Monday, October 24, 2016
Thomas Sowell: Three columns on The Left and the Masses
Here are links to three columns by Thomas Sowell. TS is on target. The Left's world view produces change that hurts those they claim to be helping.
Column 1
Column 2
Column 3
Here are some excerpts.
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The greatest moral claim of the political left is that they are for the masses in general and the poor in particular. That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many leftists themselves.
One of the most recent efforts of the left is the spread of laws and policies that forbid employers from asking job applicants whether they have been arrested or imprisoned. This is said to be to help ex-cons get a job after they have served their time, and ex-cons are often either poor or black, or both.
An empirical study some years ago examined the hiring practices of companies that did a background check on all the employees they hired. It found that such companies hired more blacks than companies which did not follow that unusual practice.
Why? This goes back to decision-making by human beings in general, with many kinds of decisions in general. Since we seldom have all the facts, we are often forced to rely on generalizing when making our decisions.
Many employers, aware of higher rates of imprisonment among blacks, are less likely to hire blacks whose individual backgrounds are unknown to them. But those particular employers who investigate everyone's background before hiring them do not have to rely on such generalizations.
The fact that these latter kinds of employers hired more blacks suggests that racial animosity is not the key factor, since blacks are still blacks, whether they have a criminal past or not. But the political left is so heavily invested in blaming racism that mere facts are unlikely to change their minds.
Just as those on the left were not moved by hard evidence before they promoted laws and policies that forbad employers to ask about job applicants' criminal records, so they have remained unmoved by more recent studies showing that the hiring of blacks has been reduced in the wake of such laws and policies.
The left's infatuation with minimum wage laws has likewise been impervious to factual evidence that the spread and escalation of minimum wages have been followed by far higher rates of unemployment among young blacks, to levels some multiple of what they were before — and to a racial gap in unemployment among the young that is likewise some multiple of what it was before.
It is never easy to tell what people's motives are. But, when the political left proclaims their devotion to improving the lives of others in general, and of the poor in particular, we can at least get some clues from the way they go about it.
One of the first things the left does is take away the right of other people to make their own choices.
For example, under current California law, Hispanic school children cannot be taught in Spanish if their parents want them taught in English. Like parents in other immigrant groups before them, Hispanic parents tend to want their children to learn English, so that those children will have more opportunities when they become adults in an English-speaking country.
But the left never gives up on their pet notions. This year there is a new proposition on the California ballot — Proposition 58, very misleadingly phrased — that would take that choice away from parents, and let schools impose teaching in Spanish to Hispanic children, whether the parents want it or not.
There is the same dogged resistance on the left to allowing black parents to choose to have their children educated in charter schools that are part of the public school system, but are not subject to all the bureaucratic rules that lead to such bad results in other public schools.
When it comes to crime and violence, the political left, including much of the media, are having a great time demonizing the police. Blacks are the biggest victims of the sharp upturn in murders that has followed. But, yet again, hard evidence carries very little weight when the left is feeling good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake.
Like so much that is claimed by the left, their compassion for the masses has seldom been subjected to any factual test. Both their words and their deeds reveal their low opinion of the people they claim to be championing.
When Barack Obama referred to ordinary working people as people who are "bitter," and who "cling to guns or religion," that was not just a peculiarity of Obama. He was part of a centuries-long tradition on the left.
What role is there for the masses in the vision of the left?
One role is to provide a moral basis for the left to claim power, as defenders of the downtrodden. No secular doctrine has so swept across the world so swiftly, and with such widespread political impact as Marxism in the 20th century. Its central premise is that the workers are poor because their employers have exploited them.
That was not a hypothesis to be tested but an axiom to be accepted as sacred dogma. Nowhere in the three volumes of Marx's classic "Capital" was there the slightest attempt to test that belief empirically.
It would not be difficult to put the Marxian exploitation thesis to a test. If capitalists' exploitation of the workers is what makes them poor, then in countries run by Marxists, the workers should have a higher standard of living than in countries with a capitalist economic system.
But among the many Communist countries that emerged around the world in the 20th century, there has not been a single one where the workers' standard of living has been as high as that of working people in the United States.
Column 1
Column 2
Column 3
Here are some excerpts.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpts from Column 1
One of the most recent efforts of the left is the spread of laws and policies that forbid employers from asking job applicants whether they have been arrested or imprisoned. This is said to be to help ex-cons get a job after they have served their time, and ex-cons are often either poor or black, or both.
