THE 'EQUALITY' RACKET...by Thomas Sowell

[Lonestar_logic]

[QUOTE

Another internet tough guy.

Yeah, guys like you and ME are a dime a dozen...but the ones from Texas always smell like steer shit.

I smell bacon.

 

[Moonglow]

10 percent of Americans owned slaves and you are a racist dumbass.

Youre a fucking idiot. 10% of Americans were wealthy too during that time. Now its worse.

So? People are wealthy big fucking deal.

I know its hard to read being a convict and all but try reading the OP before you confirm to everyone you are an idiot.

I have read it. I've read a lot of Sowell's work. Why do you hate rich people?

This Texas son of a bitch is a-typical of why the Razorbacks broke-up the SWC back in 1992 and headed to the SEC. Fucking idiotic brain dead piece of steer shit.

Now you know why, Okies can't stand Texans,,and Texass....

 

[Asclepias]

[QUOTE

Another internet tough guy.

Yeah, guys like you and ME are a dime a dozen...but the ones from Texas always smell like steer shit.

I smell bacon.

Take a bath and you wont smell like that.

 

[Dad2three]

Truer words were never spoken...especially by a black man.

The Equality Racket - Thomas Sowell - Page 1

Some time ago, burglars in England scrawled a message on the wall of a home they had looted: "RICH BASTARDS."

Those two words captured the spirit of the politicized vision of equality -- that it was a grievance when someone was better off than themselves.

That, of course, is not the only meaning of equality, but it is the predominant political meaning in practice, where economic "disparities" and "gaps" are automatically treated as "inequities." If one racial or ethnic group has a lower income than another, that is automatically called "discrimination" by many people in politics, the media and academia.

It doesn't matter how much evidence there is that some groups work harder in school, perform better and spend more postgraduate years studying to acquire valuable skills in medicine, science or engineering. If the economic end results are unequal, that is treated as a grievance against those with better outcomes, and a sign of an "unfair" society.

The rhetoric of clever people often confuses the undeniable fact that life is unfair with the claim that a given institution or society is unfair.

Children born into families that raise them with love and with care to see that they acquire knowledge, values and discipline that will make them valuable members of society have far more chances of economic and other success in adulthood than children raised in families that lack these qualities.

Studies show that children whose parents have professional careers speak nearly twice as many words per hour to them as children with working class parents -- and several times as many words per hour as children in families on welfare. There is no way that children from these different backgrounds are going to have equal chances of economic or other success in adulthood.

The fatal fallacy, however, is in collecting statistics on employees at a particular business or other institution, and treating differences in the hiring, pay or promotion of people from different groups as showing that their employer has been discriminating.

Too many gullible people buy the implicit assumption that the unfairness originated where the statistics were collected, which would be an incredible coincidence if it were true.

Worse yet, some people buy the idea that politicians can correct the unfairness of life by cracking down on employers. But, by the time children raised in very different ways reach an employer, the damage has
already been done.


What is a problem for children raised in families and communities that do not prepare them for productive lives can be a bonanza for politicians, lawyers and assorted social messiahs who are ready to lead fierce crusades, if the price is right.

Many in the media and among the intelligentsia are all too ready to go along, in the name of seeking equality. But equality of what?

Equality before the law is a fundamental value in a decent society. But equality of treatment in no way guarantees equality of outcomes.

On the contrary, equality of treatment makes equality of outcomes unlikely, since virtually nobody is equal to somebody else in the whole range of skills and capabilities required in real life. When it comes to performance, the same man may not even be equal to himself on different days, much less at different periods of his life.

What may be a spontaneous confusion among the public at large about the very different meanings of the word "equality" can be a carefully cultivated confusion by politicians, lawyers and others skilled in rhetoric, who can exploit that confusion for their own benefit.

Regardless of the actual causes of different capabilities and rewards in different individuals and groups, political crusades require a villain to attack -- a villain far removed from the voter or the voter's family or community. Lawyers must likewise have a villain to sue. The media and the intelligentsia are also attracted to crusades against the forces of evil.

But whether as a crusade or a racket, a confused conception of equality is a formula for never-ending strife that can tear a whole society apart -- and has already done so in many countries.

If it wasn't for false premises, distortion or LIES, the right would have NOTHING to hang their hats on

Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults




In 1980 the top 1% earned 8.5% of total income. In 2007 they earned 23%.

In 1980 the bottom 90% earned 68% of total income. In 2007 they earned 53%.

Summary of Latest Federal Income Tax Data Tax Foundation

GOV'T POLICY MATTERS !!!

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich
The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agenda of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent


How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich Rolling Stone

Look! Another useless liberal chart from the N.Y. Times...

I get it Buba, you hate factual data. lol

 

[Porker]

Now you know why, Okies can't stand Texans,,and Texass....

