Thomas Sowell argues that formal education is not for everyone. By contrast, President Obama thinks everybody should go to college. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum suggested Obama's proposal* is a species of "elitist snobbery". Santorum wasn't being very tactful. But he was probably right -- at least if we believe Tom Sowell. Indeed, a lot of smart people are starting to see that higher education is the next bubble -- a bubble that any "college for all" policy would only blow up more.
You'll forgive the rather harsh assessment of both left-liberalism and conservatism. But in this video, Thomas Sowell really captures a) what's wrong with the liberal left and b) the only respectable form of conservatism.
You've probably heard that women make only $.78 on the dollar relative to men. If this is true, why is this the case? It must be institutionalized sexism. At least that's the story. What else could it be? Men in power positions can't have women making equal pay. It might bring down their logo-phallo-centric old-boy network they taught you about in college.
Because Thomas Sowell is so strong in this, I almost want just to get out of the way. But it is not in my nature. So please allow me a couple of complementary points.
Friedman's example of a world in which everyone is exactly the same is not a "straw man," but a reductio of the egalitarian position. It is a way of asking -- "when will you be content? How much will you have to take from people before your envy and indignation is finally quelled?"
For all the claptrap you hear about "diversity," egalitarians don't celebrate it. True diversity comes in differences among natural assets, circumstances of birth and in other ways. People for whom there is no envy gene are okay with true diversity. We may care about the conditions of the distressed poor, but that is not the same as concern for any so-called "gap."
Sowell absolutely blisters here on the question of process. He succinctly evokes one of the theses of his great work Knowledge and Decisions, which could be one of the most underrated books of political theory.
I'm glad to see Sowell get angry here. This is so typical of the way socialist intellectuals have tried to co-opt the Civil Rights movement and claim it as an offshoot of the socialist revolution. Piven chennels them very well and Sowell is right to call her out on it. Sadly, I think Piven believes the Civil Rights Movement was about wealth redistribution rather than equal rights before the law and an end to Jim Crow.
Friedman closes strong with the discussion of the real problem of "equalized" societies -- rife rent-seeking and special privileges granted by government. These public choice problems create distortions that result not only in gross inequality, but they destructive of liberty. These societies are unfair in the truest sense of fairness.
Piven's critique of private property in this exposes her true colors -- in case anyone was wondering.
We don't generally do "news cycle" pieces here. But in the wake of the recent New York Times // Fox News (Glenn Beck) row, we thought it important to a) let our readers know who Frances Fox Piven is and what she believes, and b) share our classic footage of Milton Friedman's 1980 Free To Choose series.
In this segment, Frances Fox Piven clashes with Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. They are arguing about equality: What is best for society? Equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? The best answer to this question is probably most succinctly captured by Friedman with his famous line delivered in the opening sequence. That said, in the context of the debate, Thomas Sowell is solid on the point about the absurdity of considering "retrospective results at the finish line." (Stay tuned. In tomorrow's clip, the debate continues and Sowell is blistering.)
You'll notice Piven refer to "Marlene Dietrich's legs," an example Friedman uses in a segment of Free To Choose outside this clip. I'm sure Piven considers the reference sexist. Perhaps it is, perhaps not. But I think a sexual reference is apt, not only because attractive legs are attributes many people would like to have, but because the example exposes the absurdity of redistributing natural assets, sexual or otherwise.
In other words, if I am taxed when I choose to apply my natural assets to create value for others in exchange for money, that taxation is in some sense a means of redistributing my natural assets, whether a laJohn Rawls or a la Karl Marx.
Note: Piven refers to Friedman as "Mr." at least twice -- which I think is intended to signal disrespect or worse.
In the 1980s two intellectual traditions died. Both had been elegant in theory. Neither worked in practice. Both had been highly illiberal--leaving no room for the individual. But both captured the imaginations of the intelligencia. And both had been dangerously wrong.
Once dead, these two traditions descended into the Underworld. There they found each other and engaged in unholy acts. The product of that union is with us today -- having climbed from out of the darkness -- first to suckle at the bosom of academe, then later, as an adolescent, it crept into the marbled domes to eat at the taxpayers’ trough.
