Lack of jobs could lead to more crime.

• Position: Unemployment

As the market continues to labor under a tax and regulatory burden that stifles all attempts at growth, the unemployment figures promise to remain at unacceptably high levels. While the media focuses on the number of unemployed, there is another story that will emerge.

This army of unemployed Americans, angry and desperate, soon will begin preying upon those with property and wealth. Crime will rise across the nation as some of those without gainful employment begin to turn to the dark side, stealing and, sometimes, killing to acquire what they want, according to attorney Jonathan W. Emord, the principal of Emord and Associates, Clifton, Va., and author of The Rise of Tyranny--How Federal Agencies Abuse Power and Pose Risks to Your Life and Liberty and Global Censorship of Health Information--The Politics of Controlling Therapeutic Information to Protect State-Sponsored Drug Monopolies.

Arrests have occurred with the Occupy Wall Street crowd, but they involve a small fraction of those who have been trespassing, Emord points out. Their anger against Washington and Wall Street is a familiar and generally accepted tune: the Wall Street bailouts, amounting to about one trillion dollars, have buoyed the financial status of individuals who--and firms that--largely are responsible for the prolific speculative substandard lending that has spawned a domestic and international catastrophe, the worst debt crisis in world history.

Violent crime and theft will increase as those who either are compromised in their ethics or mental state will move from despondency over job loss to anger directed at those with property and wealth. That fraction of the unemployed increasingly covets the properly and wealth of the employed and will, sooner or later, strike out if employment cannot be regained.

The unemployed who turn to these measures are different from the jobless of prior years, Emord maintains. The unemployed in the central cities now will be joined by an enormous new army of jobless coming from the suburbs, indeed from across the nation. While many have fallen off the lowest rung of the economic ladder, many others have experienced a profound drop in fortune from...