An empirical study some years ago examined the hiring practices of companies that did a background check on all the employees they hired. It found that such companies hired more blacks than companies which did not follow that unusual practice.
Many employers, aware of higher rates of imprisonment among blacks, are less likely to hire blacks whose individual backgrounds are unknown to them. But those particular employers who investigate everyone's background before hiring them do not have to rely on such generalizations.
The fact that these latter kinds of employers hired more blacks suggests that racial animosity is not the key factor, since blacks are still blacks, whether they have a criminal past or not. But the political left is so heavily invested in blaming racism that mere facts are unlikely to change their minds.
Just as those on the left were not moved by hard evidence before they promoted laws and policies that forbad employers to ask about job applicants' criminal records, so they have remained unmoved by more recent studies showing that the hiring of blacks has been reduced in the wake of such laws and policies.
The left's infatuation with minimum wage laws has likewise been impervious to factual evidence that the spread and escalation of minimum wages have been followed by far higher rates of unemployment among young blacks, to levels some multiple of what they were before — and to a racial gap in unemployment among the young that is likewise some multiple of what it was before.
Excerpts from Column 2
One of the first things the left does is take away the right of other people to make their own choices.
For example, under current California law, Hispanic school children cannot be taught in Spanish if their parents want them taught in English. Like parents in other immigrant groups before them, Hispanic parents tend to want their children to learn English, so that those children will have more opportunities when they become adults in an English-speaking country.
But the left never gives up on their pet notions. This year there is a new proposition on the California ballot — Proposition 58, very misleadingly phrased — that would take that choice away from parents, and let schools impose teaching in Spanish to Hispanic children, whether the parents want it or not.
There is the same dogged resistance on the left to allowing black parents to choose to have their children educated in charter schools that are part of the public school system, but are not subject to all the bureaucratic rules that lead to such bad results in other public schools.
When it comes to crime and violence, the political left, including much of the media, are having a great time demonizing the police. Blacks are the biggest victims of the sharp upturn in murders that has followed. But, yet again, hard evidence carries very little weight when the left is feeling good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake.
Excerpts from Column 3
When Barack Obama referred to ordinary working people as people who are "bitter," and who "cling to guns or religion," that was not just a peculiarity of Obama. He was part of a centuries-long tradition on the left.
What role is there for the masses in the vision of the left?
One role is to provide a moral basis for the left to claim power, as defenders of the downtrodden. No secular doctrine has so swept across the world so swiftly, and with such widespread political impact as Marxism in the 20th century. Its central premise is that the workers are poor because their employers have exploited them.
That was not a hypothesis to be tested but an axiom to be accepted as sacred dogma. Nowhere in the three volumes of Marx's classic "Capital" was there the slightest attempt to test that belief empirically.
It would not be difficult to put the Marxian exploitation thesis to a test. If capitalists' exploitation of the workers is what makes them poor, then in countries run by Marxists, the workers should have a higher standard of living than in countries with a capitalist economic system.
But among the many Communist countries that emerged around the world in the 20th century, there has not been a single one where the workers' standard of living has been as high as that of working people in the United States.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Even the Washington Post is beginning to see the light
Here is Josh Rogin's column in the Washington Post.
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Don Boudreaux on Trade
Here is Don Boudreaux's excellent comment on trade. Don is on target, but misses one important fact. Although free trade makes it possible to produce more of everything, hence possible for everyone to be made better off, it does not follow that everyone is made better off.
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I.
The positive economic case for free trade is straightforward. Here I distill it into ten – well, as you’ll see, really eleven – elemental points.
First, nothing about political borders justifies treating trades that cross those borders differently than trades that don’t. Whatever benefits result from you trading with someone in Kentucky are no less available when you trade with someone in Korea. Whatever economic problems – real or imaginary – are caused by you trading with someone in Korea are no less likely when you trade with someone in Kentucky.
Second, all economic activity is ultimately justified by how much it enables us to expand our consumption, not by how much it enables us to expand our production. Consumption is the end; production is the means. Of course, production is an essential means; we cannot expand consumption without expanding production. But production is not the ultimate purpose of economic activity. If you disbelieve me, ask yourself how much you’d pay for a sawdust-nail-‘n’-cardboard pie that took its well-meaning baker several days to produce. If you answer “nothing,” then you get this point.
-------------------------------------------------------
I.
The positive economic case for free trade is straightforward. Here I distill it into ten – well, as you’ll see, really eleven – elemental points.