You think I haven't know that for the last 65 years or so? We played those SoBs since 1914, about the time OU became chicken shits and dropped out of the same conference with the steers (neutered bovines).

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Libertarianism is naïve, reactionary, and utopian – it's a ridiculous and discredited political philosophy, and Sowell is just as ridiculous and discredited.

 

[squeeze berry]

Libertarianism is naïve, reactionary, and utopian – it's a ridiculous and discredited political philosophy, and Sowell is just as ridiculous and discredited.

good then you can discredit him

waiting .........................

 

[Moonglow]

Libertarianism is naïve, reactionary, and utopian – it's a ridiculous and discredited political philosophy, and Sowell is just as ridiculous and discredited.

good then you can discredit him

waiting .........................

He speaks slow...

 

[Dad2three]

Libertarianism is naïve, reactionary, and utopian – it's a ridiculous and discredited political philosophy, and Sowell is just as ridiculous and discredited.

good then you can discredit him

waiting .........................

For those who don’t know him, Thomas Sowell (born 1930) is an American economist, retired professor, social critic, political commentator, author, and lunatic. After seeing his vile, depraved weekly columns for the past four years I truly believe he belongs in an institution – which is just where he is. Since 1980, Sowell has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The Hoover Institution, like the Heritage Foundation and countless others, is basically a welfare program for Right Wing Op-Ed writers. Wealthy donors give people like Sowell the financial freedom to rail against entitlement programs and rewrite history, particularly the Great Depression. Consequently, they are not bound by prickly things like facts or editors or journalistic ethics.

But before we delve into all things Nazi, let me acquaint you with some of Thomas Sowell’s other bat guano droppings on a host of topics, both historical and contemporary. How this crackpot is taken seriously is more of a mystery to me than Stonehenge or ‘Cop Rock’.

Dig. In a column called “Random Thoughts”, Sowell wrote of FDR and asked incredulously: “How can a President of the United States be re-elected in a landslide after four years when unemployment never fell below 15% for even one month during his first term?”

Good one, Tommy.

Let’s see if we can unravel this enigma, shall we? OK.

First, notice how Sowell doesn’t even bother to mention that U.S. was in the throes of that little jam known as the Great Depression, and had been since 1929. Note, too, how Sowell doesn’t say what the unemployment rate was when the great Herbert Hoover left office and the awful Franklin Roosevelt took office. In 1933, when FDR became President the national unemployment rate was Twenty-Five Percent! One quarter of the nation was out of work. Maybe Tommy forgot this little fact because in 1933 he was only 3 years old. Yeah, that must be it. (The Meghan McCain Defense.)

Now, during the next four years–the same four years cited by Sowell–the national unemployment rate went from 25% to 16.9%. Funny how he doesn’t tell you this, isn’t it?

Here’s the year by year break down for those of you playing at home:

1933: 25%

1934: 21.7%

1935: 20.1%

1936: 16.9%

So, unemployment fell every year during the first four years of FDR’s first term. It dropped seven points during that period. This would be like President Obama taking office with unemployment at 12% and it falling to 5% by the end of his first term. You think he would be re-elected? And let’s not forget FDR’s rival in the 1936 election; Alf Landon, a man who ran on repealing Social Security, which had just been passed the year before, no thanks to the GOP. Sound familiar?


Shame on you, Thomas Sowell. Is your argument about FDR’s re-election so flimsy that you’re afraid to tell your readers what the unemployment rate was when he took office? I know, as John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things”.

Thomas Sowell Idiot Emeritus Tomfoolery

 

[Dad2three]

Libertarianism is naïve, reactionary, and utopian – it's a ridiculous and discredited political philosophy, and Sowell is just as ridiculous and discredited.

good then you can discredit him

waiting .........................

Thomas Sowell's Heartwarming Christmas Message: President Obama = Jim Jones; Voters=Jones' Followers

Thomas Sowell is supposedly one of the rights' leading intellectuals, having attended Harvard, Columbia and U. of Chicago and then taught at Cornell, Rutgers, Amherst, Brandeis and UCLA. Well, so is George Will.

But Sowell makes George Will look like Barney Frank. Sowell's Christmas column in Town Hall is titled On Christmas: Liberals are by no means Liberal. (Link is to Town Hall so click at your own risk.) So, Tom why aren't Liberals liberal?

The annual outbursts of intolerance toward any display of traditional Christmas scenes, or even daring to call a Christmas tree by its name, show that today's liberals are by no means liberal. Behind the mist of their lofty words, the totalitarian mindset shows through. (h/t Tom Hilton at No More Mister Nice Blog.)


Yes. The War on Christmas proves that we are really fascists.

As for the President:

If someone wrote a novel about a man who was raised from childhood to resent the successful and despise the basic values of America -- and who then went on to become President of the United States -- that novel would be considered too unbelievable, even for a work of fiction. Yet that is what has happened in real life.
. . .

