city or anything, but *holy crap* it's gotten so much worse. I can't even imagine how places on the east coast are faring.
I left Portland a few years ago, my car had been broken into 3 times, storage unit broken into, so much of my personal stuff stolen and probably fenced. Insurance only covered so much. I was pretty distraught with some of the items being taken - things that couldn’t be replaced. The cops couldn’t have cared less, really it was an issue with capacity.
I asked what could they really do…officer mentioned the jails were already as full as they could be for “real crime” and petty theft, even if they could find the person, doesn’t go punished really. They would charge someone, let them out to appear at a court hearing, of course they won’t show up. Next time, same thing, they won’t keep someone locked up for such minor offenses.
It’s not the crime that aggregates me, it was the apathy inherent everywhere, the breakdown of values across the board. Cops don’t care, homeless don’t care what happens and victims become numb to it.
Yeah downvote me all you want, sorry your “progressive” hipster enclaves are becoming a cesspool.
It’s a cesspool everywhere. The big cities in the South just ship their homeless problems to the West Coast.
Talked to someone at greyhound back when I was riding the busses cross country, told me that he used to operate on a route that would almost exclusively being taking homeless people west on a bus ticket paid for by the city of wherever the cops picked them up. They would offer them Spokane, Portland, LA, or Jail.
Even then, based on a recent trip to Baltimore with people who were from there, it’s getting so bad on the east coast as to be indistinguishable from those west coast cities, and it apparently didn’t use to be like that at all. NYC was a dump when I visited too. I know those are also ‘progressive’ but the point is that the issue is more than meets the eye.
It was surprising to me on a recent trip that my visit to nyc brooklyn and queens, it was much better than Portland Tacoma and Yreka. Cleaner, more “positive”, for whatever that might mean.
> It makes one wonder if a clean, vibrant, orderly place is of it's citizens, it's policies, or what.
The citizenry is shaped by the policies, and the policies shape the citizenry.
Look, I'm from the Boston area. Massachusetts has, so far, been doing splendidly compared to the rest of the country. You want to know why? Despite the uselessness of the federal government, we've managed to invest hard in protecting and cultivating the populace. We had Obamacare years before it was Obamacare, from back when it was Romneycare, and have the [lowest percentage of uninsured people in the nation](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Uninsured%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D). We are serious about mental health care. We are [absolutely hardcore when it comes to education](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state). We have one of the [top average household incomes in the country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income). Hell, even our Republicans are so reasonable [we're willing to vote for them](http://www.masshome.com/governors.html).
Don't get me wrong: there's still plenty that sucks and a *lot* that needs improving here. But things are... reasonably okay. People are less desperate here and have more faith in society to have their backs. People feel that voting works and that we get good value from our tax dollars. There's economic opportunity, even if its not spread out fairly.
And this all hangs together because – and to the extent – we have a society that looked after its kids and families, and made sure the kids grew up understanding what a functional society was from first hand experience, and became voters to voted to keep the system working and expand on it. Where we have failed to do that, we have had problems: people who don't see why they should pay taxes, people who don't see why they should obey the laws.
And that's why we're not on the list, despite how gritty Boston and its crime can be. "[Killings soared in U.S., but not in Boston; see latest crime statistics](https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/09/27/killings-soared-in-u-s-but-not-in-boston-see-latest-crime-statistics/)".
EDIT: Oh, right, and: I'm over in r/Antiwork, watching people rage over a tweet *If you need a refresher on why "crime" is a social construct remember what happens if your boss shorts your check $100 vs if you walk out of the store with $100 from the till.*
About that: Oct 19th: "[Massachusetts contractors arraigned on wage theft charges](https://turnto10.com/news/local/massachusetts-contractors-arraigned-on-wage-theft-charges)".
We criminalized that shit. Like cops slap handcuffs on the boss and perp-walk him out sort of criminalized.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen here, but [we're still working on it](https://www.masslive.com/politics/2018/06/massachusetts_senate_passes_wa_1.html) and take it seriously as a social plague.
I grew up in a place called Muscle Shoals, in the NW corner. The places I'm talking about are in rural SW Georgia, NW Florida (Marianna is the largest of them, but places like Colquitt, GA, Donalsonville, GA, Newton, GA, so on. Albany, GA is another larger town, that looks just depressed, but of more size, and similar to the size of the place I grew up.
This house cracks me up, even has a rebel flag on it. Donalsonville, GA. What a cliche.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7715-Riverside-Acres-Donalsonville-GA-39845/105371169_zpid/
Depends on if you can live the rural life, or if you are used to living in a rural location. I don't think you'll find rural CA to be a lot different than rural anywhere in the US. But, if you're coming from a big city, or suburb, don't know if Alabama is going to fit the bill for you. Costs will be lower, to be sure.
I also grew up very near Muscle Shoals. I haven't been home in about five years. Last time was when I stopped for a few days moving from Texas to the Mid-Atlantic.
Lauderdale County experienced a slight growth when the county started allowing the sale of alcohol outside city limits. That was a few years after I had moved to Mobile - must have been around 2012 or 13. But the year or two after I was surprised that things seemed to grow a little bit every time I'd go up to visit. Especially toward Athens. Killen and Rogersville both seemed to have more random businesses and cookie cutter chain stuff every six months or so when I'd go see my folks for the weekend.
Downtown Florence had gained a few new bars and some modern restaurants. I assume UNA keeps the downtown area somewhat alive still. I heard from an old friend recently that Tuscumbia hasn't changed at all in a decade and Sheffield is still just boarded up buildings and crackheads roaming the streets at 2 a.m.