First, nothing about political borders justifies treating trades that cross those borders differently than trades that don’t. Whatever benefits result from you trading with someone in Kentucky are no less available when you trade with someone in Korea. Whatever economic problems – real or imaginary – are caused by you trading with someone in Korea are no less likely when you trade with someone in Kentucky.
Second, all economic activity is ultimately justified by how much it enables us to expand our consumption, not by how much it enables us to expand our production. Consumption is the end; production is the means. Of course, production is an essential means; we cannot expand consumption without expanding production. But production is not the ultimate purpose of economic activity. If you disbelieve me, ask yourself how much you’d pay for a sawdust-nail-‘n’-cardboard pie that took its well-meaning baker several days to produce. If you answer “nothing,” then you get this point.
Monday, October 17, 2016
A test of your economic literacy
From Don Boudreaux's website. No explanation needed - or if there is - reread microeconomics 101.
The World Health Organization recently endorsed a global hike in the tax on sugary drinks. The stated goal, of course, is to improve people’s health by raising their costs of consuming high-calorie drinks. (Ignore here the officiousness of bureaucrats who arrogantly fancy themselves to be entitled to recommend the forcible extraction of money from people who act in ways that those bureaucrats have divined are ‘bad’ for those people. [I’m not one to propose taxes, but if – as is often asserted – we ‘must’ have taxes, I propose that stiff taxes be levied on all proposals to butt into the private affairs of others, and that stiff X 10 taxes be levied on all actual acts of butting into the private affairs of others.])
Credit the WHO staff at least for correctly understanding basic economics: artificially raising the cost to buyers of acquiring drinks of kind X and Y will reduce (at least in above-ground markets) the number of drinks of kind X and Y that are purchased.
Yet I wonder how many are the pundits, professors, politicians, and preachers who will favorably and self-righteously wave the WHO’s recent proposal as they support hiking taxes on sugary drinks because they predict that such taxes will reduce the quantity of such drinks demanded and who also self-righteously support hiking minimum wages because they predict that such minimum-wage hikes will not reduce the quantity of low-skilled labor demanded.
I’ll bet that the number of such inconsistent people is large.
The World Health Organization recently endorsed a global hike in the tax on sugary drinks. The stated goal, of course, is to improve people’s health by raising their costs of consuming high-calorie drinks. (Ignore here the officiousness of bureaucrats who arrogantly fancy themselves to be entitled to recommend the forcible extraction of money from people who act in ways that those bureaucrats have divined are ‘bad’ for those people. [I’m not one to propose taxes, but if – as is often asserted – we ‘must’ have taxes, I propose that stiff taxes be levied on all proposals to butt into the private affairs of others, and that stiff X 10 taxes be levied on all actual acts of butting into the private affairs of others.])
Credit the WHO staff at least for correctly understanding basic economics: artificially raising the cost to buyers of acquiring drinks of kind X and Y will reduce (at least in above-ground markets) the number of drinks of kind X and Y that are purchased.
Yet I wonder how many are the pundits, professors, politicians, and preachers who will favorably and self-righteously wave the WHO’s recent proposal as they support hiking taxes on sugary drinks because they predict that such taxes will reduce the quantity of such drinks demanded and who also self-righteously support hiking minimum wages because they predict that such minimum-wage hikes will not reduce the quantity of low-skilled labor demanded.
I’ll bet that the number of such inconsistent people is large.
Friday, October 14, 2016
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Words versus actions
Here is Thomas Sowell's column on Trump and Clinton. TS is on target.
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Trump's gutter talk about women shows yet again that he is bad news. The problem is that Hillary Clinton is far worse.
Trump's talk is indefensible. But Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State, carrying out the Obama administration's foreign policies, have cost many lives in many places, including the American ambassador and others killed in Benghazi.
Women have a right to be offended by Trump's words. But women have suffered a far worse fate from Secretary Clinton's and President Obama's actions. Pulling American troops out of Iraq, despite military advice to the contrary, led to the sudden rise of ISIS and their seizing of many women and young girls as sex slaves.
A message from one of these women urged the bombing of ISIS. She said she would rather be dead than live the life of a sex slave. Some women who tried to commit suicide and failed have been tortured for trying.
Meanwhile, President Obama tried to downplay ISIS with flippant words, by calling them the junior varsity. His half-hearted, foot-dragging military response has allowed ISIS to parade before the world as triumphant conquerors, appealing to disgruntled people in Western countries to carry out terrorist attacks in support of their cause.
That is a lot worse than some stupid and gross words by Donald Trump, which even he has had to repudiate. Make no mistake about it. Neither party has a good candidate for President. The choice is between bad and disastrous.
