I made a chart showing much much safer Seattle is than peer cities, and it went viral online.
Rather than drop the usual abstract “homicides per 100,000” statistic, I tried to think of something a little more concrete. I went with the (average) number of years you can live in a city before getting murdered, which is a little grotesque, but alas, it’s something you can hang your hat on.
You’d make it 27,000 years in Seattle, almost eight times as long as your 4000 in Kansas City. I also rendered these into “lifetimes,” (I just divided by 80 years, I didn’t adjust by life expectancy per city or anything).
Seattle, it turns out, is much safer than many comparable cities. The only big, dense city that is safer is the other city run by a socialist Mayor*.
Something to think about this weekend while you are safely playing in Seattle’s beautiful parks.
(Yeah, obviously they are both newer Mayors. But we’re constantly being sold the lie that lefty governance creates urban hellscapes and it’s just plain false).
Ron, I love when policy and statistics wonks like yourself (and that’s a compliment) can break down the numbers into visuals that are completely understandable to nearly anyone with a middle school education. Please keep up the drum beat. We need you!
Thank you, Ron, for pushing back against the relentless Republican propaganda against Mayor Katie Wilson. The way you presented the data was clear and visually understandable.
Unfortunately, citizens have been blasted with lies and misrepresentations by the Republicans ever since Reagan, who was a game changer.
Democrats and Independents need to create a relentless "cultural" offensive where the alternative vision of government as a power for the people's best interests, gains irresistable traction.
This is a good time, given the free-fall this country is in, by almost any critera. Lawlessness, venality, corruption, and greed of the vast majority of polititions in both parties, is beyond belief for someone who has been paying attention for the last 65 years.
There are major cracks showing in this country. Too big to patch up by politics as usual.
I take inspiration from the reaction to Macklemore's stand against to ongoing genocide of the Palestinians.