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Comment by pasttense01 | Hacker News Reader

"It’s well known that people with lower incomes commit more crime."

No, this is only for certain types of crime. The amount of money stolen via income tax evasion, financial crimes... by the well off is massively, massively greater than the total amount stolen by the poor via shoplifting and other theft crimes.

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>The amount of money stolen via income tax evasion, financial crimes... by the well off is massively, massively greater than the total amount stolen by the poor via shoplifting and other theft crimes.

But the article is talking about "more crime", not "more money stolen" or similar. I think most people would agree that there's "more crime" happening when 100 people each steal $5 worth of candy bar from a store, than if a single person failed to report ~$2000 worth of income, and is therefore evading $500 worth of taxes.

I read it implicitly as "violent" and "petty" crime. I'm fairly certain there's a bias against "breaking the rules" vs "exploiting the rules" in this discussion.

Many financial crimes are just that, 'crimes', not exploiting the rules, not bending them, but flat out breaking them. There is also a big difference between 'petty' (e.g. shoplifting, loitering) and 'violent' (e.g. mugging, school shooting,...)

Did you really misunderstand what I meant? or, perhaps you really are trying to help me edit to make my point? Or perhaps you disagree with the sentiment and are finding details to disagree with? This comment type is confusing.

It is well known that the crimes committed by poor people are prosecuted more consistently and more frequently than the complicated white-collar crimes committed by wealthier people.

It’s not really well known. We’ve almost stopped prosecuting any petty crime at all in some jurisdictions (so it’s like shoplift till you drop). AG’s and county DA’s, on the other hand, make it a point to pursue white collar crime very aggressively, and whenever the Feds are involved (eg for insider trading), they are very aggressive. The issue with white collar crime, is that it is simply very hard to identify, while the guy walking out of Target with a basketful of stuff while avoiding checkout is just really obvious.

It is also a matter of incentives. The only thing goin after most shoplifters will get the state is having to fund their court appearances and incarceration, a net loss. Going after a rich guy for a crime nets them real money, so when they can they definitely will do it (at least where I live, your locale will differ).

That people commit shop-lifting and other minor crimes with impunity is a right-wing meme that has very little basis in reality. It's being pushed by grifters with a financial interest in promoting the idea of societal decay and disorder and getting people worked up and afraid.

>That people commit shop-lifting and other minor crimes with impunity is a right-wing meme that has very little basis in reality

How do you square this against DAs that openly state they won't prosecute such crimes?

You have data showing decreasing prosecution rates for such crimes, or is this selective reporting of what a few DAs (of the many thousands in this country) said?

Vibes vibes vibes.

So if you're being held up at gunpoint, what's going to be your response? "Well ackshually the chances of being robbed is less than 0.1% per year, so the idea that I'm being victimized is a right-wing meme that has very little basis in reality"? The fact that DAs in Mississippi are oppressing shoplifters is cold comfort to a storeowner in NY, LA, Dallas, St. Louis[1], SF[2], or Portland[3]. And that's just the jurisdictions I could turn up in a 2 minute google search.

[1] https://www.apainc.org/choosing-not-to-prosecute-low-level-c...

[2] https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/data-shows-chesa-boudin-...

[3] https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/the-story/multnomah-d...

Not a right winger watching FauxNews, just a moderate (somewhat left of center). But when you see shoplifting happening multiple times a week, where the store worker or security guard is saying “would you please pay for that?” It’s obvious something is out of control.

And where's the data?

Like here is the larceny-theft rate from 1990 to 2022.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191247/reported-larceny-...

This suggests shoplifting is down since 2018 in a large number of cities.

https://www.statista.com/chart/31272/number-of-shoplifting-i...

Again, vibes are manipulated by selective highlighting of specific examples of outrageous behavior. It's often done because certain people profit from your feeling that things are falling apart around you.

Reporting of shoplifting to the police is down for sure, since the police aren’t doing anything about it, there is no reason to report it. How does QFC report something that happens hourly, when they are understaffed already and those reports can only be taken over a phone that is unlikely to be answered, since the police are also understaffed? Petty crime reporting is notoriously noisy, the only reliable crime statistic is homicide (it is actually illegal to not report a murder).

so you don't have data is what i am hearing.

And your data is incomplete, so? We have police chiefs here begging people to report crime since they need it for decent statistic is even if they can’t act on it.

Spot on - and this doesn't only apply to white collar crime - the wealthy are overwhelmingly more likely to escape prosecution for any crime.

Whether through having resources to get off (legitimately or illegitimately), or just cultural bias (Eg. The mere existence of terms like "white-collar crime")

It’s almost certainly true that the most commonly committed crime is tax evasion, with drug use as another contender. Neither are particularly confined to the lower incomes.

Is tax evasion distributed differently by income level? How do you control for it just being more complicated to file as income increases? My experience in the lower rungs is that middle class people pay taxes faithfully out of great fear of consequences for not doing so, while lower income and poor friends often cheat or don’t bother with taxes at all (or bank accounts for that matter). I’ve met and known tax cheats but none of them white color workers. I would love to see data. I would predict a u shape, with tax evasion lowest in the middle, and higher for both low income blue color workers (including waitresses), and higher for the upper classes and those who own homes, other major wealth.

>My experience in the lower rungs is that middle class people pay taxes faithfully out of great fear of consequences for not doing so

It's also pretty hard not to pay taxes if you're getting most of your income through employment, since your employer is obligated to withhold your taxes on behalf of the state.

This seems broadly accurate, in the sense that middle class wage earners cheat on taxes the least, and have the least ability to. Lower income workers don't cheat out of much taxes either, because they don't have much money and don't get taxed much, but it's widespread for the under the table or cash economy of course. Which yes, leaves consequential tax evasion as mostly the province of the more well off, where it is rampant.

I would think, at least for under the table cash transactions, that it would be more lower income, not higher. That includes the fly by night electrician who will install a new outlet for you as long as you don’t need it certified, cash only, the guy also lives out of his truck. Or is consequential excluding those cases?

Yes it's widespread and frequent among the lower income classes for the reasons you mention. But it's a whole lot less money than tax evasion by the wealthy, for obvious reasons.

I’m not sure, probably. But they are usually skipping out on not only income tax, but self employment taxes. I have to say I don’t find myself bothered by it as much as tax evasion.

I would hazard a guess that the amount of taxes avoided by the top 10% of wealthy in the United States is larger than the actual total income of the bottom 10%.

Avoidance isn’t illegal, however, so I’m not sure why it would count. I’m pretty sure evasion in the top 10% is pretty low, just because they have better accountants and wouldn’t take the risk.

I’m not sure. I do know that until some of Biden’s changes, identifying tax evasion in the lower classes was hardly possible. The only evasion cases worth identifying were those that could pay enough to help fund the expensive prosecution of such crimes. Now, with greater government power over bank accounts (the 600 dollar rule), we should have better ability to measure tax evasion in the lower classes even though we won’t prosecute it yet.

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