Rotten Capitalism

Toronto: Income inequality and crime

This is the second post in a series of posts about the city of Toronto, as an example for recent economic changes on the North American continent. The University of Toronto Cities Center published a large study about the changes in Torontos neighborhoods in the last 35 years, as we have seen in the last post. In this post we will have a more detailed look at the data.

The problem about this data is less the fact that there is a huge difference in income, between the three different cities within Toronto, it is moreover the large inequality in change. Whereas the income for the rich neighborhoods increased by 75 % over the last 35 years, it decreased tremendously for the other neighborhoods. This trend is even more extreme in the last 5 years of the study, a relatively short period of time. However, at least the taxation works towards the right direction, not as observed in the US.
This graph also illustrates the central credo of this blog: There is nothing wrong about capitalism per se, but there is a dramatic shift away from a form of capitalism that benefited almost everyone to a form that only benefits a small handful.

However, as you can see above, the homicide rate is 5 times higher in low income areas, as compared to the high income areas. If the trend continues and the middle income areas in Toronto vanish, we don’t have to apply complicated math to understand that the overall homicide rate will go up. Moreover, there is a large possibility that because of the more apparent income and thereby lifestyle differences crime rates will even go up. So maybe it should also be in the interest of the high income population of Toronto to work against this trend of income polarization?