Quote Of The Day: Maybe Crime Doesn’t Pay As Well As We Think

“The upshot is that the crack trade, even at its market peak, was lucrative only for those at the top of a selling organization. The gang’s foot soldiers made less than minimum wage and faced a 1-in-4 risk of being killed over four years. (In the same time, being a timber cutter, the most dangerous legitimate job in the U.S., carried a 1-in-200 risk.) These drug dealers struggled desperately to reach the gang’s upper echelons, but few would make it.”

From “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?” A chapter in Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner’s new book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything via Glenn Reynolds

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