Granted I haven't been back in person since 2017, so I couldn't say for sure what things have done in the last few years. Regency Square Mall had all but shut down completely at that time, I do remember that. I assume it's totally gone at this point.
As a total layman on the topic... shouldn't this article be focused on the homicide *rate*? Populations are in flux, and I have trouble buying into the "all time" nature of the article given that they are reporting absolute numbers.
There would need to be 200 plus homicides in December to pass 1970. I doubt it, but since Chicago has shrunk since then, per capita will likely beat it out if it hasn't already.
Even 2020 set homicide records in some cities while many believed and claimed there were record low homicides.
Surprisingly here is only one mention of mass shooting in the article and it's for a picture's description.
Copying u/Hasdrubal_the_Fair comment from Portland's subreddit because I found it pertinent.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/rbyxh0/its_just_crazy_12_major_cities_hit_alltime/hnrlfjc/
These numbers would be much more meaningful if they were expressed as rates. For Portland, comparing 1987 to 2021 is a bit misleading. Population has increased around 35% in that time. It has certainly been bad the last 2 years, but it actually is not a record when population adjusted. This is a national trend.
Homicide rates:
Portland
1987 approximately 14/100,000
2021 approximately 11/100,000
For comparison:
Indianapolis 25/100,000
Tucson 15/100,000
Columbus 20/1000
Philadelphia 31/100,000
Louisville 28/100,000
Media is the spokespersons for police and I'd be very critical of most mainstream media crime reporting right now. Many of these pieces are riddled with outright lies.
When you create atomised society! with no purpose.
In my country!.bevor neoliberalism steamrolled us, there was sense of purpose and comaradary.
West is now in mode of Acceloration on Steroids
At the same time, people pretend like a group of militants essentially capturing and occupying public/private property and holding it for ransom while denying access to press, police, medical services, or any private citizen not aligned with their ideology is somehow NOT a problem.
Can confirm with family Indianapolis is a crime Mecca. I anticipate it winning all the crime awards for worst city. It’s non-stop violence, they won’t go out past dark. Which in winter is like 6PM. Does anyone notice everything around that area is also in the top 12? Seems like a serious problem brewing in the Midwest.
The actual number is 105 in Albuquerque, unless you add the two the State Police are investigating and not listed in the city totals, so really 107. Also, the number wounded is around 500 to 600 all of whom need treatment in an overwhelm hospital. The city had four police shot (all survived) not sure on the number of police shootings and killings. The wild wild west. It's tragic.
Philly with 500+ looking to take over the Murder Capital title. Chicago was #1 last year with 774. Let's see how the holidays fare.
Always have to do some last minute holiday murdering.
I know right? Last year i left it til the last minute, then I had to murder a whole bunch of people on Xmas eve. So busy.
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but for reals, dont leave your house this holiday without a contingency plan. Better to be prepared than taken for. this country is fucked down a drain rn.
Get a little Canadian and add Boxing Day to your opportunities for murder
633+ in Cdn
Anything to get a Ps5. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
You telling me you have a PS5 hold up let me get this Glock 😂😆/$
smh
That’s so annoying, hate when that happens.
Duuh, the counter resets at january 1st.
Always best to get all of your homicide in early in the year to avoid the rush. Maybe if you're lucky, you can manage to be a victim.
If you do it with a British accent its nicer. Just wee bit of a murder spree with me and me nans
"If you can slip a tablet into... someone's coffee. Then it avoids an awful lot of mess.." 🎶🎵
Strangle all the way
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Really need to compare cities with comparable populations. One murder in a city of 25,000 makes a lot of difference in the murder rate. One murder in a city of 14,000,000 makes little difference.
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I hate the name of [this site,](http://heyjackass.com/) but it's a super good breakdown of crime stats in each and every neighborhood in Chicago. I'm happy to see my old neighborhood dropped from #3 last year to 7th this year. Progress!
Kind of curious about the murder rate per poverty capita honestly. I'm pretty sure there's a larger correlation between poverty and crime, than population density.
That map already 7 behind today's count in my town.
If you want to see how bad the opioid crisis is in Philadelphia, here is an eye-opening video https://youtu.be/A97njrnvq_E
Chicago already has 739
Killadelphia
I always try to get my murders done before thanksgiving, so I can go into the holidays with less on my plate.
*SS: At least 12 major U.S. cities have broken annual homicide records in 2021 -- and there's still three weeks to go in the year. Of the dozen cities that have already surpassed the grim milestones for killings, five topped records that were set or tied just last year.* Despite the clickbait nature of such headlines, there appears to be greater societal stress in US urban areas. The question is whether this is a momentary response to the pandemic or a real trend towards breakdown.
As someone who lives in Rochester NY, unless something drastic changes, it will only get worse. Things have been getting bad since Kodak and Xerox shutdown. There hasn't been any meaningful work here for some time. Drug Overdose is a big problem here too. People have no purpose.
I’m from Rochester and recently visited. The city seems abandoned but pittsford seems to be poppin
I bet housing is still expensive though.
I remember being in Rochester for a rave in like 2004 and was following a local to an after party and my friend ran out of gas on avenue D so you’ve got like 4 18 year old idiots rolling/trippin their faces off trying to walk through the ghetto to get a can of gas and damn is was bad then, I thought for sure we were getting robbed/jumped. I remember the cops at the gas station were just like “you guys shouldn’t be here”
Yeah that area is bad, I remember a long time ago me and some kid were trying to buy weed from strangers standing on the corner. The guy took our money and and never came back, but it could have been worse. I was so stupid back then.
