The 80s were a crime paradise.--drug gangs, mafia, wall st white collar crime, informercial scams, televangelist and cult scams --you name it, it all thrived in the 80s.
Considered acceptable in the 80's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOV5WXISM24
In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
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Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
So to clarify that...the federal Assault Weapons Ban applied to semi-auto rifles with certain ergonomic features, including pistol grips, flash hiders, and folding stocks. (Semi-auto is one bullet per trigger pull, full-auto means you can hold the trigger down and spray bullets.) The North Hollywood robbers had illegally modified their weapons to enable full-auto fire. Since well before 1997, modifying guns like this…
Where do you even buy those pre-86 full autos? Asking for a friend.
Usually at auction. Even poor quality, worn out registered automatics will run in the high thousands, or low tens of thousands because of constrained supply. This creates interesting dynamics where people take cheap (relatively, still ~$5,000 on the low end) legal automatics like MAC-10s and converting them to 5.56x45mm while retaining the original lower receiver.
Example:
Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every crime category is now much lower than it was in 1990, in every jurisdiction of the USA. Money laundering? idontthinkso.
"U.S. enforcement actions against institutions and individuals caught violating anti-money laundering rules dropped to a record low again in 2019"
On the other hand, measuring crime by enforcement actions is somewhat like saying "crime rates dropped to a record low during The Purge".
That said, piracy seems like a much easier bet for a crime category that hasn't gone down in the last thirty years. Also maybe jaywalking? Not sure if the U.S. distinguishes between crimes and misdemeanours but I can't imagine people have decided to stop doing it.
Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then came the police state and the party was over.
It sounds like the 80s were more fun. We had Miami Vice, MacGyver, The A-Team, Knight Rider, and Battlestar Galactica back then. And homes were still affordable places to live in.
That $40k home isn’t so cheap when you make $13k and interest rates were 11-15%.
My entire extended family mostly bailed out of NYC because they bought houses for $10-25k in the 70s and sold for 20x in the late 80s. That profit gave that generation a vault up the ladder and the prime the pump mortgage policy made a few rich.
Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every crime category is now much lower than it was in 1990, in every jurisdiction of the USA. Money laundering? idontthinkso.
"U.S. enforcement actions against institutions and individuals caught violating anti-money laundering rules dropped to a record low again in 2019"
Yet we are building empty skyscrapers in major cities for the express purpose of laundering money.
Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#46Not that it drastically improves the statement, but the tagline for the article
> a bank was robbed every hour of every day.
But the article itself clarifies they mean "each banking day" and the worst year had about seven robberies a day. Still a shocking amount, but not the 24 a day implied.
Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#47It’s interesting as an older person to realize that Americans born in the 90s and later have no real concept of the amount of crime and violence that was widespread in US.
Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like the 80s were more fun. We had Miami Vice, MacGyver, The A-Team, Knight Rider, and Battlestar Galactica back then. And homes were still affordable places to live in.
> And homes were still affordable places to live in. So does this mean the “crime paradise” was a better more prosperous time for people to live in than tech? If so, what does that say about modern society that our most depraved decade was actually better?
Withuot knowing nothing about California in the 80s besides what's in this thread, it seems you're saying gang shootings and bank robberies is an acceptable trade for affordable housing.
Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like the 80s were more fun. We had Miami Vice, MacGyver, The A-Team, Knight Rider, and Battlestar Galactica back then. And homes were still affordable places to live in.
That $40k home isn’t so cheap when you make $13k and interest rates were 11-15%. My entire extended family mostly bailed out of NYC because they bought houses for $10-25k in the 70s and sold for 20x in the late 80s. That profit gave that generation a vault up the ladder and the prime the pump mortgage policy made a few rich.
> That $40k home isn’t so cheap when you make $13k and interest rates were 11-15%.
With a decent down payment (lets say ~15%) that's still less than 5 years salary even with interest, which would be completely acceptable terms especially since cost of living was way more affordable back then and the population had ~10 million people less than today in the 90s. Just to give you context that's more in population increase than many US states have in totality!
The problem comes from the fact that even with most FHA loans, decent down payments and average(non-FAANG) middle class income wages you're still looking at 15+ years of salary with a home with no repair clauses from banks that bought distressed proprieties on the cheap in the 2008 housing crises, and are selling far above their ATH. And that's assuming you can even get a home into escrow before external demand or Chinese investors fleeing the mainland pay cash for it sight unseen for something they will just at best rent out on Airbnb or let decay as its better than the alternative of keeping it in fiat before the CCP takes it.
Personally speaking NY is exactly what I didn't want CA to become, and slowly it started to resemble it more and more in all the negative ways; the recent lockdowns from incompetent politicians with deluded presidential aspirations only highlighted how much they have in common now.
I'm not a protectionist and I welcome(d) people to come work and live in CA, by my issue is that in the process it stripped a lot of what was good about it away and enhanced a lot of the worst parts instead.
Personally speaking with all of that culture and atmosphere lost I don't think it's worth it. And I think that one guy below was right, California will probably never go back to what it was back in the 90s and I should probably just be satisfied I got to experience it all.
Re: In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time. It was also the inspiration for Heat’s shootout!
> Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time. Only semi-correct, they had full-auto AK47s and extended mags, all of which at the time could be purchased and legally owned with a special stamp by the ATF [0]. As a…
The weapons they used theoretically could have been legal had they had the provenance to make them legal.
Converting your own semi-auto to full auto is in now way legal then nor now.
Full auto guns are basically a rich man's toy and have been since well before new ones were outlawed in 1986. The practicality mostly isn't there for criminal use and they're real expensive to feed.