Sunday, September 6, 2015

A Black Economist on the First 100 Years After Slavery and the Last 30 Years of the Welfare State

Thomas Sowell is out with a new book, Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective. He discussed parts of the book with WSJ:
“One of the things I try to do in the book is to distinguish between what might be the legacy of slavery, and what’s the legacy of the welfare state. If you look at the first 100 years after slavery, black communities were a lot safer. People were a lot more decent. But then you look 30 years after the 1960s revolution, and you see this palpable retrogression—of which I think the key one is the growth of the single-parent family.”

Mr. Sowell says he cannot remember ever hearing a gunshot when he was growing up in Harlem, and he used to sleep on the fire escape to beat the summer heat. He cites changes in black enrollment at New York City’s highly competitive Stuyvesant High School, which he attended. “In 2012, blacks were 1.2% of the students at Stuyvesant,” he says. “Thirty-three years earlier, they were 12%.”

Here’s the point: Does anyone believe that racism and the legacy of slavery are stronger today than in the 1970s—or for that matter in 1945, when Mr. Sowell enrolled at Stuyvesant? “It’s not a question of the disproportion between blacks and whites, or Asians, but the disproportion between blacks of today and blacks of the previous generation,” he says. “And that’s what’s scary.”

He offers another statistic: “For every year from 1994 to the present, black married couples have had a poverty rate in single digits,” Mr. Sowell says. “Those people who have not followed the culture—the ghetto culture—are doing fine.”

So how can the case for reform be made? Let’s say the Republican presidential nominee has a speech lined up at the historically black Howard University. What should the candidate say?

Mr. Sowell says he should tell the audience that “one of the worst things for blacks is the minimum wage.
 -RW

8 comments:

  1. Govt is doing too much to help black people. They would be so much better off if govt did nothing to help them. Get rid of the Civil Rights Act for starters. Blacks would be better off if the market rather than govt policed discrimination.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sowell is right the ghetto culture is disgusting. I'm neither white or black but as I got to my mid-20s I realized why my parents moved me out of NYC.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Every one should also read Hazlitt's Man vs. the Welfare State. It is free at Mises.org on PDF.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Everyone knows that the welfare state is destroying ... has destroyed ... the black family and economic opportunities for black people; especially black men. They just don't care. This has never been about helping black families and communities become prosperous and self-sufficient. It has always been to benefit the (mainly white) bureaucratic class.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's funny how in the conversations about the welfare state and blacks, black people are presented as essentially having no agency. White liberals are 'doing this' to blacks despite the fact that the majority of black voters vote for these things themselves. Furthermore the majority of white Americans vote republican and would probably be for rolling back if not doing away with welfare but it's politically impossible because they're outvoted by non-whites thanks to the mass immigration since 1965. And also the media that routinely portrays white Americans who are in favor of things like getting rid of welfare as 'racist' is disproportionately, though not exclusively, owned and run by Jews. That is, people of Semitic/Middle Eastern ancestry rather than Europe. And yet somehow the whole situation becomes the fault of the 'white bureaucratic class'. White gentiles are the only group who it is completely acceptable and politically correct to beat up on, no matter what side of the political spectrum you're on. If there's one thing for sure no matter what, if the issue involves race you can blame whites.

      Delete
    2. As Laurence Vance has reported over the years conservatives had power during the Reagan revolution, the Republican Revolution and through most of the Bush years yet they did nothing about the welfare state.

      Delete
  5. The other sidenof the coin is the war on drugs. How many black families have been broken apart by that? Sowell is sharp, but he is oft-blinded by his conservative sensabilities. He'd afraid of hippies and terrorists and communists, while he's far mire likely to be killed by a cop. Read what he had finest about Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012. The guy endorsed. Newt Gingrich for Gods sake .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The day conservatives turn on the drug war will the be day liberals embrace the free market.

      Delete