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I think we'll just have to agree to disagree then.

We don't get to choose where or to whom we are born. If you are then born into "bad cultures and values", as you say, that has a huge influence on your "choices". If you drop the same kid randomly into a more affluent family, I highly doubt he makes the same choices.

I just don't think that the cause can be simply boiled down to choices, when environment clearly has an outsized effect.

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An affluent person can certainly sustain themselves more easily where bad values are concerned like single motherhood, etc. So much they can actually promote it as a value which eventually gets picked up by middle and lower classes and is destructive there.

Poor communities had as a value the 2-parent family and their crime rates were far lower than today. As our social values have changed our crime rates have generally increased. We like to point out that since the 90’s they’ve gone down but not overall the last 100 years.

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