The Mythology of Thomas Sowell

[kalm]

No.

76,000,00 million votes

4 Trump flags

Typical Hysterical TDS BS

Excuse me?

I’m not the one defending questionable usage of old glory in the name of a cult leader. Those people are clearly repressed, attention demanding freaks. They should get their one day per year to celebrate their leader. That’s more than generous.

[Caribbean Hen]

76,000,00 million votes

4 Trump flags

Typical Hysterical TDS BS

Excuse me?

I’m not the one defending questionable usage of old glory in the name of a cult leader. Those people are clearly repressed, attention demanding freaks. They should get their one day per year to celebrate their leader. That’s more than generous.

You’re making stuff up again and besides, I would bet old glory has never been displayed in your yard or the front of your house

The only ones talking about Trump flags are the ones with the Donald derangement syndrome and maybe somebody has a flag for that illness

[UNI88]

No.

76,000,00 million votes

4 Trump flags

Typical Hysterical TDS BS

Hysterical BS is being a sensitive snowflake over Pride Month, flags and the LGBTQ+ community being publicly proud about who they are and then crying tDS when it's compared to MAQA yahoos with their flags.

[Caribbean Hen]

“Many in the media, and among the intelligentsia in general, see themselves as citizens of the world. They see the United States as just the country that happens to be lucky enough to be graced by their presence.”

Sowell on Americas who hate it

https://www.recordnet.com/story/opinion ... 698289007/

[kalm]

A couple of examples from an article about Sowell’s sophistry and intellectually dishonest laziness.

Each of these claims, as well as the argument as a whole, are riddled with problems of argumentative logic and empirical evidence. In many cases even just one of them would tank the entire enterprise; the sum of all of them is utterly damning.

Discrimination and Disparities
Sowell is correct that intentional racial discrimination (according to Sowell’s classification, Discrimination 1b and 2) at a given juncture — say, racial discrimination by an employer — cannot fully explain Black-White racial disparities in economic outcomes. It does not follow, however, that therefore the remaining racial disparity not explained by acute racial discrimination is not caused by racism in society. Sowell concludes that, for instance, employers and realtors and bankers will make choices about hiring or real estate or loans based on the relevant qualities the individual brings to the table, such as education, credit scores, criminal or eviction history, and so on (this is what he calls Discrimination 1a). People have differences in the quantity and quality of these they can bring to the table, and thus it is perfectly reasonable to find inequalities in economic outcomes.

What is not answered by this, however, is why these inequalities would be unevenly distributed by race. It’s certainly not a realtor’s fault that there is a Black-White disparity in credit score, but that difference is not a natural fact of the universe. I and most other social scientists believe that there is inherited inequality from the entire history of American social life that at least in part accounts for why the distribution of these sorts of things are unequal by race. The literature on inherited racial inequalities in sociology, economics, and history is simply massive and cannot be hand-waved away. As it stands, Sowell’s argument on this point is hopelessly endogenous.

This argument is also wrapped up with the claim that any government intervention intended to reduce disparities will result in unintended consequences that will most likely make things worse for the people you’re trying to help. This is, in the terms of Albert Hirschman, the “perversity thesis” — the common conservative argument that whatever change you want to implement in society will actually do the opposite of what you want it to do. The reason why this rhetorical move has power is because it seems intuitively true, and sometimes policies do have consequences of this kind. But it simply does not logically follow from the example that some such policies backfired that any such policy inevitably will.

Black Rednecks
Where Sowell thinks underlying disparities originate from, rather than inherited inequality, is inherited culture. This argument is perhaps one of the worst ones Sowell makes and betrays an unbelievable historical and social-scientific ineptitude. The basics of his claim is that British Americans introduced “redneck” culture into the South prior to the Civil War, this culture was transmitted to Black people, and that it was brought to Northern cities with Black migrants. This, he says, explains why Black people commit so much crime and have such high rates of poverty, single motherhood, and unemployment.

