Quote:
Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Giant step backward? You really are glum about the world, aren't you?
Murder: According to a Justice Department report called Homocide Trends in the US, homicide rates recently declined to levels last seen in the late 1960's. I'm not sure if they included 9/11 in their numbers.
Abortion: According to the CDC, who has been monitoring legal abortions since 1969, the number of abortions in the US has been declining, and this is not accounting for changes in the population size. In a November 2003, MMWR article interpreting the data from 2000 the CDC reported that "From 1990 through 1997, the number of legal induced abortions gradually declined. In 1998 and 1999, the number of abortions continued to decrease when comparing the same 48 reporting areas. In 2000, even with one additional reporting state, the number of abortions declined slightly."
Incarceration: The rate has increased significantly since 1980, but it appears that it is leveling off.
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
ETA on the government expenditures: I'm still looking at deficit and surplus numbers, but preliminarily it looks like federal outlays as a percent of GDP have been falling considerably since 1990.
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I am so misunderstood (and I swear that you are one person here who I will never, ever intentionally insult, and its not because you are a moderator... more because you are like a hero).
My comparison is with the time before all of the great society programs began. I want to see all of my factors at the 1946 or 1927 levels. Comparing our crime factors to the time of our crack wars just doesn't do it for me. Similarly, comparing our abortion and teenage birth rates to any time after 1973 and the 1960's respectively, just doesn't do it for me. Even a conservative pro-choice estimate of abortions will show (I'm fairly certain I've seen several) that abortions skyrocketed after it was made legal, and teen birth generally skyrocketed after government aid was made an entitlement. I'd go so far as to say that the reasons society shies away from going after dads is because of the no-say-in-abortion decisions thing and (of course) the general availability of government aid. We have 19 year olds living in public housing with 3 kids next door to the public housing apartments where they grew up with 7 more. I don't mean to sound like I'm optimistic that all of this (misallocated incentives) gets fixed. Rather, I think this stuff gets slowly rolled back. And I'm not saying that you have not dealt with sheer human misery in this country, but if you've seen the same things I have, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Hello
