This is a blanket statement and is lazy in the same way as "all government is bad" or "all business owners are bad".

Of course a small portion of all crimes is committed due to poverty. But it's super easy to come up with counter-examples.

Mass murderers are committing crime because they're evil / crazy, not poor. There have been lots of rich mass murderers.

Ponzi schemers do it because they're greedy. Just think Bernie Madoff - already super rich, then decided to steal some more.

Gangs do it because for them it's a business. Again, the gang bosses are already rich but they keep going.

Not one single rape has ever been about inequality.

And so on. In the past, inequality was much worse and more entrenched than it is today, and yet crime during certain historical periods were much lower. Here's an example from the UK: https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/oly...

I didn't make my comment in a vacuum. Look at the context. Notice we aren't talking about rape, or financial ponzi schemes. Context clues people, context clues.

Well, Dubai, Kuwait, Singapore and a bunch of other places clearly demonstrate that you can have high inequality and close to zero street crime.

Might be a lot easier to reduce street crime if you don't care about sentencing innocent people or human rights in general

No, it's a function of low IQ and low impulse control.

IQ is a bullshit measure.

What do you think is a better measure of intelligence?

Is there a universal measure of intelligence for AI? Why not? Why should there be one for people?

Wet streets cause rain.

Agreed. Although based on the downvotes HN doesn't see it that way, who could have predicted?

> Crime is a function of inequality

I think the prevailing attitude is more like, "Yes, crime is a function of inequality, but it's also a function of X, Y, Z other things, and leaving them out does more harm than good to the discourse."

Don't blame crime on the poor.

In an unequal society the crime could just be in the areas of high poverty because the government chooses to avoid improving those areas. Off the top of my head that's just one way to interpret "Crime is a function of inequality."

Ok, but not all correlations are spurious. What makes that research spurious?

I can't read that paywalled article, but from the sounds of the abstract, no methodology is introduced to demonstrate causation. Any correlation that does not in turn show causation is spurious.

Got it, so you are just guessing.

Do you have more info? Would be great if you explain how they do demonstrate causality. Not really sure why it is on me to refute a paywalled article that has no indication of being relevant. Please note that the OC who posted the link to the study (and to whom I was responding) specifically said "correlated".