This argument is rife with historical and conceptual problems. For instance, if “redneck” culture accompanying Black migrants to Northern cities was the cause of increases in crime in those cities, why did homicide rates increase after the second wave of the Great Migration, but not the first? Why wasn’t there a similar racial disparity in crime in the South, where Black people were moving to cities from? Why did crime rates only begin to rise in the 1960s (at the same time low-skilled Black unemployment rates began to soar)? Why did the rise in single parenthood that coincided with the rise in crime and unemployment wait until some 20 years after the second wave of the Great Migration to take effect if we’re to believe that this is all caused by “redneck” culture, passed along in the 18th and 19th century and not taking full effect until the second half of the 20th?
Sowell’s theory of culture is also incredibly bizarre. To read his argument, you would imagine culture to be a free-floating thing, unaffected by material circumstance, passed unilaterally from one group to another and retained, unchanged, until you strip it off and put on a new one. Culture does not work that way. At the very least, culture adapts to material circumstance, especially culture regarding how one should behave in order to be successful in life. If your group is presented with a series of poor economic chances in historical succession culminating with the segregation into neighborhoods of concentrated unemployment following de-industrialization, it would be perfectly rational that your group would develop a culture adapted to that economic environment. There is little reason to believe Sowell’s theory of unchanged cultural traits passing unilaterally to a population, while the theory of cultural adaptation to material circumstances has much to recommend it given the actual historical record.

The Welfare State
I’ve previously written an entire post about this argument of Sowell’s — that the welfare state helped create the behavioral pathologies that maintain Black-White inequality. There simply is not a lot of evidence for this, and even where it may have merit — a welfare cliff when you get married is bad — it cannot go the whole way to explaining the persistence of these disparities. On the other hand, the historical record of mass Black migration to Northern cities followed by housing discrimination and de-industrialization has immense explanatory power here, and Sowell basically doesn’t acknowledge that possibility.

I want to briefly point out that this is exactly the sort of adaptive theory of culture and behavior that Sowell ignores when it’s not convenient to his underlying ideological assumptions. Why would it be that Black culture would adapt to the material conditions of the welfare state but not the material conditions of, say, housing discrimination and deindustrialization leading to unemployment? The rational conclusion is that Sowell wants to downplay the history of material deprivation and inequality that led to the behaviors he wants to condemn and magnify the role welfare had to play in those behaviors because he has an ideological predisposition to oppose welfare, being a Chicago-school libertarian economist.

Hack.

[Bobcat]

“Many in the media, and among the intelligentsia in general, see themselves as citizens of the world. They see the United States as just the country that happens to be lucky enough to be graced by their presence.”

Sowell on Americas who hate it

https://www.recordnet.com/story/opinion ... 698289007/

So true, and explains a few people in here, very well

[Caribbean Hen]

“Many in the media, and among the intelligentsia in general, see themselves as citizens of the world. They see the United States as just the country that happens to be lucky enough to be graced by their presence.”

Sowell on Americas who hate it

https://www.recordnet.com/story/opinion ... 698289007/

So true, and explains a few people in here, very well

Yes Sir it really does

[UNI88]

So true, and explains a few people in here, very well

Yes Sir it really does

Believing America isn't great and needs to be made great again could be construed as hating America.

A real patriot believes America is great and will continue to be great regardless of which buffoon occupies the White House.

[kalm]

Yes Sir it really does

Believing America isn't great and needs to be made great again could be construed as hating America.

A real patriot believes America is great and will continue to be great regardless of which buffoon occupies the White House.

This.

And we have many tremendously large warts and self inflicted wounds.

Our shit stinks too but I love where I live.

[Bobcat]

I love it when communist try and define what being a patriot is. Same thing on fan message boards, "youre not a good fan" WTF would you know about it. Honest people criticize and look at all the angles.

America is in debt
Education sucks
Taxes are out of control
Little manufacturing
No energy agenda
Horrible foreign policy
Wide open borders
Drugs flowing in from everywhere

Yeah its great, Its embarrassing and I have no idea how anyone can be proud of the current state of this country.

Thank god Daddys home and this mess is gonna get cleaned up fast.

[UNI88]

I love it when communist try and define what being a patriot is. Same thing on fan message boards, "youre not a good fan" WTF would you know about it. Honest people criticize and look at all the angles.

America is in debt
Education sucks
Taxes are out of control
Little manufacturing
No energy agenda
Horrible foreign policy
Wide open borders
Drugs flowing in from everywhere

Yeah its great, Its embarrassing and I have no idea how anyone can be proud of the current state of this country.

Thank god Daddys home and this mess is gonna get cleaned up fast.

I didn't realiZe sowell was a communist.

[Caribbean Hen]

I love it when communist try and define what being a patriot is. Same thing on fan message boards, "youre not a good fan" WTF would you know about it. Honest people criticize and look at all the angles.

America is in debt
Education sucks
Taxes are out of control
Little manufacturing
No energy agenda
Horrible foreign policy
Wide open borders
Drugs flowing in from everywhere

Yeah its great, Its embarrassing and I have no idea how anyone can be proud of the current state of this country.

Thank god Daddys home and this mess is gonna get cleaned up fast.