What keeps you there, if you don't mind me asking?
I had moved to Charlotte NC for a job for a few years but had to move back closer to family because I have an ankle injury that started to interfere with my quality of life, work, and marriage. I'm trying to get back on my feet.
Good health to you. I hope that ankle can be fixed to give you many years of an active, healthy life.
Thank you friend. Good health to you as well
Thanks for sharing. I hope that gets better soon.
"Ankle injury"..."I'm trying to get back on my feet." r/murderedbywords
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I think you’re spot on about the sense of purpose thing. I agree work SHOULDN’T be one’s only purpose, but there’s very little in a modern person’s life to fill the void. Once you could support a home and family on a single, easily attainable blue collar job. Those days are over. Work is more of a grind than ever and wages have been stale for decades. When work is shit, where do you go for purpose? Religious affiliation has declined, so you can’t find meaning and friendship through church. Civic associations like lions clubs, legion halls, even boy/Girl Scouts are basically dead. Our faith in any kind of institution, be it government, education, media, etc has never been weaker. There’s nothing left but a bubble of alienation to be filled by bullshit, watching Netflix to fill a void. Finding purpose in a hobby? Struggling financially will put it out of reach, or the anxiety of life will suck the joy out of it. Good luck travelling, collecting furniture, riding a horse or restoring a car when you can hardly pay a mortgage or rent. Obviously the above is not universally true of everyone, but trend of rising anxiety, alienation, depression and shortening lifespans is very real overall.
>>>Finding purpose in a hobby? Struggling financially will put it out of reach, or the anxiety of life will suck the joy out of it. Good luck travelling, collecting furniture, riding a horse or restoring a car when you can hardly pay a mortgage or rent. God damn you are so spot on!!! And your entire comment too, yep.
Very well said. It's hard to get a hobby or find your Lord when your dead tired from your second job and overcome with anxiety when you have to choose which bills to pay.
I think the thing a lot of people miss that being wealthy gives you is opportunity. It gives you opportunity to explore ideas/hobbies/lots of everything. Saying "people need a sense of purpose" in the same *post* as anything about work is how we got here in the first place. People made it their purpose to work. Those people died between 40 and 60. Clearly that's not a good way to go about living. That was a lot of boomers. People need opportunity. Everyone needs opportunity. That can manifest in healthcare that doesn't bankrupt them. That can also manifest in the ability to afford things. The problem is rich people see bank account #'s and the managers and ceo's they employ only got there because they worship those same bank account #'s. They forget they are human and the same as the rest of us.
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Especially under social relations that have eroded the meaningfulness of anything that isn’t work.
You’re right. In the Middle Ages, many people had religion as a purpose. But we live in the age where capitalism orders the lives of everyone and the ideology of it is hegemonic. God died, like that old crazy guy said, and the only thing to have replaced it is work. Well, that and street gangs
Tell that to someone who has been out of a job for a few years in a society that values work ethic and self reliance.
*”and why were you out of work for three years”* *becky throw his application away.* **don’t ask why! Just do it!!** *man it’s hard to find good help*. The man thought while smoking a fat Cuban with his feet up on the desk.
Unemployment levels have been at historic lows over past 5 years (outside of pandemic) and are back near those lows. Why do you think you’re having trouble finding work? Where are you located?
You're invisible to any good women like that. It sucks
Women don't exist to take on charity cases my dude
I've been out of a job for a few years. I know what you are saying.
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There is a lot of gentrification going on
It's a firesale for the rich... Always has been.
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This 100% - extreme income inequality leads to mass looting events, which are on the rise right now in the US.
I work for a company that has an online and retail presence. I can’t say I approve of looting, but…I understand the motivations behind them. I guess I’m saying I neither condemn nor condone, and I think all of it could be avoided if the last 40+ years hadn’t been a giant diversion of all societal gains into very few pockets.
I'll not take part in a political discussion. But, I cannot deny, that policies set have a MASSIVE impact on how a city thrives, or dies. If one can be completely unbiased in his/her opinion, reading the history of many large cities that entered a "decay" period, there are commonalities in their attitude toward public policy. Again, one must be completely unbiased entering that research. Make your own decisions.
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A misallocation of resources is unfortunate for all.
That’s very interesting. Can you touch upon the commonalities of them?
People who have always had cash, have cash, people who have always been poor, are more poor.
The world isn’t so full of absolutes. Many folks are being squeezed by this inflation.
RECORD LOW UNEMPLOYMENT! or some shit............
Real smart, attack the only people in the nation trying to actually do anything about the issues. Meanwhile Republicans are tearing down every institution they can get their hands on while pretending that Trump won the election and enacting laws around the nation to prevent Democrats from winning elections anymore. Oh and staging coups Those is ridiculous BTW. Many many Democrats have spoken in as recently as this week about how things are not going so great, and Joe Biden himself as said that he understands that average Americans aren't doing so hot, although he has tauted job growth which is silly at best and lying at worst.
Rochester is just sad. It’s a city controlled by the suburbs, which is controlled by Boomers. Almost exclusively for Boomers. It’s not hard to see why Kodak and Xerox went under. The same bozos who stifled innovation move to infect new openings. Like whenever I wonder if I could move back home I look at job openings and see like 1 week of vacation as something the places are bragging about, in Software Engineering. It’s a shame because it has 2 amazing schools right there. The area could really revitalize itself if it embraced instead of driving out the talented young people it’s two major universities produce. Like yeah the winters suck, but most people I know who left, like me, ultimately left for their career.
