art credit: blog.press.princeton.edu
Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite columnists, not the least
because of his ability to explain economics in ways that anyone can understand.
He writes in plain English, marshals his facts, and it’s all but impossible to
find a logic lapse in any of his arguments. While I may disagree with him on this or that, I admire him and respect his opinion. Always. So I am extracting his column from a
recent Front Page column on “Essential
Reads For The 2016 Election:
Books every American should be familiar with before voting this
November”:
If
you are concerned about issues involved when some people want to expand the
welfare state and others want to contract it, then one of the most relevant and
insightful books is "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple. It
was not written this year and is not even about the United States, much less
our current presidential or other candidates.
What
makes "Life at the Bottom" especially relevant and valuable is that
it is about the actual consequences of the welfare state in England — which are
remarkably similar to the consequences in the United States.
Many
Americans may find it easier to think straight about what happens, when it is
in a country where the welfare recipients are overwhelmingly whites, so that
their behavior cannot be explained away by "a legacy of slavery" or
"institutional racism," or other such evasions of facts in the United
States.
As
Dr. Dalrymple says: "It will come as a surprise to American readers,
perhaps, to learn that the majority of the British underclass is white, and
that it demonstrates all the same social pathology as the black underclass in
America — for very similar reasons, of course." That reason is the welfare
state, and the attitudes and behavior it promotes and subsidizes.
Another
and very different example of the welfare state's actual consequences is
"The New Trail of Tears" by Naomi Schaefer Riley. It is a painful but
eye-opening account of life on American Indian reservations.
People
on those reservations have been taken care of by the federal government for
more than a hundred years. They have lived in a welfare state longer than any
other minority in America. What have been the consequences?
One
consequence is that they have lower incomes than any other minority — including
other American Indians, who do not live on reservations, and who are doing far
better on their own.
The
economic plight of people on the reservations is by no means the worst of it.
The social problems are heart-breaking. As just one example, the leading cause
of death, among American Indian boys from 10 to 14 years of age, is suicide.
As
regards black Americans, there is much talk about the role of police. If you
want a book that cuts through the rhetoric and confusion, and deals with hard
facts, then "The War on Cops" by Heather Mac Donald does precisely
that.
On
racial issues in general, the best economic survey is "Race and
Economics" by Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University. Just
the table on page 35, showing unemployment rates among black and white
teenagers, going all the way back to 1948, should demolish all the rhetoric and
spin that tries to conceal the deadly effects of minimum wage laws on
unemployment among black teenagers.
The
rest of Sowell's column is here. The authors cited by Sowell are also regular
contributors to print and online sources. So if book-length discussions are too
time-consuming for a busy schedule, you can access columns by Dalrymple on welfare and poverty here,
Williams on the consequences of minimum wages here, and McDonald on the war on cops here. And here’s a review of McDonald’s book on
cops.
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