I didn't realiZe sowell was a communist.

He admitted he was a Marxist in his early years but he learned quick

[UNI88]

I didn't realiZe sowell was a communist.

He admitted he was a Marxist in his early years but he learned quick

BobsKKKat called him a communist like he still is.

[GannonFan]

I love it when communist try and define what being a patriot is. Same thing on fan message boards, "youre not a good fan" WTF would you know about it. Honest people criticize and look at all the angles.

America is in debt
Education sucks
Taxes are out of control
Little manufacturing
No energy agenda
Horrible foreign policy
Wide open borders
Drugs flowing in from everywhere

Yeah its great, Its embarrassing and I have no idea how anyone can be proud of the current state of this country.

Thank god Daddys home and this mess is gonna get cleaned up fast.

US has the second highest manufacturing output in the world, second only to China, and what we're making now, in terms of value, is the highest it's ever been in this country. We make a lot of stuff.

[kalm]

I love it when communist try and define what being a patriot is. Same thing on fan message boards, "youre not a good fan" WTF would you know about it. Honest people criticize and look at all the angles.

America is in debt
Education sucks
Taxes are out of control
Little manufacturing
No energy agenda
Horrible foreign policy
Wide open borders
Drugs flowing in from everywhere

Yeah its great, Its embarrassing and I have no idea how anyone can be proud of the current state of this country.

Thank god Daddys home and this mess is gonna get cleaned up fast.

OG commie.

[UNI88]

I love it when communist try and define what being a patriot is. Same thing on fan message boards, "youre not a good fan" WTF would you know about it. Honest people criticize and look at all the angles.

America is in debt
Education sucks
Taxes are out of control
Little manufacturing
No energy agenda
Horrible foreign policy
Wide open borders
Drugs flowing in from everywhere

Yeah its great, Its embarrassing and I have no idea how anyone can be proud of the current state of this country.

Thank god Daddys home and this mess is gonna get cleaned up fast.

US has the second highest manufacturing output in the world, second only to China, and what we're making now, in terms of value, is the highest it's ever been in this country. We make a lot of stuff.

Let's poke some more holes in BobsKKKat's points.

sowell tries to define what a patriot is so he is (still) a communist.

America's debt increased significantly during trump's first term.

trump university and it's ilk contributed to the issues with education in America. trump and devos didn't fix it during his first term.

Spending (not taxes) is out of control. Compare our current tax rates vs to history and they're not that bad. Chizzy always said, "we do not have a revenue problem we have a federal spending problem".

Leaving Ukraine at russia's mercy, abandaning NATO and essentially letting the world burn might be the worst foreign policy the US has ever considered.

[kalm]

US has the second highest manufacturing output in the world, second only to China, and what we're making now, in terms of value, is the highest it's ever been in this country. We make a lot of stuff.

Let's poke some more holes in BobsKKKat's points.

sowell tries to define what a patriot is so he is (still) a communist.

America's debt increased significantly during trump's first term.

trump university and it's ilk contributed to the issues with education in America. trump and devos didn't fix it during his first term.

Spending (not taxes) is out of control. Compare our current tax rates vs to history and they're not that bad. Chizzy always said, "we do not have a revenue problem we have a federal spending problem".

Leaving Ukraine at russia's mercy, abandaning NATO and essentially letting the world burn might be the worst foreign policy the US has ever considered.

I’ll quibble a little with tax rates. We used much higher rates to climb out of the crisis driven debt from both the Great Depression and WWII. For a number of decades. (And yes Ganny I know how Europe’s destruction created a competitive advantage



Covid was similar but crisis spending was not offset by tax increases from those who could afford it.

[Bobcat]

Other people money is not your money and its also none of your business if someone "can afford it"

[SeattleGriz]

Still at I see. Racist piece of shit.

You’re slipping.

Yeah. Kinda mailed that one in.

[UNI88]

You’re slipping.

Yeah. Kinda mailed that one in.

Appropriate considering that could be said of 99% of sowell’s work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kalm]

You’re slipping.

Yeah. Kinda mailed that one in.

[Caribbean Hen]

The fact that the Ivy crowd has issues with Sowell only illustrates his brilliance

[UNI88]

The fact that the Ivy crowd has issues with Sowell only illustrates his brilliance

Scott Adams is 100x more insightful than sowell.

I went to a directional state university not an Ivy.

[Bobcat]

That explains a lot

[UNI88]

That explains a lot

To paraphrase CH, "the fact that a fan of SOUTH manitoba state university has issues with me only illustrates my brilliance".

The irony is that south and north are directions.