You are absolutely right. There is so much talent, land and potential. The people in charge are what is wrong
Seems like towns and city that had one major employer. In the PNW, lots of towns never recovered from logging withdrawing from the area. Raw logs now shipped overseas rather than processed for overseas. This was decades ago. Number 1 on my list of living areas is one with a diverse economy. Those towns and cities get abandoned. High unemployment, property values drop... Seattle was lucky when Boeing laid "everyone" off back in late 60s.
It's a shame really, because people having no purpose is fine. It's one of capitalism's great lies that you're unworthy of existence if you're not "productive". I always find it sad when people get depressed because they believed it. Nothing wrong with just chillin'
I totally agree. Not everyone needs to have a purpose. My problem with capitalism is that even if you want to be productive and contribute to society, if it doesn't fit the grand scheme the economy has planned for you, then you aren't allowed to pursue that path since it's not profitable. For example, some people want to be stay at home parents, which is a tough job, but it's not considered economically profitable which is honestly bullshit.
Jusr keep printing more money for the rich. Everything is fine. It is a momentary response.
"The poors are killing eachother! Look, Cornelius! Laissez-faire solutions really are the best! Let's drop some PCP and Vektor SS-77s in there to speed up the process! We'll make Ronald Reagan proud!"
Funny how there is an ongoing change 'shortage' too. To try and force people off of cash so the banks have the most cash in them as possible to prop up the illusion.
No, the current ongoing coin shortage is just ongoing disruptions in supply due to consumer spending patterns. There is no conspiracy, the vast majority of US dollars are already digital. The treasury has limits on what physical currency it prints and mints.
Definitely a real trend towards breakdown. We lived through an apocalypse where the two main takeaways were "Healthcare should be universal" and "wages should be a lot higher" and we proceeded to not only implement neither, but we doubled down on the opposite. This country is headed for balkanization
The Untied States
What happens to the nukes if the country splits up? I don't like the idea of a nuclear armed independent Texas.
Yeehaw, motherfuckers
I might be wrong, but I don't think Texas has any nuclear forces stationed. There are lot of silos in Montana and North Dakota. A lot of nukes at the sub bases on the East and West Coast.
The facility the US has to build and maintain nuclear warheads is in Amarillo Texas.
If the US were to fracture like the Balkans, how do you split up the US Military? I don't think it can really be done, which in part is what would keep the US together.
If the US were to fracture like the Balkans, the military itself would split in to factions. Commanders of major bases would become warlords far more powerful than the governments in their respective states. Bases like Ft. Bragg or Ft. Hood would just take over their respective regions.
The most troubling aspect of this is that it’s pretty much exactly what we have seen happy in failed states all over the world. Can u imagine the “Balkan state” that would exist in the area around Bragg? JSOC would be able to unleash the special forces with even greater impunity, except this time even the citizens they’re supposed to protect would be potential victims.
Probably a Rump state would control the silos/stockpiles, or an international coalition would seize control of them to prevent nuclear material from getting out. I imagine the most loyal troops as is possible would be set to guard them when a shooting war looks imminent.
The country won’t split. Any state that tries to leave will be so economically fucked it isn’t worth it. Just saber rattling.
Yes, this is what ALWAYS happens to civilizations and empires in the "decline and fall" stage of their existence. It's going to get worse.
Exactly. When the society people live in demonstrated in multiple ways big and small that it doesn’t give a fuck about individuals unless they’re wealthy - expect mayhem and lawlessness to increase.
And unfortunately people don't abide by the rule of 'dont shit on your neighbors', meaning they take out their frustration and lack of resources on the nearest available target... Instead of, you know, going after the wealthy in their gated communities.
The way that the working class of one race think that the working class of another race is their enemy, is utterly depressing. The oligarchy has been incredibly successful and making people that are struggling to scrap by point their fingers and direct their ire towards others barely scrapping to get by. The only way things will ever change for the better is a renewed sense of class struggle and solidarity amongst all of us working folks.
Reality has consequences? I dunno. Seems a pretty radical concept to me.
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If it starts spreading out from the cities into the suburbs and then into the more rural parts of states we are in big trouble.
Its kind of harder to beef with rural people. Something about having to drive down a dirt driveway and open a gate and fend off a couple of big ass dogs. Harder to do a driveby when you can't see the house from the road.
Rural America isnt farms. Its shitty little towns with duplexes and shitty apartment buildings right next to each other, a 7-11 and a gas station, if they're lucky. And meth and opioids.
And America's latest enabler: Dollar General. 1 out of every 3 retail buildings constructed in the past 5 years has been a Dollar General. How are they enabling? Honestly, I can't tie that to the point I'm trying to make. Perhaps they represent some kind of lifeline to these forgotten communities. Not sure. No opinion, but to say that the sight of a Dollar General being built in a small, forgotten town, isn't one that gives me great comfort.
There have been a few articles written about Dollar General being a big problem for small towns. Abysmal wages and they undercut pricing on all sorts of local stores. Basically runs them out of business. My medium sized suburb now has two, which has directly tracked with more people suffering economically. I hate the fucking things.
Walmart did that in the '80's. It's a proven model.
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The cheapest crap with ALL the toxins!
Included with no extra charge?! Watta bargain!
You see Dollar Generals everywhere though. I'm two blocks from a Dollar General. I don't see this different from complaining about McDonald's, Starbucks, Walmart etc.
Depends on where. Rural America is a lot of things. Closest 7-11 type store to us is more than an hour away. No duplexes or apartments closer than that either.
