These posts will explore factors that are thought to influence violent crime rates, such as police response times, clearance rates, conviction rates, sentencing norms, and demographics. I will limit my exploration to the 10 safest and 10 most dangerous cities listed in the above chart, the better to reveal patterns of influence. Hopefully, these cities keep good records.
“Food production is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss across the world. This was true for most of our history and is still true today.” -Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser/Our World in Data
For comparison, as of 9/30/24, the Dow Jones average net profit margin was 2.46%; the Nasdaq average net profit margin was 16.09%. And according to a January 2024 analysis by NYU Stern School of Business, the average net profit margin for US corporations across 94 industries was 8.54%, based on a sample of 6481 firms.
Americans used to be fairly united on the need to protect the environment through stricter laws and regulations. That consensus took a nosedive in the 1990s and has never recovered…
The authors don’t tell us why Medicare and insurers are increasingly relying on prior authorization, nor do they address the prevalence of unnecessary or low-value medical care or the risks associated with such care. That’s a huge omission. Potential harms should be weighed against potential benefits, the better to find solutions that preserve benefits while reducing harm. As for the prevalence and risk of unnecessary and low-value care, evidence suggests that up to one-fifth of healthcare spending is wasted on such care and around 10% of patients are harmed in the process.
Around a quarter of healthcare spending in the US is wasted, much of it on unnecessary or low-value tests and procedures that do not improve patient outcomes. Here are a few ways countries and healthcare systems are tackling the problem…
“False consciousness [is] the notion that people are so misled about reality that they act against their own interests. What was once the preserve of Marxists, flummoxed that workers refused to lose their capitalist chains, is now the fall-back position for the modern [left], which worries that voters cannot accurately comprehend the world in which they live.” - Are voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks? The Economist, November 30, 2024.
These survey results reveal broad support for a get-tough approach to crime before 2000. Then, as the crime rate dropped, American attitudes softened - until crime rates rose again, a trend the following chart documents…