[jammur]

It would seem obvious why there might be a negative correlation between wealth and violent crime. Violent crime essentially has the lowest barrier to entry. I'd have to imagine that if poor people had the option to choose white collar crime over violent crime, they would.

[aspensmonster]

My understanding is that they do if it is available. Fraud is the most accessible flavour of white crime that I'm aware of.

[MaysonL]

Depending upon how you define violent crime: war is rarely started by the poor.

[jlgreco]

How many rich people do you think are responsible for starting wars in the past century?

Being as loose with "rich person starts a war" as possible, I really can't see that number going higher than the low hundreds. Peanuts, in the grand scheme of things.

[yohanatan]

That's astonishingly naive. Who sets corporate, national and international policies?

[jlgreco]

I am including those people in my "low hundreds of rich people" guess. Lets say for the sake of discussion that Oil Barons are responsible for Iraq... how many of those are there actually? How many rich oil barons are responsible for Iraq?

The point of being rich and powerful enough to start wars is that there aren't many other people like you. Being unusually powerful and being common are mutually exclusive.

[yohanatan]

And what percentage of all 'rich people' is that number? I would venture that it is quite high. Certainly a much higher percentage than the number of poor people responsible for these wars (which I think was OP's point).

[jlgreco]

> And what percentage of all 'rich people' is that number?

A very very small percentage. Currently there are several million millionaires in the US alone. Now, the question isn't "are rich people responsible for starting more wars than poor people". Of course the answer is "rich".

The question is whether poor people or rich people are more unethical. Poor people have a very disproportionate amount of violent crime. Rich people have a disproportionate amount of war-starting. However few rich people get a chance to start a war.

I don't doubt for one second that poor people commit more crime per capita than rich people start wars per capita. Maybe somebody can work out those numbers, but it seems plain enough for me to not even bother.