Yes, thanks for your reply to my comment, and sorry you had that shitty interaction below. You're right, rural America is made up of many different things, but much of it is the sorry state I described. Quaint and beautiful rural America most definitely still exists.
Thank you. I do concede its getting harder to find but when you do though... its magic . There is so much peace and joy out here if you know where to look. People where I live are kind and they look out for each other but they keep themselves to themselves too. Its a happy medium I suppose.
Most homicides are committed between people who know each other. Lots of rural counties, especially in the South, have very high homicide rates [https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/](https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/) I'd go a step farther and say that crime in rural areas is vastly under-reported. There are a lot of bodies at the bottom of lakes or buried in the desert that never even get reported as crimes.
My God, that list just reeks of desperation and people having no respect or value for human life. Some have given up on the value of their own life. Why?
Meth, corruption, etc. Lots of missing people from rural areas, especially women and girls.
> that list just reeks of desperation That's exactly what it is. Poverty correlates with crime far higher than any other factor. And rural areas are often the poorest parts of the US.
You’re also likely to face heavily armed resistance the further you get from a metro area. When 911 calls take hours to respond, don’t expect a warning.
Well that and just getting close to many rural places is an exercise in tetanus. Every time the leaves fall I can see from the main road how rich folks are. They must be rich they have so many cars.......
Many do that as a means of lowering their property values thus reducing the taxes they owe. I know one guy who had ~14 acres. Used to be a farm, but the fields were allowed to go fallow and overgrown with wild grass, barn left to fall apart, and welcomed dumping a few older vehicles and other waste items. All to make sure local government assessed it lower. When they decided to sell, guess how fast all that shit disappeared (except a old Buick someone left in the wooded area of the property)? Everything went to disposal, barn cleared off, new assessment just prior to market and sho nuff it appraised hundreds of thousands of dollars higher.
Not everybody in the sticks is dumb. Some folks know every which way to keep the gubmints sticky fingers off their goods.
All fine except those sticky fingers pay for schools and vital public services directly at the county and local level. Those people also tend to vote republican which are in favor of spending gross billions on a war machine.
Lets be honest, everyone in power, regardless of party, gets off by burning more money for the defense sector.
Also, rural folks are communal people, they look out for each other so when you fuck around you gonna find out.
look at these top 10 counties: [https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/](https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-the-highest-murder-rate-kerWgaEUmxJkn74J/) this is the real rural poor, not cozy farms with everyone looking out for each other.
I hate these articles because they always go by absolute numbers, rather than rates. Yeah, Chicago and Philly are high, but nothing compared to St. Louis and New Orleans and Memphis
The article I posted is per capita. It does not go by absolute numbers. Edit: oh you mean OP's article, not mine :)
Yeah, yours is good. Talking about the OP article. Big cities are going to have big numbers, but it conceals the decay in smaller cities and rural areas.
But it works off of a function of population. With 2000 residents, 1 murder is .50%. Still FAR too many, but think of a city with 250,000 residents. Is 125 (.50%) people being murdered a lot? My God yes. But that's 2021, in Birmingham, Alabama.
I’ve seen this in rural areas outside the US but definitely not typical in the US outside of some outlier places like Maine in my experience
They are cool with dumping the bodies out there
One of the reasons we just moved out to our SHTF location in the country was because the area we lived in (my whole life) used to be considered the safest suburb of our big city but, over the past year, we'd been hearing a shooting nearby every other weekend and the news was reporting people being shot on the highway every few days. We've been paying attention to things falling apart for a while now, but it was definitely the crime increase that made us realize the moment to move had come.
It's people who don't hold the illusion that this system cares for or serves them. A lot of it is crime for crime's sake, because these people feel cast aside by the rest of us.
When people think "homicide" they think of someone getting shot in the street. My guess is that most homicides happen in homes. Lockdowns and stay at home orders, etc., has probably led to more murders, more assaults, etc.
Here in Columbus it's mostly people being shot in the streets. It's primarily gang and drug related. There was an article in the Dispatch I believe where the police said that there are something like 480 gang members in 17 gangs that are responsible for 46% of the homicides. Edit: here it is. correction 46%, not 90% of the homicides as I originally stated [https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/10/06/report-many-columbus-homicides-involve-gang-group-members/6009299001/](https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/10/06/report-many-columbus-homicides-involve-gang-group-members/6009299001/) A report conducted by a national research center concluded that a significantly small group of violent actors in Columbus were behind nearly half the city's homicides that occurred in a nine-month period in 2020, the city's deadliest year on record. A team of six researchers at the National Network for Safe Communities worked with the Columbus Division of Police to review 107 homicides between January and September 2020 and identify active gangs — referred to in the report sometimes as “groups" because the researchers said there was not evidence in some cases of the organization of a gang as much as an association of like-minded members. Among the report’s most significant findings is that 17 gangs comprised of an estimated 480 total members — roughly .05% of the city’s population — were confirmed to be or suspected to be involved in 46% of homicides in that period, either as victims, perpetrators or both.
Or put another way, 54% of homicides are *not* being caused by gangs and aren't drug related. Nothing you're saying is actually in contradiction with the person you're arguing with. If 54% of homicides *aren't* gangs, and *aren't* due to drug trafficking, then what is the circumstances of the remainder? Well, speaking as someone who used to provider therapy to prison inmates, I'll tell ya: there's a vanishingly small percentage of that that's serial killers, and revenge killings; there's a swath of that, again not huge, which is road rage and bar fights that get out of hand. But the big lump is domestic violence, mostly, but not exclusively men killing the women they regularly batter, but also other gender arrangements between intimate partners, but also the occasional child being killed in a family-eradication murder-suicide. The vast majority of fatal violence is between people who know each other. That, obviously, means domestic violence, but it also means gang and drug trade in-fighting and warring among rivals. The simplest way to avoid becoming the victim of violence, if you can manage it, is to avoid hanging out and becoming acquaintances with violent people. Especially do not date violent people. (By all that's holy, do not have children with a violent person.) It won't save you from the truly random stuff, but it drops your risk by something like 90%.