After watching a documentary about the tragic story of Jonestown, I was struck by the utterly unthinking way that so many people put themselves completely at the mercy of a glib and warped man, who led them to degradation and destruction. And I could not help thinking of the parallel with the way we put a glib and warped man in the White House.

OK, let's sum up: Liberals are fascists because they object to any display of xmas scenes (news to me, Tom)

President Obama "despises" the basic American values and is a "glib and warped man."


People who voted for President Obama are just like the followers of Jim Jones.

So there you have it. Thomas Sowell settles down beside the fire on December 24, enveloped in the warmth of the Holiday (oops) Christmas season, and writes one of the most vile columns I've ever seen.

 

[Dad2three]

Libertarianism is naïve, reactionary, and utopian – it's a ridiculous and discredited political philosophy, and Sowell is just as ridiculous and discredited.

good then you can discredit him

waiting .........................

Listening To A Liar: A Response to Thomas Sowell

Dear Thomas Sowell,

I’d call you a liar but mom says I shouldn’t cast stones or darts, so I won’t, yet. When I read your essay “Listening To A Liar”, which was published on RealClearPolitics.com, I thought your pants were on fire. I listened to you Mr. Sowell and all I heard were jingle bells. Mom says never smackdown anyone who has a PhD, even if they’re not smarter than you or just trying to be controversial, but she’s got a PhD too yet she’s totally bonkers and not credible at all. I make my own decisions.

In any case, I get the sense you, Dear Thomas, are hellbent on fanning the flames of fear and hypocrisy as you stoop down to your cable television logic. I must admit, up front, you have the right to your own opinion, but you don’t have the right to your own logic. I want to assure you this is not an attack on your freedom of speech, but you will probably see it otherwise. Instead, I would like to address 3 points: your ad hominem attack on Barack Obama’s character, your total disregard for facts relevant to the healthcare debate, and your relentless assault on intellectualism in general.

First, your essay is/was, really and clearly, about politics and not substance, but that’s still an understatement. Mom says you made an ad hominem argument...

Listening To A Liar A Response to Thomas Sowell

 

[Dad2three]

Libertarianism is naïve, reactionary, and utopian – it's a ridiculous and discredited political philosophy, and Sowell is just as ridiculous and discredited.

good then you can discredit him

waiting .........................

Careful who you Call a Liar, Thomas Sowell


“Lie” is a broad term, and its broadness can sometimes create the space both for people to mislead while not self-identifying as “liars,” and, on the other hand, for people to brand others as “liars” when they really mean only “holds a view I don’t think is accurate.” Given his Rock Star Academic reputation, Thomas Sowell ought to be able to understand the difference. The slanderous screed he published at National Review today suggests either that he does not understand it, or that he himself is a liar of the first order.

First of all, when you are writing under the heading, “Republicans must be able to thoroughly discredit liberal lies,” you ought to come prepared with several clear examples of liberal lies. If liberals are such inveterate, incorrigible liars, this should not be difficult. Just list, say, the top 5 biggest, most obvious falsehoods you hear most frequently from liberals. In support of his thesis about liberal “lying,” Sowell cites a whopping total of one: the question of whether or not minimum wage laws (MWL) are good or bad public policy, especially for black teenagers. Sowell quotes no “liberal” saying anything in particular about MWL or their effects. Sowell simply assigns “liberals” the “MWL-good” position, and “conservatives” the “MWL-bad,” and on this basis labels liberals “liars” for their support for MWL.

Even if we were to award Sowell a “W” on this point, and conclude that conservatives are 100% correct that minimum wage policies are always, everywhere damaging public policy, we would be forced to conclude that he has not supported his thesis: that liberals are liars and Republicans need to do a better job of explaining that.

But about this supposed “lie”: how, exactly, does it meet the definition of a “lie”? Is there a factual matter that “liberals” have demonstrably misrepresented? Sowell asserts that minimum wage laws “create massive unemployment among black teenagers,” and presents some evidence (albeit without any numbers or context) that black teenage unemployment was at its lowest “in the 1940s, when inflation virtually repealed the minimum-wage law passed in 1938….” Two things to note: (1) Even if we give Sowell the benefit of the doubt regarding his assertions about unemployment levels in the 1940s, he has at most demonstrated correlation, not causation (and in fact, even this depends on the debatable premise that inflation had “effectively repealed” the minimum wage law; there was a minimum wage during the period Sowell is describing!); and (2) Even if there were conclusive evidence that there is not only a correlation, but in fact a causal relationship between MWL and higher unemployment, that still wouldn’t be decisive in the question of whether MWL are on balance good or bad public policy.

Conservatives tend to speak of MWL and unemployment as though any job, no matter the conditions or the pay, is preferable to no job...