Are women more in danger from Trump's words or Hillary's actions? Are Americans in general more in danger from Trump's shallowness on issues or Hillary's ruthless grabs for money and power — a track record that goes all the way back to the days when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas?
Mrs. Clinton's own announced agenda attacks the very foundation of American Constitutional government, on which Americans' own freedom depends. She has already said that she will appoint Supreme Court justices who will specifically overturn a recent Supreme Court decision, "Citizens United versus FEC."
That decision said that both corporations and labor unions have freedom of speech, including the right to contribute money toward political campaigns.
Hillary Clinton's determination to pick judicial appointees on the basis of their willingness to overturn that decision is a more brazen extension of the political left's other attempts to stifle the free speech of those who oppose their agenda.
Demands that various advocacy organizations reveal the names of all their donors are an obvious attempt to scare off those donors, with harassment by everyone from vandals to rioters to the Internal Revenue Service and other government bureaucrats.
Without the right to free speech, none of the other rights is safe. Government officials can get away with all sorts of abuses, if others are not free to talk about those abuses.
Despite Hillary Clinton's claims to be a champion for black people, her political agenda threatens the education of black children, the employment of black adults and the physical safety of black communities.
No law has done more damage to the employment prospects of young blacks than the federal minimum wage law. But nothing is easier, or more popular, than for some politician to raise the minimum wage — despite the fact that unemployment rates among black young people have skyrocketed to several times what they were before.
You don't get any wage at all when you are unemployed. And if you are young and unemployed, you don't get any job experience to help you rise up the ladder, when you don't get on the ladder.
As for safety in the black community, Hillary Clinton has allied herself with those who demonize the police. The net result has been a sharp increase in the number of blacks killed by other blacks, as criminal elements take control of the streets when the police are not allowed to.
Do you choose a President by talk — or by actions and consequences?
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Trump's gutter talk about women shows yet again that he is bad news. The problem is that Hillary Clinton is far worse.
Trump's talk is indefensible. But Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State, carrying out the Obama administration's foreign policies, have cost many lives in many places, including the American ambassador and others killed in Benghazi.
Women have a right to be offended by Trump's words. But women have suffered a far worse fate from Secretary Clinton's and President Obama's actions. Pulling American troops out of Iraq, despite military advice to the contrary, led to the sudden rise of ISIS and their seizing of many women and young girls as sex slaves.
A message from one of these women urged the bombing of ISIS. She said she would rather be dead than live the life of a sex slave. Some women who tried to commit suicide and failed have been tortured for trying.
Meanwhile, President Obama tried to downplay ISIS with flippant words, by calling them the junior varsity. His half-hearted, foot-dragging military response has allowed ISIS to parade before the world as triumphant conquerors, appealing to disgruntled people in Western countries to carry out terrorist attacks in support of their cause.
That is a lot worse than some stupid and gross words by Donald Trump, which even he has had to repudiate. Make no mistake about it. Neither party has a good candidate for President. The choice is between bad and disastrous.
Are women more in danger from Trump's words or Hillary's actions? Are Americans in general more in danger from Trump's shallowness on issues or Hillary's ruthless grabs for money and power — a track record that goes all the way back to the days when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas?
Mrs. Clinton's own announced agenda attacks the very foundation of American Constitutional government, on which Americans' own freedom depends. She has already said that she will appoint Supreme Court justices who will specifically overturn a recent Supreme Court decision, "Citizens United versus FEC."
That decision said that both corporations and labor unions have freedom of speech, including the right to contribute money toward political campaigns.
Hillary Clinton's determination to pick judicial appointees on the basis of their willingness to overturn that decision is a more brazen extension of the political left's other attempts to stifle the free speech of those who oppose their agenda.
Demands that various advocacy organizations reveal the names of all their donors are an obvious attempt to scare off those donors, with harassment by everyone from vandals to rioters to the Internal Revenue Service and other government bureaucrats.
Without the right to free speech, none of the other rights is safe. Government officials can get away with all sorts of abuses, if others are not free to talk about those abuses.
Despite Hillary Clinton's claims to be a champion for black people, her political agenda threatens the education of black children, the employment of black adults and the physical safety of black communities.
Mrs. Clinton is on the side of the teachers' unions that want to stop the expansion of charter schools, even though these are among the very few places where black children can get a quality education to prepare them for a better future. Here, as with other issues, her public statements are contradicted by her actions.