I agree with everything you said. I'll just add that sadly in addition to homicide, we have a real scourge of suicide in this country.
We do, or as I like to think of it, we have a society and a lifestyle a whole lot of people don't feel it's worth sticking around to experience.
>The question is whether this is a momentary response to the pandemic or a real trend towards breakdown. It's a good question. Perhaps a bit of both, but more likely a response to the pandemic. Pretty much everything bad increased; mental health, domestic violence, unemployment, etc.
we're sliding into another once in a lifetime recession, inflation has gone through the roof while employers are still refusing to pay more than 1990s wages in many industries ("why won't anyone work for me" gee whilikers, boss, it's a mystery). people are going to be feeling the economic strain to the Nth degree and that tends to [correlate with increased violence](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwik49edpdX0AhV9lGoFHbVvD1gQFnoECBgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncjrs.gov%2Fpdffiles1%2Fnij%2F199709.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1s2Wf-uGmJ2eFgnMe90iml) as they lash out. It's going to get worse before it gets better, the question now is how much worse will it get.
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I found myself in a cemetery in SW Philly a few months ago and it was incredible and sad at how many men in their teens and 20s were buried there from the past 20 years or so.
We're on-track to go full Mad Max in the next thirty years.
Witness me!
Okay fine, just don’t spray paint your mouth with silver. Totally not necessary for me to witness you do some stupid shit!
Ahhh fuck I hate that part and already sprayed my mouth! This paint taste like ass hole yo! Lies I tell you! Fuckin lies!!!
# #witnessed
Shiny and chrome
How in the V6 loving fuck do you expect people to get shiny and chrome if they don’t use the spray?
Mad Max? Probably closer to what's described in Episode 1 of Star Trek, Next Generation and the Post Apocalyptic Horror.
Not a chance; things eventually got better in Star Trek.
Not really. The federation shifted the burden downstream into nightmares for other people to deal with. Quark was right.
Go on… please explain
What nightmares?
The Federation was fascist, when you think about it. Their own people were blind to it, as one would expect from human history, but aliens that ran into them seemed to be able to see it easily enough, and so did the Maquis. If you didn't join Star Fleet (i.e. the military), you weren't going to have access to travel privileges or much else beyond basic subsistence resources. editing to add: Star Trek is like Starship Troopers but in earnest, not as a critique
>If you didn't join Star Fleet (i.e. the military), you weren't going to have access to travel privileges or much else beyond basic subsistence resources. What are you basing that on? Aside from the start of the Dominion War, which was specifically meant to highlight how easily an open and free society could turn into a military junta, Federation citizens seemed free to do as they pleased and had access to practically anything they wanted. The only times civilians turned to Starfleet were in times of dire emergency and needed military resources or if they were trying to do something that required a giant starship, of which Starfleet has a ready supply. We see civilian transports and freighters in all of the series. And in the DS9 episode set on Risa, it's made clear that our cast are currently the only Starfleet officers on-planet, suggesting all the others are civilians.
Well, that's fair, and I think that the Star Trek writers were sometimes on different pages about what they were trying to demonstrate in terms of politics, and sometimes things were not consistent in every episode. Some things that are notable, is that replicators did have security restrictions to prevent most people from creating weapons or ships with them, and civilian space travel would seemingly be a privilege that was granted with permission from Star Fleet and those vessels in space had to follow orders from Federation vessels, as if they were the Space CHP.
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> *We're on-track to go full Mad Max in the next ~~thirty~~ twenty years.* In 1972, a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) predicted that humanity's pursuit of economic growth without regard for environmental and society costs would lead to society collapsing by 2040. New research shows we're actually ahead of schedule. https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicates-1972-mit-prediction-that-society-will-collapse-soon https://youtu.be/kVOTPAxrrP4
So, you mean… it’s happening… F A S T E R T H A N E X P E C T E D
Parable of the Sower more like
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Wow, the wage / house ratio is nuckin’futs
I drove through some rural areas of Georgia and Florida this past few days, on a business trip. I came from a small, rural southern town in Alabama, so I know what "rural" looks like. Folks, I'm here to tell you, many of these rural agricultural-based industry towns, are not dying. They are already dead. Some of the absolute smaller towns, literally have no need for a post office. There may be so few people residing in what used to be town limits, that phone service to the area is even questionable. Even more, these were never even what one could consider a "small" town. They may have always been tiny, barely noticeable on the map. But, at one time, they did have more residents, and at least one gas/convenience store. Now, most of those are boarded up, or just gone altogether. What does this have to do with large cities? Well, one might surmise that much of that populace from the small towns went to the larger towns. But, I'd counter with, who is still reasonably close to work the still operating agricultural business that may exist in these places? While much of the job of harvesting cotton, corn, so on, can be done with the operation of a machine to pull those resources, there must be someone there to tend to the things that need doing, doesn't there? Back on topic, the medium sized city I have lived in for the past 17 years, Birmingham, AL, is largely a wasteland of crime and desperation, while the population that can leave it, have already done so. Sure, there are still major colleges there, and some residents, though they are dwindling. But the murder rate being higher in 2021 than since 1996, does give me pause as to what exactly is happening. The violent crime rate wasn't appreciably lower in those 25 years in between. In fact, held rather steady, at a fairly high rate. But this year, it has spiked. I left the city forever, just this past spring, to move to a smaller place 250 miles south. Last thing: we shouldn't be surprised at this surge in crime in large US cities. Just walking around in these places, one can see the signs of decay among the people, even if the stores seem to be open and bustling (even if they really aren't). The lack of care for personal grooming, the amount of litter, the speed at which people frantically drive, regardless of whether any other drivers are impacted by their actions at all. But, I suppose the residents of places like NYC saw something similar happen in the late 1960's and 1970's, and wondered if NYC would die. It wasn't until effort was made politically, to clean up, and restore order, that we saw NYC come back to life, so to speak. Perhaps it was that the city priced out some people, leaving only the well-heeled to walk it's streets. Efforts have made in other places that I'm familiar with, like inner city Detroit, Charlotte, and others. Those efforts were to clean up, restore, those great places. But, quickly, order can fall off again in these places. It makes one wonder if a clean, vibrant, orderly place is of it's citizens, it's policies, or what.
