If we were a species that evolved where extreme inequality made sense, we'd probably be fine with it. But we aren't - not even close. We have strong notions of fairness and acting in the best interests of society as a whole, that enable us to cooperate effectively etc. Extreme inequality eats away at what has made us successful as a species.

> If law enforcement is well-funded and works well - which isn't all that expensive or hard on a national scale - than what's the problem about extreme inequality?

Law enforcement in the US is insanely well funded. The NYPD, for example, has 5 billion dollars of budget for 50k employees and serves about 8.8 million citizens. In contrast, in the German state of Bavaria, a budget of 500 million dollars [1] supports 45.000 employees and 13 million people.

And yet, Bavaria has extremely low crime rates (the lowest in Germany with ~3700/100k people [2]), and the police stats could be even better if cops weren't forced to waste time on marijuana bullshit... while in New York, headlines referring to a lack of safety are more or less the norm [3].

The most interesting thing to me is: in absolute numbers, Bavaria had 508.000 crime reports filed in 2021 (cleaned up for cases of being in Germany unlawfully). New York reports 95.000 crimes in 2021... a sixth of the Bavarian absolute case count. What is the cause of this difference, and why is public perception of safety so immensely different?

[1] https://www.bayern.de/herrmann-zum-haushalt-2021-66-milliard...

[2] https://www.tvmainfranken.de/auch-dank-wuerzburg-und-aschaff...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-is-nyc-safe-crime-st...

[4] https://www.newsweek.com/new-york-city-most-dangerous-year-c...

Something is wrong here, 500M for 45K people means ~850 euros per month per employee which is less than German minimum wage (1584 eur per month). Plain mistake.

$100K per year per employee in NYC sounds about right: around half are probably salaries plus payroll tax on them, resulting in just-over-poverty wage for low level employees and barely-middle-class for the higher ups; and the other half for supplies, building maintenance, etc.

> Something is wrong here, 500M for 45K people means ~850 euros per month per employee which is less than German minimum wage (1584 eur per month). Plain mistake.

Indeed. I don't know what our precious Interior Minister has been talking about, chances are he simply once again blasted bullshit towards the press and no one called him out as well... I dug a bit in the government's budget plan and updated the figures. Still, we spend ~1.2 billion (assuming 1:1 exchange rate) less than the US, with five million more citizens that are served by the cops - so there is still a marked difference.

The difference is probably less poor and desperately poor people.