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Crime isn’t caused by inequality. If most crooks wanted to be equal to most victims, they would get a nine to five job and stay legit.
Crminals want more than we have, and they want to get it without earning it.
And this is borne out by the abundance of well-heeled chiselling crooks in the Palace of Westminster who still felt the urge to join in the great expenses swindle.
I think that by nature, we are hard wired for dishonesty, spite, violence, jealousy. It’s upbringing that trains us out of that, and teaches us empathy, co-operation, all the arts and crafts of modern life.
Some of us never have that nurturing phase. And some of us have such a powerful instinct for selfishness that we overcome our conditioning.
Could crime be caused by inequality? Surely a hard-working burglar or shoplifter would soon be much richer than an idle burglar or shoplifter, and the cycle would have to start again.
Although according to the estimable Theodore Dalrymple, there is no victim of crime quite so indignant as a burglar who’s house has been burgled.
I won’t argue that the temptation to commit some crime (what might be termed survival crimes) probably does increase with impoverishment, but the socialist line that it’s all done to inequality is simply bollox.
The first evidence to disprove this line of thought is the large number of the less well off who don’t commit crime and would never dream to do so. The second is even better:
If it inequality explains crime, why did 350 MPs, all earning at least three times the national average wage for what is essentially a part time job, feel the need to defraud the taxpayer to the extent they were doubling their wages?