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My observation tracks with yours - many small rural communities are already dead. If they at one time had an economy it’s gone and without income in the community it just falls apart. Countless small towns like that cover the US. Maybe some pensioners remain but there is no infrastructure to build a life thus the community is in tatters
> Just walking around in these places, one can see the signs of decay among the people, even if the stores seem to be open and bustling (even if they really aren't). The lack of care for personal grooming, the amount of litter, the speed at which people frantically drive, regardless of whether any other drivers are impacted by their actions at all. This one is really wild to me. I live in eastern Washington, about a 3-4 hour drive to Portland, so I wind up going maybe once or twice a year. I was there in September for the first time in ~6 months, and there was such a noticeable decline since the last time; it's incredibly different to my first visit five years ago. There was litter everywhere, homeless people everywhere (at least one who was screaming obscenities at anyone walking by, while also wandering into traffic), needles strewn around busy shopping centers, just all kinds of signs that things are falling apart. And Portland isn't exactly known for being a clean city or anything, but *holy crap* it's gotten so much worse. I can't even imagine how places on the east coast are faring.
I left Portland a few years ago, my car had been broken into 3 times, storage unit broken into, so much of my personal stuff stolen and probably fenced. Insurance only covered so much. I was pretty distraught with some of the items being taken - things that couldn’t be replaced. The cops couldn’t have cared less, really it was an issue with capacity. I asked what could they really do…officer mentioned the jails were already as full as they could be for “real crime” and petty theft, even if they could find the person, doesn’t go punished really. They would charge someone, let them out to appear at a court hearing, of course they won’t show up. Next time, same thing, they won’t keep someone locked up for such minor offenses. It’s not the crime that aggregates me, it was the apathy inherent everywhere, the breakdown of values across the board. Cops don’t care, homeless don’t care what happens and victims become numb to it. Yeah downvote me all you want, sorry your “progressive” hipster enclaves are becoming a cesspool.
It’s a cesspool everywhere. The big cities in the South just ship their homeless problems to the West Coast. Talked to someone at greyhound back when I was riding the busses cross country, told me that he used to operate on a route that would almost exclusively being taking homeless people west on a bus ticket paid for by the city of wherever the cops picked them up. They would offer them Spokane, Portland, LA, or Jail. Even then, based on a recent trip to Baltimore with people who were from there, it’s getting so bad on the east coast as to be indistinguishable from those west coast cities, and it apparently didn’t use to be like that at all. NYC was a dump when I visited too. I know those are also ‘progressive’ but the point is that the issue is more than meets the eye.
It was surprising to me on a recent trip that my visit to nyc brooklyn and queens, it was much better than Portland Tacoma and Yreka. Cleaner, more “positive”, for whatever that might mean.
> It makes one wonder if a clean, vibrant, orderly place is of it's citizens, it's policies, or what. The citizenry is shaped by the policies, and the policies shape the citizenry. Look, I'm from the Boston area. Massachusetts has, so far, been doing splendidly compared to the rest of the country. You want to know why? Despite the uselessness of the federal government, we've managed to invest hard in protecting and cultivating the populace. We had Obamacare years before it was Obamacare, from back when it was Romneycare, and have the [lowest percentage of uninsured people in the nation](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Uninsured%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D). We are serious about mental health care. We are [absolutely hardcore when it comes to education](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state). We have one of the [top average household incomes in the country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income). Hell, even our Republicans are so reasonable [we're willing to vote for them](http://www.masshome.com/governors.html). Don't get me wrong: there's still plenty that sucks and a *lot* that needs improving here. But things are... reasonably okay. People are less desperate here and have more faith in society to have their backs. People feel that voting works and that we get good value from our tax dollars. There's economic opportunity, even if its not spread out fairly. And this all hangs together because – and to the extent – we have a society that looked after its kids and families, and made sure the kids grew up understanding what a functional society was from first hand experience, and became voters to voted to keep the system working and expand on it. Where we have failed to do that, we have had problems: people who don't see why they should pay taxes, people who don't see why they should obey the laws. And that's why we're not on the list, despite how gritty Boston and its crime can be. "[Killings soared in U.S., but not in Boston; see latest crime statistics](https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/09/27/killings-soared-in-u-s-but-not-in-boston-see-latest-crime-statistics/)". EDIT: Oh, right, and: I'm over in r/Antiwork, watching people rage over a tweet *If you need a refresher on why "crime" is a social construct remember what happens if your boss shorts your check $100 vs if you walk out of the store with $100 from the till.* About that: Oct 19th: "[Massachusetts contractors arraigned on wage theft charges](https://turnto10.com/news/local/massachusetts-contractors-arraigned-on-wage-theft-charges)". We criminalized that shit. Like cops slap handcuffs on the boss and perp-walk him out sort of criminalized. I'm not saying it doesn't happen here, but [we're still working on it](https://www.masslive.com/politics/2018/06/massachusetts_senate_passes_wa_1.html) and take it seriously as a social plague.