Careful who you Call a Liar Thomas Sowell - The Bruzzer - Open Salon

 

[Uncensored2008]

"The Equality Racket - Thomas Sowell"

You've got to be kidding.

Sowell's errant libertarian nonsense has long been exposed to be false.

No Saul, it sure hasn't.

You're just a petty bigot lacking the intellect to grasp Sowell.

 

[Dad2three]

Libertarianism is naïve, reactionary, and utopian – it's a ridiculous and discredited political philosophy, and Sowell is just as ridiculous and discredited.

good then you can discredit him

waiting .........................

Sowell simply regurgitates the same debunked supply side rubbish that failed the Bush administration, failed the Reagan administration, caused two recessions and the great depression.Why should anyone care what a discredited partisan ivory tower academic like Sowell thinks?

 

[Uncensored2008]

How does a fully functioning, thinking (going out on a limb assuming) adult allow an anonymous stranger on the Internet to "turn them" into anything?

Your own tendencies and thought processes were likely already in place.

Saul Goodman (C Clayton) is an utter moron. He is not capable of presenting and defending an argument. He actually falls a rung below Asslips on the "worthless clown" ladder.

Dr. Sowell makes many good points, which Saul fails to address, much less counter. I assume Asslips will savage Dr. Sowell as a racist pile of shit like him is wont to do.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Listening To A Liar: A Response to Thomas Sowell

Dear Thomas Sowell,

I’d call you a liar but mom says I shouldn’t cast stones or darts, so I won’t, yet. When I read your essay “Listening To A Liar”, which was published on RealClearPolitics.com, I thought your pants were on fire. I listened to you Mr. Sowell and all I heard were jingle bells. Mom says never smackdown anyone who has a PhD, even if they’re not smarter than you or just trying to be controversial, but she’s got a PhD too yet she’s totally bonkers and not credible at all. I make my own decisions.

In any case, I get the sense you, Dear Thomas, are hellbent on fanning the flames of fear and hypocrisy as you stoop down to your cable television logic. I must admit, up front, you have the right to your own opinion, but you don’t have the right to your own logic. I want to assure you this is not an attack on your freedom of speech, but you will probably see it otherwise. Instead, I would like to address 3 points: your ad hominem attack on Barack Obama’s character, your total disregard for facts relevant to the healthcare debate, and your relentless assault on intellectualism in general.

First, your essay is/was, really and clearly, about politics and not substance, but that’s still an understatement. Mom says you made an ad hominem argument...

Listening To A Liar A Response to Thomas Sowell

Oh look, Dumb2Three posted hate - from a hate site...

How worthless.

 

[Asclepias]

How does a fully functioning, thinking (going out on a limb assuming) adult allow an anonymous stranger on the Internet to "turn them" into anything?

Your own tendencies and thought processes were likely already in place.

Saul Goodman (C Clayton) is an utter moron. He is not capable of presenting and defending an argument. He actually falls a rung below Asslips on the "worthless clown" ladder.

Dr. Sowell makes many good points, which Saul fails to address, much less counter. I assume Asslips will savage Dr. Sowell as a racist pile of shit like him is wont to do.

I dont know much about Sowell. However, since you think he is credible I am inclined to believe he must be the same type of person that attracts idiots. To me that means when he starts talking I will most likely tune him out the moment he sets off my BS alarm. Sort of how I deal with your posts. What were you saying again?

 

[Uncensored2008]

I dont know much about Sowell. However, since you think he is credible I am inclined to believe he must be the same type of person that attracts idiots. To me that means when he starts talking I will most likely tune him out the moment he sets off my BS alarm. Sort of how I deal with your posts. What were you saying again?

Yes, I can see where you would know nothing about a world renowned economist who is heralded by academia as top in his profession. Oh, and who happens to be black.

 

[Asclepias]

I dont know much about Sowell. However, since you think he is credible I am inclined to believe he must be the same type of person that attracts idiots. To me that means when he starts talking I will most likely tune him out the moment he sets off my BS alarm. Sort of how I deal with your posts. What were you saying again?

Yes, I can see where you would know nothing about a world renowned economist who is heralded by academia as top in his profession. Oh, and who happens to be black.

You evidently agree with him There is no way he has anything intelligent to say if you like him. i dont care if he is polka dot.

 

[Dad2three]

I dont know much about Sowell. However, since you think he is credible I am inclined to believe he must be the same type of person that attracts idiots. To me that means when he starts talking I will most likely tune him out the moment he sets off my BS alarm. Sort of how I deal with your posts. What were you saying again?

Yes, I can see where you would know nothing about a world renowned economist who is heralded by academia as top in his profession. Oh, and who happens to be black.

PERHAPS he should stick with economics and stay of the lies, distortions and social commentary? lol

Sowell earns a good living by expounding silly, unsupportable, poorly conceived “ideas” that appeal to lunatic right-wingers and make everyone else’s heads explode.