No law has done more damage to the employment prospects of young blacks than the federal minimum wage law. But nothing is easier, or more popular, than for some politician to raise the minimum wage — despite the fact that unemployment rates among black young people have skyrocketed to several times what they were before.
You don't get any wage at all when you are unemployed. And if you are young and unemployed, you don't get any job experience to help you rise up the ladder, when you don't get on the ladder.
As for safety in the black community, Hillary Clinton has allied herself with those who demonize the police. The net result has been a sharp increase in the number of blacks killed by other blacks, as criminal elements take control of the streets when the police are not allowed to.
Do you choose a President by talk — or by actions and consequences?
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Monday, October 10, 2016
Whatever Happened to Adam Smith
Here is a link to an article by Matt Ridley. MR is on target.
Here are some excerpts.
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Last week both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump set out their economic policies in set-piece speeches. Mr Trump’s, delivered in Detroit, so far as one could tell from the fractured syntax and the digressions into invective, involves a trade policy designed to punish consumers and protect producers, a recipe for recession. But Mrs Clinton’s, also delivered in Michigan, was even worse. She too wants to pursue the old mercantilist fallacy of restricting imports and helping exports, but while spending more money, unleashing a blizzard of new regulations and doubling the minimum wage.
“Laissez faire, laissez passer” is the most tolerant of all creeds. As Smith insisted, it’s the very opposite of “pro-business” or pro-inequality; the market loves to disrupt complacent cartels. Yet to listen to most of the intelligentsia, you would think that freedom to exchange goods and services – which they prefer to call by the Marxist word “capitalism” – has done terrible harm in the world and needs taming by virtuous government. Further, that small-government philosophy has been terminally discredited, not least by the financial crisis of 2008.
But the financial markets were heavily regulated cartels in the run-up to the crisis. The Insurance giant AIG, whose credit default swaps went belly up, had been, in George Gilder’s words, “supervised and pettifogged by federal, state, local, and global beadles galore, in fifty states and more than a hundred countries”. The explosion in sub-prime lending, far from being the product of deregulation, was the direct result of mandates passed by Congress to increase mortgage lending to low-income and minority people. These mandates were imposed on government–sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), enforced by law and encouraged by two presidents. George W. Bush added regulations to the US economy at the rate of up to 78,000 pages a year.
Why is economic libertarianism out of favour? Unlike welfare-socialism and crony-capitalism, it fails to create vested interests dependent on its subsidies. The whole point of running for president is to be able to hand other people’s money to your favourite causes and generate grateful patronage.Laissez-faire robs you of that treat.
Here are some excerpts.
----------------------------------------------------------
Last week both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump set out their economic policies in set-piece speeches. Mr Trump’s, delivered in Detroit, so far as one could tell from the fractured syntax and the digressions into invective, involves a trade policy designed to punish consumers and protect producers, a recipe for recession. But Mrs Clinton’s, also delivered in Michigan, was even worse. She too wants to pursue the old mercantilist fallacy of restricting imports and helping exports, but while spending more money, unleashing a blizzard of new regulations and doubling the minimum wage.
“Laissez faire, laissez passer” is the most tolerant of all creeds. As Smith insisted, it’s the very opposite of “pro-business” or pro-inequality; the market loves to disrupt complacent cartels. Yet to listen to most of the intelligentsia, you would think that freedom to exchange goods and services – which they prefer to call by the Marxist word “capitalism” – has done terrible harm in the world and needs taming by virtuous government. Further, that small-government philosophy has been terminally discredited, not least by the financial crisis of 2008.
But the financial markets were heavily regulated cartels in the run-up to the crisis. The Insurance giant AIG, whose credit default swaps went belly up, had been, in George Gilder’s words, “supervised and pettifogged by federal, state, local, and global beadles galore, in fifty states and more than a hundred countries”. The explosion in sub-prime lending, far from being the product of deregulation, was the direct result of mandates passed by Congress to increase mortgage lending to low-income and minority people. These mandates were imposed on government–sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), enforced by law and encouraged by two presidents. George W. Bush added regulations to the US economy at the rate of up to 78,000 pages a year.
Why is economic libertarianism out of favour? Unlike welfare-socialism and crony-capitalism, it fails to create vested interests dependent on its subsidies. The whole point of running for president is to be able to hand other people’s money to your favourite causes and generate grateful patronage.Laissez-faire robs you of that treat.
The Purpose of the News Media in the United States
Here is a great comment by Robert Higgs. RH is on target.
Thursday, October 06, 2016
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