I am surprised that, given the poverty of the rioters, there hasn't been a lot of looting. These guys seem to be staying on a consistent plan of burn and destroy.
That is surprising.
It's also amazing that not one death has been reported.
They're probably not that poor. My daughter is a cop in a Western US city, and when she goes into ghetto apartments they have a couple of new SUVs out front and a huge plasma TV as their centerpiece. These people, btw, are on welfare, or at any rate, the holder of the apt. (either a single woman or an elderly person) is technically on welfare or receiving SS or SSI payments.
There was a study about 5-6 years ago when I was living in NYC that showed the amount of economic activity in Harlem compared to the recorded amount of income entering. Nowhere close. Much more buying power than income, and you know that folks don't come in from the burbs to buy sneakers on 125th St.
That said, this has nothing to do with income. The black riots really had to do with wanting to get what the Koreans had worked for - without staying up all night behind a cash register to get it. Once the rioters got a few goodies, they were happy.
But this is ideological, even though the rioters themselves may not be fully aware of it.