Author challenges the idea that all problems that plague society can be “solved” or need “solutions” by government. Disputes 1-cause answers as relates to causation of World problems. Argues against trying to force people from the projects into affordable housing in middle class neighborhoods, whose often-times black residents are the most vocal opponents, who worked hard to get out of the ghetto, and get their families away from the negative elements. There are often many “prerequisites” to be extremely successful at something, and people can be close to having them all, but not all. “Given multiple prerequisites for many human endeavors, we should not be surprised if economic or social advances are not evenly or randomly distributed among individuals, groups, institutions, or nations at any given time.” There is no control for how people are raised, and this vastly impacts how people turn out as adults. “People from different social backgrounds may also have different goals and priorities – a possibility paid little or no attention in many studies that measures how much opportunity there is by how much upward movement takes place, as if everyone is equally striving to move up.” Not everyone wants the same thing. “Does anyone seriously believe that Asian American youngsters have much interest in playing basketball as black youngsters have? Or does anyone doubt that the Asian youngsters' lesser interest in basketball may have something to do with the dearth of Asian Americans among professional basketball players?” Points to critical moments in history as prerequisites that explain why civilizations have declined, such as China, that forbade overseas exploring in 1433, reducing the impact of outside societies on China, and thus allowing their rate of progress to slow. The rulers of China “forfeited the country’s preeminence in the world.” “Nothing is easier to find than sins among human beings, but to automatically make those sins the sole, or even primary cause of different outcomes among different peoples is to ignore many other reasons for those disparities.” “Two of the monumental catastrophes of the twentieth century – Nazism and Communism – led to the slaughter of millions of human beings, in the name of either ridding the world of the burden of ‘inferior” races or ridding the world of ‘exploiters’ responsible for the poverty of the exploited. While each of these beliefs might have been testable hypotheses, their greatest political triumphs came as dogmas placed beyond the reach of evidence or logic.” Points to costs and who pays them as it relates to discrimination – which is not limited to money costs. “People who would never walk through a particular neighborhood at night, or perhaps not even in broad daylight, may nevertheless be indignant at banks that engage in “redlining” – that is, putting a whole neighborhood off-limits as a place to invest their depositors’ money. The observers’ own ‘redlining’ in their choice of where to walk may never be seen by them as a different example of the same principle.” Points to criminal background checks as something that have actually helped young black people gain employment, as people then know they are not criminals, and are more willing to hire them. Author points out that intentions, even bad ones, do not necessarily translate into bad outcomes, despite how academic scholars may usually reason. Decisions in academia are insulated from feedback, as are things that happen in government oftentimes (bad “processes” Sowell 1980). The people making the decisions do not bear any costs, as in a market situation. Points to minimum wages as something that hurt minorities in particular, and that in the 1940s when there was effectively no minimum wage, that there was little difference in the unemployment rate between white and black teens. When there is an excess of people looking for a job, it is the case that it becomes easier for people to discriminate against those they are prejudiced against. “It may well be that the racial attitudes and beliefs held by white landlords and realtors in early twentieth-century Harlem were more hostile to blacks than the attitudes and beliefs of white residents and officials in late twentieth-century San Francisco and other coastal California areas. But, in terms of end results, the actions of the former failed to keep blacks out of Harlem, while the actions of the latter drove out of San Francisco half the blacks already living in that city. Costs matter.” Because housing has not been allowed to be built in the Bay Area for myriad reasons, preserving neighborhoods, the environment, etc. “Attitudes and beliefs, however strongly held or loudly proclaimed, do not automatically translate into end results—into ‘what emerges’” (Engels). Points to an anecdote from black professor Wilson who would put on a tie, and then be respected by people, but would be looked at suspiciously if he was wearing sweatpants. Thus, are those people racists, or are they fearing for their own safety? “Successful charter schools give a glimpse of what can be accomplished by black children in low-income ghettos when self-sorting frees them from the disruptions and violence of unruly classmates, just a small number of whom can prevent a whole class from getting a decent education.’ Thus, a similar line of reasoning here from DeBoer, which is that the United States has a small percentage of students who do really really badly, and this brings down the averages, but also hurts those who actually want to try to learn. While DeBoer chastises charter schools, however, Sowell does not. Questions whether anti-discrimination laws are a net positive or a net negative, with companies sometimes choosing to locate places without black people to avoid appearing like they discriminate. Statistics on “household income” can be deliberately misleading, similar to how “affordable housing” works. When two people live together, they are a household, but when one can afford to survive on their own, they become a second household, one that has lower household income than the previous one household that had two incomes combined. Thus, one must be careful at the composition of who’s in the households when analyzing household income. Points out that the “top 20%” of households have many more people in them per household than the “bottom 20%”. Also points out that most people do not stay in the same income quintile from one decade to the next, thus, “the poor” and “the rich” are not time-enduring. This same thing applies to the “top 400” even from year to year, which means that in the course of a decade, there are actually thousands of people who fell into the “top 400.” Capital gains income gets booked all in one year, even though it happened over a much longer period of time, oftentimes. “The very possibilitythat tax rates and tax revenues can move in opposite directions has seldom been mentioned in the media – a crucial error of omission.” Says that this has often times been the case, in the 1920s and also under Bush Jr. “In the United States federal agencies have pressured and threatened schools where statistics show a disciplining of black male students at rates that are disproportionate to the disciplining of other students. The invisible fallacy in the background trumps the most blatant and disastrous realities right in front of our eyes.” If black children are the ones causing problems, they should be disciplined. Says that murder rates, venereal disease, and teenage pregnancy were all on the decline up until the 60s, when the rates rebounded up. Points to language as a practical issue – knowledge comes in only so many languages. In the Czech Republic, they used to learn in German, because that was the language all the knowledge was in. Symbolic and ideological issues ought to yield to practical ones – there are no textbooks in “Black English” to learn from. “Group spokesmen, activists, or ‘leaders’ may be preoccupied with languages as badges of cultural identity, but cultures exist to serve human beings. Human beings do not exist to preserve cultures, or to preserve a socially isolated constituency for the benefit of ‘leaders.’” “Poverty” can be whatever government statistics say it is – it can be one thing to one person, and another to different people. Poverty line in the US could be middle class in Mexico. “How people with difficulty keeping food on the table can be overweight, even more often than other Americans, is a mystery he did not explain. Words trumped realities.” Points out that human capital cannot be stolen, only physical capital, via “redistribution.” Thus, human capital flight is a real risk, if it gets bad enough for the people who create the economy.
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