A lot of hoopla on the right about the FBI revising 2022 crime numbers higher. Here’s my take:
▪️According to these revised stats, violent crime did rise from ‘21-‘22, but then fell in ‘23, which many are leaving out. Violent crime is down from the ‘20 spike and the crime rate is actually near historic lows. Murders and murder rates also fell from ‘22-‘23, but are still elevated from the mid 2010s lows.
▪️It’s possible that future revisions could raise ‘23 violent crime numbers above ‘22 levels, which would indicate crime is trending worse. But until that happens it’s pure speculation, these are the numbers. Also, it’s highly doubtful that murders would be revised above ‘22 levels as it would require a massive upward revision, and you can look at many major cities’ stats showing murder has dropped.
▪️Generally, violent crime and murders were on a steady decline for decades until about the mid 2010s. Then, this progress was reversed when it spiked in 2020. Violent crime is down since then, but still hasn’t gotten back to the lows.
▪️Statistics don’t capture everything, and many rightly feel like crime is up in their areas. I like to use the example of stores locking up products. If stores are locking up things they didn’t 10 years ago, crime is up in your area, regardless of how many thefts are reported by police stats. Walk into a CVS in downtown Sacramento and there’s barely anything that isn’t locked up. You don’t need stats to tell you crime is high there.
▪️The left keeps using this meme but they don’t actually believe it. If you believe SNAP subsidizes companies to pay below a “living wage” this implies that if you take food stamps away they would suddenly pay a higher, “living” wage. So why not get rid of food stamps, then?!
▪️Except they know, and everyone knows, this isn’t true. Wages are set by supply and demand, not some mythical “living wage” metric. Absent food stamps there would actually be downward, not upward, pressure on wages, because the reality is food stamps subsidize the poor to not work as much as they might otherwise need to.
▪️Without SNAP, some low income people would need to work more hours to make ends meet, increasing the availability of low-skilled labor and lowering wages (all else being equal).
▪️Plus, we all know the left loves and supports food stamps. Which means, by this meme’s logic, they love to subsidize corporate profits. But they don’t really, they just think this ...
▪️Wait, this is the guy libertarians and the new right rave about being a great historian?! This sounds like a clueless meme from The Other 98%, except they wouldn’t add in the bizarre defense of feudal lords. Feudalism didn’t deprive peasants of their livelihoods for abstract goals? This is total fantasy.
▪️Amazon employs 1.55M, so this is less than 2% of their workforce, although these cuts will be to corporate, which employs 350k, so 8.5% of that. The CEO says there is an excess of bureaucracy at Amazon, and AI can automate certain repetitive tasks. Also, much of the cuts will be to HR, which is expected shrink by 15%, yay. Managers and HR are peasants now?
▪️I don’t know the inner workings of Amazon, and neither does Darryl, but this seems to be normal management practice to keep a company efficient and competitive. Given the immense size of Amazon the numbers look large, but far bigger shakeups happen all the time in the private sector. Apparently, under the new ...
▪️This statistic is just made up. The reality is that there hasn’t been a real study on this since 2013, when Pew did a poll. They found that Democrats were actually more than twice as likely as Republicans to report ever using food stamps (22% vs 10%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/
▪️Obviously, those percentages could have changed over the past decade, but it’s very likely that Dems still receive more SNAP benefits. Certainly, without an actual study or poll the claim should be thrown out, as it wildly contradicts a previous study.
▪️The meme probably comes from a 2024 analysis by Social Explorer, which found that 78.7% of US counties with the largest increase in SNAP since 2010 voted for Trump in 2020. But that tells us nothing about the actual number of Republicans (or Democrats) who are receiving benefits, just county-wide trends.
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