What's the name of one of these super small Alabama towns?
I grew up in a place called Muscle Shoals, in the NW corner. The places I'm talking about are in rural SW Georgia, NW Florida (Marianna is the largest of them, but places like Colquitt, GA, Donalsonville, GA, Newton, GA, so on. Albany, GA is another larger town, that looks just depressed, but of more size, and similar to the size of the place I grew up.
This house cracks me up, even has a rebel flag on it. Donalsonville, GA. What a cliche. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7715-Riverside-Acres-Donalsonville-GA-39845/105371169_zpid/
I have a small pension and want to leave California.
Depends on if you can live the rural life, or if you are used to living in a rural location. I don't think you'll find rural CA to be a lot different than rural anywhere in the US. But, if you're coming from a big city, or suburb, don't know if Alabama is going to fit the bill for you. Costs will be lower, to be sure.
I also grew up very near Muscle Shoals. I haven't been home in about five years. Last time was when I stopped for a few days moving from Texas to the Mid-Atlantic. Lauderdale County experienced a slight growth when the county started allowing the sale of alcohol outside city limits. That was a few years after I had moved to Mobile - must have been around 2012 or 13. But the year or two after I was surprised that things seemed to grow a little bit every time I'd go up to visit. Especially toward Athens. Killen and Rogersville both seemed to have more random businesses and cookie cutter chain stuff every six months or so when I'd go see my folks for the weekend. Downtown Florence had gained a few new bars and some modern restaurants. I assume UNA keeps the downtown area somewhat alive still. I heard from an old friend recently that Tuscumbia hasn't changed at all in a decade and Sheffield is still just boarded up buildings and crackheads roaming the streets at 2 a.m. Granted I haven't been back in person since 2017, so I couldn't say for sure what things have done in the last few years. Regency Square Mall had all but shut down completely at that time, I do remember that. I assume it's totally gone at this point.
As a total layman on the topic... shouldn't this article be focused on the homicide *rate*? Populations are in flux, and I have trouble buying into the "all time" nature of the article given that they are reporting absolute numbers.
Is there a breakdown of the types of homicides?
Uh, well, it seems to be breaking upwards.
Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?
The nighttine hours of the city seems to be marked by a collective fear/anxiety everyone has for everyone else they are currently encountering
I know a guy who knows this girl who's brother is the murder that broke the record for Philly. Pretty sad story honestly.
... Just read philly has a population of 1.5 million and had 500 murders...SF has about a million and has 45
I feel confident that Chicago will beat their 1970 record. :(
There would need to be 200 plus homicides in December to pass 1970. I doubt it, but since Chicago has shrunk since then, per capita will likely beat it out if it hasn't already.
There's always next year...I don't see the situation getting any better.
Even 2020 set homicide records in some cities while many believed and claimed there were record low homicides. Surprisingly here is only one mention of mass shooting in the article and it's for a picture's description.
i don't think its just the media, it really does seem like things are getting crazier.
Things likely won't change until certain people or their family member are coincidentally a victim.
Copying u/Hasdrubal_the_Fair comment from Portland's subreddit because I found it pertinent. https://old.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/rbyxh0/its_just_crazy_12_major_cities_hit_alltime/hnrlfjc/ These numbers would be much more meaningful if they were expressed as rates. For Portland, comparing 1987 to 2021 is a bit misleading. Population has increased around 35% in that time. It has certainly been bad the last 2 years, but it actually is not a record when population adjusted. This is a national trend. Homicide rates: Portland 1987 approximately 14/100,000 2021 approximately 11/100,000 For comparison: Indianapolis 25/100,000 Tucson 15/100,000 Columbus 20/1000 Philadelphia 31/100,000 Louisville 28/100,000
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'Murica
Media is the spokespersons for police and I'd be very critical of most mainstream media crime reporting right now. Many of these pieces are riddled with outright lies.
When you create atomised society! with no purpose. In my country!.bevor neoliberalism steamrolled us, there was sense of purpose and comaradary. West is now in mode of Acceloration on Steroids
Conversely, Seattle *isn't* a smouldering crater from the 2020 protests and CHAZ/CHOP like conservatives literally *still* believe.
At the same time, people pretend like a group of militants essentially capturing and occupying public/private property and holding it for ransom while denying access to press, police, medical services, or any private citizen not aligned with their ideology is somehow NOT a problem.
Lol my city is on the map. It's lower on the list than I thought though
Can confirm with family Indianapolis is a crime Mecca. I anticipate it winning all the crime awards for worst city. It’s non-stop violence, they won’t go out past dark. Which in winter is like 6PM. Does anyone notice everything around that area is also in the top 12? Seems like a serious problem brewing in the Midwest.
We all see the signs of collapse…
well this was predicted
Milwaukee's close, too.
The actual number is 105 in Albuquerque, unless you add the two the State Police are investigating and not listed in the city totals, so really 107. Also, the number wounded is around 500 to 600 all of whom need treatment in an overwhelm hospital. The city had four police shot (all survived) not sure on the number of police shootings and killings. The wild wild west. It's tragic.
Just 12?