The first tradition was Behaviorism, which was killed by the ascendancy of cognitive science. The second tradition was Keynesianism, which was killed by the election of Ronald Reagan.
Skinner thought you could tweak people into ideal behaviors. The mind, brain and the genes could simply be cut away in his methodology. To perfect people would be to stimulate them in the appropriate ways. But that required lobotomizing them in a way. The baby that Skinner threw out with the bathwater -- cognitive neuroscience -- has come a long way since Skinner orphaned it. And, though Skinner has been pretty thoroughly discredited by contemporary science since Beyond Freedom and Dignity, strands of his thinking have re-emerged in the work of some behavioral economists.
Where Skinner discarded the mind, brain and genes at the local level, Keynesian turned individuals and their behavior into aggregates and abstractions at the macro level. Sophisticated mathematical models were enough, it seemed, to limn the important aspects of a deterministic economy. Generally, it doesn’t matter if that economy is made up of thinking, feeling, acting individuals with different predispositions. Circumstances of time and place -- individual actions and local knowledge - are not important from the perspective of expert policymakers.
Skeynesian takes the worst of these two dead traditions. And it's thriving. To qualify for appointment in academy or government these days, you have to be willing both to lobotomize and to abstract people. As Thomas Sowell says above, there are rarely any consequences for your actions. Your expertise is not a product of trial, error and refinement out in the real world. Your expertise is a "vision" and you are the "anointed." Your theory's rubber hits the road in places one cannot easily see. And that allows you to hide there behind all that marble, enjoying the fruits of tenure, getting the ear of the powerful, and holding the microphone of minor fame.
I know, I know. We really do have the choicest cuts.
In this exclusive Free To Choose Network archival video, Thomas Sowell delivers a concise-but-powerful message--one I think can be broken down into usable lessons for any politician or activist with good intentions.
First, intentions are not consequences. Indeed, the most well-intentioned legislation can create perverse effects. When Sowell gave this address, the U.S. welfare state underclass was bulging at the seams, and it continued to bulge until the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. (Of course, it hasn't gone away.) Sowell warns us to look at facts about results.
Second, incentives matter. If you pay people merely to subsist, subsist they will. If you could get freebies doing nothing or work for a chance at upward mobility -- what would you do? You or I might work harder. But there are a whole lot of people who would just take the check for doing nothing.
Third, bureaucrats end up just as parasitic as the people they purport to help. Indeed, the learned classes appointed to act as stewards of the poor pay themselves handsomely. This ecosystem of waste and dependence doesn't just go one way. In other words, it becomes a Poverty Empire--a powerful interest group.
It's no wonder David Mamet called Sowell our "greatest contemporary philosopher."
In this clip, Thomas Sowell alludes to the Laffer Curve phenomena. His points seem forever to be lost on those who believe that the government has to raise taxes in order to increase revenues. Of course, these folks are often government officials.
If the government's goal is to increase revenues to the state (which is not necessarily a good thing, but let's just stipulate that it is) the important questions become: What is the rate (or range) of taxation that doesn't create incentives for people to be less productive or to evade (legally or illegally) paying taxes? At the low end of that range, what is the rate at which revenues start to taper off (after all, the tax rate can theoretically be zero)?
Sowell makes a simple point about the progressive tax system that bears repeating: those who are considered "wealthy" earners are often the ones who are finally realizing the fruits of their labor after many years of hard work. That is, once they have reached these tax brackets, they're taxed at a higher rate. If we view tax brackets as rungs on the latter of upward mobility, we can see how progressive taxation punishes productivity. As Sowell reminds us, these are not wealth taxes, but income taxes.
This point should also give us pause as it relates to what entities file as higher earners. Very often these entities are small businesses. In these instances, the tax code makes no distinction between business and personal income. So the success (profitability) of an expanding small business gets taxed more--which is, of course, effectively a tax on growth and job creation.
I realize there is a perennial debate about the above points. But Thomas Sowell's elegant simplicity strengthens his position.
